Clarion Write-A-Thon: Initial Brainstorming and Selecting the First Italian Fairy Tale

Hello readers,

Last week, I talked about what I’m writing for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. I spent some time this weekend thinking about the negative experiences I’ve had, and have been mulling over Colorism because it’s something I want to be mindful of when writing these stories.

Italian-Americans are sometimes treated differently because we’re not deemed white enough. There are stereotypes that shape this toxic view; Italians from the top of the boot are thought to be lighter-skinned than those in the south. The further south you go, the darker the skin tone–with Calabria and Sardinia residents being the darkest. In other words, where your family is originally from sometimes acts as a signpost for your perceived worth. (Which is nonsense.)

My own experiences have been really weird. Though I am white, I have olive undertones to my skin. There have definitely been times where I haven’t been white “enough” or, alternatively, not tan “enough” to call myself Italian. Mind you, I have never experienced these moments among people of color, and since I changed my hair color to blonde (which I did because I’m mostly grey and occasionally vain) I didn’t have as many issues as I once did. Now, I’ve managed to unpack some of those experiences and learn more about Othering, mostly to confirm: “Okay, so that’s what happened.”

Thankfully, I’m past the pain of my experiences–so much so they’ve faded to a small watermark. That said, I do know Colorism still exists. I just don’t know how Colorism started for Italian immigrants, nor do I know enough about the subject to speak to it authoritatively. Of course, Colorism and Racism aren’t the same, either, even though sometimes they’re conflated. It doesn’t help that Italian pop culture references often reinforce harmful stereotypes while, at the same time, whitewashing Italian cultures–especially anything that smacks of “Rome”. The adverse effect of that is reinforcing Colorism–either intentionally or unintentionally.

Choosing the Fairy Tale

Deep topics, right? So, how the F*&$ do I choose which fairy tale to retell? Well readers–I decided not to. Instead, I pulled out my copy of Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales. This 763-page book is a collection that includes fairytales like The Three Crones from Venice along with non-magical folktales. Then, I closed my eyes and opened it up. Whatever random page I opened up to? That’d be the fairy tale I selected for the week.

And so, the first story I’m retelling is called “Barbara the Wise” from Palermo, Sicily. The moral to this particular tale is quite interesting, because the lesson intersects with class-and-gender based stereotypes while championing a free and public education. I did some preliminary research about the Sicilian fairy tale, and found it by an alternative name: “Catarina the Wise” in Giuseppe Pitre’s Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales translated by Jack Zipes. (Apologies for the misspelling of Pitre’s surname. There should be an accent grave over the “e”, but I couldn’t get the accent to stick.)

I dug a little deeper to see if I could find any women writing about this story and came up unsurprisingly empty. What I did learn, is that Guiseppe Pitre (1847-1916) is literally an unknown champion of Sicilian culture and folklore in the 19th century. This is a huge deal. Anti-Italianism was rampant and deadly at the time. It’s also subtext in Little Women that often gets ignored or misunderstood, because Anti-Italianism doesn’t have the same meaning in modern times as it did to a 19th century resident. (See: Laurie.) If you’re looking for highlights, the anti-italianism page on Wikipedia has a good overview of how Italian-Americans were treated historically, and how that’s changed during-and-post WWII. Pointedly, there’s a long list of resources at the bottom you can check out yourself.

After reading “Catarina the Wise”, I wanted to learn more about its origins because I was surprised by how feminist it was. This story proudly declares gender and class equality–that’s literally the lesson. Prince and pauper both deserve an equal education and fair treatment, and the prince who doesn’t agree and tries to punish Catarina is taught quite the lesson. The locations mentioned–Palermo, Venezia, Genoa, Napoli–don’t read as an accident to me, either. The story tells me that Sicilians are no different from other Italians and are valued the same. Not should be. Are. Ugh! It’s a perfect folktale. Now, I just have to figure out how to retell it. Yeah, no pressure. No pressure at all. *whistles*

About this Post: In exchange for sponsor support, I promised to highlight how I’m processing my identity as an Italian-American and daughter of an immigrant through brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

June 22, 2020
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My Clarion Write-A-Thon Project

Hiya! This year, I signed up to help the Clarion Write-A-Thon raise funds and support the workshop. I just decided what I’ll be writing about and have opted to select six, unique Italian fairy tales to retell. I want to share with you what this means to me in the hopes you’ll follow along and support my work.

Clarion’s six week-long Write-a-Thon is the perfect opportunity to explore a part of my identity while consciously avoiding tropes. I’m pledging six short story drafts in this time period; I’ll be releasing the drafts, one per week, under a password protected area on my website for sponsors to read. The rules? Simply, this: for the project, I will not include cisgendered white male characters.

I have complicated feelings about being Italian-American and the daughter of an immigrant due to past experiences. I’m also fed up with media depictions that focus on a razor-thin section of the entire culture, both here and abroad. In America, the dominant Italian-American stereotype in artistic media is a cartoonish “wise guy” or sometimes “gal”. Over and over again, these stereotypes of Italian-Americans depict cisgendered white men and few cisgendered white women. Of the men, Italian-Americans must be the hyper-masculine, violent tough guy/hottie or the devoted, politically shrewd Catholic priest. Of those few Italian women, we must be sexy mothers or nuns.

In exchange for your support, you’ll read how I process this part of my identity through my brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

If you’re not, that’s okay! There are dozens of other writers you can support, too, and I will always encourage you to back the writer you want to read. Here’s the link to the full list.



June 18, 2020
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Game Producer Journals: The Jumpstart

In the kickoff for my game producer blog series, I wrote about demo materials for different types of games, defined a few terms, and dove into quickstart design.

Today, I want to talk about jumpstarts. First question: why do you need one? Well, the answer is “it’s complicated”. A jumpstart is one method for obtaining fans of your game and, like any promotional tool, it has its utility. Some people believe jumpstarts deter corebook sales because they encapsulate the game and often have a lower price point. I am not one of them.

Jumpstarts are best designed when they are not conceived in a vacuum. When the jumpstart has a clearly defined goal like: “teach new players how to play our game” or “give existing players a sample of what they’ll find” or “use it as a free, promotional tool to attract all players”. Jumpstarts can be designed with several goals in mind when they’re produced with the understand that anyone–even those players unfamiliar with a publisher or gameline–might pick up a copy.

Like quickstarts, jumpstarts are marketing tools for a gameline. Unlike quickstarts, I don’t believe they’re always necessary provided the corebook teaches players how to play their game. Most corebooks do not have actual play examples, sample dice rolls, a step-by-step outline for a sample campaign, a full adventure, and a full page ad to show where new players should go if they need more information (YouTube!, Twitch, Discord, forums, etc.) Many corebooks, especially second editions, serial games, or collector’s editions, are not designed with new players in mind. Many games are crafted for people who already know how to run a tabletop gaming session.

Jumpstarts are often needed because they serve players who need a different type of game design. Often, jumpstarts employ word conservation by focusing on what players need to know in order to play the game. Jumpstarts are great for a) complex settings b) complex rule sets c) new or debuting rule sets d) games with multiple playing styles e) original settings and d) messaging/visibility showing how the publisher is new-player friendly. Players who have fun with a jumpstart will have more confidence when running the game–and that player confidence is key.

It can be challenging to distill a corebook into a jumpstart. My approach to writing/designing in this form is to empower the player while providing value. I’ve found the easiest design method is to utilize a 3-to-5 act narrative structure, 3-5 non-player characters, and a sample fleshed out location. All games need setting–especially places where the players can hunt, search, investigate, etc.–and a jumpstart helps ground the players in it.

My last post included five steps to producing a quickstart. These are the same steps to follow when plotting a jumpstart with one, major caveat: conceiving a jumpstart requires greater analysis of your corebook’s content. You could repurpose some material for the quickstart. A jumpstart that rehashes all of the corebook’s materials is less useful, however, and you’ll miss out on residual sales–even if the jumpstart’s release precedes the corebook’s.

Lastly, I want to mention that while there’s no “one way” to design a jumpstart, I do believe a good jumpstart provides value. The jumpstart shouldn’t be an exact replica of your corebook’s content–there’s a different type of product for that called a “beta”. Instead, use the jumpstart to frame your corebook’s material so players transitioning from one to the other are confident they know the basics and are eager to learn more.

May 27, 2020
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Magic Monday Dispatches No 2: A Few Good Fantasy Worldbuilding Terms

To kick off my Magic Monday Dispatches, I talked a little bit about the definition of magic and offered twenty questions to help you worldbuild.

Today, I want to introduce a few worldbuilding terms I use to help you think more deeply about the magic in your fantasy world.

Ability: In this case, the skills and knowledge a practitioner possesses to perform magic.

Area of Effect: Or range of effect. When a spell is performed, all characters within range will suffer its effects. This is used a lot in fantasy roleplaying games, but it’s also useful if you’re thinking about ways to limit your magic.

Backlash: In this instance, an undesirable result caused by the spell. A type of failure. The spell could have been: the wrong incantation, performed poorly, interfered with, had the wrong components, defended against, etc.

Cost: I’m sure you’ve heard the words “magic must have a price” before. The cost of doing magic implies something that must be spent in order to influence the natural world. Costs can be scalable to complement a spell’s complexity and relay rarity or potency. A spell to summon a pixie might have more common components than one to hail a fairy queen, for example. Typically, the cost of performing magic becomes more complicated when types (or schools) of magic are added. Having necromancy and creation magic in the same setting, for example, might generate directly opposing costs and ritual requirements that include time of day, dried herbs or flowers, crystals, candles, animal/body parts, blood, etc.

When there’s no consequence or cost to using magic, then the scale of effect is harder for the reader to place. In these situations, the magic presents itself as limitless and the only thing stopping practitioners from significantly changing their environment is moral fiber.

Effect: Or consequence. The effect is simply what happens when the spell is performed.

Frequency: How often magic is performed and by whom. The frequency of spells performed can contribute to a backlash or it can stretch the practitioner’s limits.

Limit: A limit can mean 1) the maximum exertion a practitioner can extend for a spell or period of time. 2) the limit of what the magic system can do. Or 3) The number of magic practitioners able to perform magic. Building limits into a magic system is a good idea, but often we see a system holds infinite power but can only be accessed by literate characters or those with the proper blood/parentage. There are other ways to add limits without tapping into a user’s genetic makeup by introducing an element of time. Celestial events, time of day, age of ritual components, etc. are natural limits to performing magic because they are recurring states or access points. These limits force the player to conserve the use of magic until replenished. The mage must find new ingredients. The wizard must wait until the next full moon.

Magic System: Also known as a “school” of magic. A set of magical spells and rituals around a common theme. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Solar, Lunar, Birth, Death, etc. Most magic systems that possess schools have more than one.

Scale of Effect: Or, magical potency. The scale of effect typically shows how powerful the practitioner (or their spell/components) is. A magician who can summon a thunderstorm steamrolls any character who can only conjure a glass of water. The reason why magic often has an associated price (or cost) is to limit its usage which reduces the frequency of magical effect.

Source: Magic can be found in sunlight, moonlight, earth, fire, water, air, metal, blood, words, etc. The scale of effect, limit, and cost can naturally stem from any of these, because the sources themselves aren’t limitless. Daylight doesn’t shine for twenty-four hours; a cloudy sky could spell disaster. The source of magic can be renewable (sunlight) or finite (crystal).

May 25, 2020
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Game Producer Journals: New Players and 5 Steps to Quickstart Design

Two of the ongoing needs in game production are to retain players and attract new players. In video games, short interactive demos give players the feel and basic functionality of the game. Part-marketing/part-preview, player demos are arguably the best way for them to understand gameplay outside of actual play reels.

In hobby gaming, there’s a number of ways to preview a game before a title debuts ranging from actual play videos to hands on demos at conventions or retail stores. This introduces a lot of challenges for veterans. After a while, it’s easy to associate who’s playing a game with personal interactions online and off. This can skew a designer’s perspective and lend to design decisions geared toward the audience you’ve encountered and not the people who play the game but never contact the publisher. Setting sample data set analyses aside, the people that interact with a publisher are not typically new players, either.

Jump starts, quick starts, convention demos (live, recorded, and in print), and actual play videos work well when they’re designed to attract new players–people who don’t typically interact with your company. Otherwise, you’re targeting players in the same audience at different times. Though existing players and player retention are both incredibly important, new players are crucial to the overall health of the industry. If you’re having trouble understanding why, please remember that gaming is a dynamic industry. New players often become core fans integral to the community in direct and indirect ways.

Attracting new players is a complex process that requires a multi-pronged approach. It is often intimidating to be a new player because they don’t know the culture (of the publisher, fans, and intersecting micro-communities) or the linguistics on top of not knowing how to play that game. These are barriers to new players that can be resolved in multiple ways, but doing so requires intent and knowledge of both community management and basic marketing techniques.

This process is easier for new games that don’t have previous editions attached and becomes increasingly more challenging the older the game (or property) is. These legacy games (Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade, Dungeons and Dragons) are more complex to manage because of their multi-year, multi-edition spanning history. Each edition that debuts, which is healthy for a publisher to consider, has a core audience and the potential to welcome new players. If the game is primarily being played solely by legacy players with few to no new players added, then over time the core base will shrink.

Using Product to Attract New Players

One product that can help reach out to new players is a quickstart. Here’s where it gets fuzzy: the words “jumpstart” and “quickstart” are often used interchangeably, even among publishers. I asked Matt M McElroy, the Operations Manager for Onyx Path Publishing, what the difference was. He said that: “Jumpstarts are more robust, and are basically starter sets in book form. Quickstarts are very light introductions with some marketing attached.” The jumpstart can also serve as a quickstart and often does, which is partly why the terms are swapped so often.

Going forward, I’ll use the word quickstart to mean “a short standalone marketing product designed to demonstrate the core rules and feel of a game” and a jumpstart as “a robust starter set for a game that includes an adventure, characters, etc.”

Quickstarts are almost always free and are treated as a marketing expense; jumpstarts can be free, but are often not due to the costs involved. Often, jumpstarts must hold more perceived value for the consumer than a free product because of the cost.

Designing the Quickstart

Designing a quickstart is one-part game design, one-part marketing. I personally feel that game designers shouldn’t develop the quickstart’s outline by themselves. This task is something the publisher and marketer should be involved with for a few reasons. They typically 1) know their core fanbase 2) have a rough budget in mind and 3) know how to brand their game. Who works on the quickstart, in particular, is less about skill and more about perspective.

Step One: Identify Your Audience

How a team is set up to handle production won’t matter unless the publisher has a clear idea of who the quickstart is for. Typically, that answer is one or more slices of an overall audience. Just saying “new players” is pretty generic. New players who like “X” system can be too specific if that fanbase is small or insular.

To figure out audience, I recommend reviewing a minimum of five similar products produced by different companies. In this way, you establish a marketing baseline for your game by analyzing what others have already produced.

Step Two: Determine Your Message

Once you have your audience in mind, you can then brainstorm your message. Saying “we have the best game evah!” is not a good message and, quite frankly, is challenging for engagement. Rephrase that to be: “here are the reasons why this title is the best game of its kind”. Then, list the reasons.

Unpacking my last statement, here’s what my rephrased statement means:

    * here are the reasons – you’re presenting the meat of what your audience needs to know in order to purchase your game.
    * why this title – you’re focusing on revealing more about this game and not previous editions, similar settings, etc. This keeps your focus on the present.
    * is the best game – you’re acknowledging the hard work that went into making your game. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of what you created.
    * of its kind – you’re acknowledging this game has its own style/feel and will be compared to other games in this vertical regardless of publisher.

Codifying these reasons will force you to think about your game from the perspective of someone who’s never heard of it–which is typically the hardest audience to write for.

Step Three: Identify Components

While an outline is valuable and typically follows next, I feel that quickstarts necessitate a different conversation before it can be finalized. Components are key elements of a game that are important to the audience and messaging.

Items might include:

    * Ad for the corebook
    * Sample player character
    * Sample NPC
    * Highlights of gameplay: damage, advancement, combat, investigation, social conflict, player vs. player, success/fail, etc.
    * Condensed setting
    * Iconic art
    * Flash fiction or character sketch
    * Corebook chapter preview
    * A DM-facing section
    * Sample adventure hooks
    * Sample loot
    * Sample equipment
    * Sample map
    * Mini-scene
    * Gameplay examples
    * Graphs/icons of dice rolls
    * Full page ad for company (with links to social media, streaming channels, etc.)
    * Ad for upcoming products or Kickstarters
    * Interview questions with the producer/developer
    * …and more!

I recommend that this stage occurs without a clear page count or product spec to freely allow for brainstorming.

Step Four: Outlining

This phase is where the nuts and bolts shape the quickstart. I personally believe a sample layout here is crucial, because knowing how many words are on a page will impact the outline. Once the production parameters are known and a page count is determined, then content can be assigned on each page.

Here, it’s also smart to figure out how you intend to distribute your quickstart, because that will affect its intent and budget. Saddle-stitched and digital quickstarts are the two most common types and are used for different reasons. Printed quickstarts are great for conventions/retail distribution and may attract people who have never heard of that game or publisher before. Digital quickstarts can do the same thing, depending upon where it’s offered and what the perceived value is.

If you’re on the fence during the outlining phase and find you’re adding more information, you might want to consider a hybrid jump/quickstart that you can charge for. This is the perfect step to make this decision!

Step Five: Production

Following this, it’s time for production to begin. I would treat this product just as you would a gaming supplement by hiring a writer who can simplify setting and rules into a condensed space. Less is usually more. The quickstart is a slice of what your game is all about and why it’s unique. I would absolutely lean into that to best inform potential players.

If you’re worried about art, I agree with your instinct. People make decisions to buy games for all kinds of reasons and mentally associate gameplay with emotions that are invoked through their experiences. Art can invoke emotion and is important to their impressions of value and setting.

Lastly, you might get to this point and realize you don’t know how to market your game. That’s okay! It’s for this reason you’ll want to plan a quickstart even if you don’t go through with production. The elements you decide during this project further shape how you want to present your game. If you need to stop and rethink a detail, that’s a good thing to happen early on.

Thanks for joining me and good luck!

May 20, 2020
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