By Rite Publishing | July 08, 2010 at 05:12 PM EDT |
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Illustration by Mark Hyzer
In the Company of Gargoyles available July 15th
“Plays Nice with Others”
by T. H. Gulliver
Some of my earliest paid writing jobs were before I had any access to the World Wide Web. Writing felt a lot more lonely and secretive when you dropped your assignments off on the editor’s desk and didn’t see them again until the paper came out a couple days later. Writing in an era of instant communication feels a lot less solitary. Through the staff section of the Rite Publishing messageboards, I can get plentiful feedback from Steve and other Rite Publishing staff.
After a long day of meetings at work, I returned to my office and found that my fellow Riters (see what I did there?) Steven Russell, Jonathan McAnulty, and Jim Groves had responded to a draft version of “In the Company of Gargoyles.” The feedback was encouraging but not entirely positive. Taking criticism can be challenging, but I like to think I play nice with others.
The problem: My gargoyle didn’t play nice with others at all. In trying to explain the psychology of a creature that lurks around in shadows on rooftops and window ledges then swoops down on its prey, I had accentuated the viciousness and sadistic side of gargoyles. Then, realizing that they had to function as a player character, I had allowed some gargoyles to be exceptions to the rule. The consensus was that serial killers can be disruptive to the game and perhaps aren’t the best party members and that roleplaying the good aligned racial misfit has been done to death.
The final version of “In the Company of Gargoyles” benefitted from this feedback. I’ve made a much clearer distinction between ‘feral gargoyles’ – the creatures that have been pouncing on adventuring parties for as long as I can remember – and ‘stonewarden gargoyles’ – a race that sacrificed their own humanity to become humanity's guardians. The stonewardens initially lack the strength of their degenerate, bestial cousins, the feral gargoyles, but through training and experience can draw the power of stone into their bodies becoming, at higher levels, warriors that can make the ground shake and whose shadows causes enemies to tremble. They’ll be a lot of fun to roleplay and a great addition to your game.
