The following is a re-upload of an article posted on Medium.com, as I have lost my login and have no desire to keep writing there, I have reposted it in full (with some corrections) below. This same post can also be found on Ko-Fi

How I Spent Seven Years Writing in the Wrong Medium

I remember driving to university more than I remember the substance of my classes. I’d cut across the city, pick up my best friend Teddie (in my crappy white car with a leak in the power steering), and then floor it down the freeway to make it to my classes on time.

Stephen King (I know I quoted him in my last post, I fear there may be more) once referred to writers as “stenographers taking divine dictation”. Unlike last time, I’m not going to disagree with him. One of the worst questions anyone can ask a fiction writer is where we get our ideas. There’s the odd chance that we can trace the root of a concept, but for the most part, we don’t have any idea where the stories come from.

It was during one of those drives with Teddie that a sentence first appeared out of thin air, divine dictation, a simple tagline that’s changed my life in ways I never could have anticipated:

“They fell in love again, and again, in other towns…”

At the time, I was a film major, convinced I’d go on to be a filmmaker and spend the rest of my life in Hollywood. Given the corporate greed recently exposed by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, I’m glad I allowed that dream to change.

But, I digress.

Other Towns

Film major-ed-up, I took that other towns line and tried to find a movie buried somewhere in it. What presented itself was a bizarre four-hour love story set across three distinct worlds, with the same lead actors playing drastically different characters in each.

The first was a sort of modern fairy tale about a girl trapped in a small town in Massachusetts, desperate to escape the curse placed upon her life.

The third was set in a fantasy desert where the villains drove enchanted metal blimps and the last standing kingdoms were at war with an evil queen.

So far, nothing impressive. Elements of those stories have been dissected and altered to fit into other projects I’ve worked on since then. But, that isn’t what we’re here to discuss.

The second story, set in the 31st Century, had our lovers in a prison on the moon, teaming up to escape the clutches of their warden. Together, they steal a hover-train, and hightail it to a nearby settlement where a rocket headed for Mars is located, their only saving grace.

I never had names for these characters, to be fair, I never had much of a plot either. During development, I decided to name the woman Voyager, and the man Rebel; nicknames that seem to have stuck.

The second story was meant to be the downtrodden midpoint, with our lovers never making it to the last rocket off the moon. The train was to be destroyed, with Rebel sacrificing himself to save Voyager’s life. The closing moments would have seen her gunning down the warden, and realizing with no way off, she would likely die alone on the moon.

Had I managed to make that film, I would have wasted the story, falling in line with the theme of my last post. I didn’t know it then, but I was writing in the wrong medium.

The Road to MUSE RPG

As the founder of a tabletop RPG company, you’d think I’d have some long history with Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Tales From The Loop, etc. I wish that was the case, but it was Teddie who first got me to play. In 2018, he invited me to a join a space adventure with a few old friends, blending universes in so many ways I’d be sued by every major studio for describing it.

I rolled up a rebellious gunslinger robot, and by the end of that day, I knew something had changed, even if I didn’t understand what that was.

Let me go back a little here.

• When I was a kid, I used to stitch pieces of printer paper together to make city maps that covered the entire living room floor; desperately trying to find a way to turn the whole thing into a game.

• In my early teens, mowing grass for comic book money, I found myself drawn to the dice showcased in the glass counter of my local shop. I didn’t know what they were for, and for some reason never thought to ask.

• During summer sleepovers with my cousins at Grandma’s house, I wrote a system to keep us from fighting about “who actually hit who first with the lightsaber,” which relied upon the drawing of cards to break ties.

There was always a game designer in me, waiting for the penny to finally drop. Cut to 2021, the pandemic is “over”, and the idea of running my own campaign consumes me. So, I started writing, and quickly realized that no established system would let me run the world the way I wanted to. It wasn’t enough for me to write the setting, I needed a new system to go with it.

By the end of 2021, Teddie, and a couple of close friends were neck deep in my first campaign, set in the fantasy world of Ilhdeinia (which you all will be introduced to next year), running the system that would become MUSE RPG.

Escape from Atlas 9 & Raygun Gothic

So why am I telling you any of this? 2023 rolled around, and as a group, we decided to release MUSE RPG to the public. Brainstorming sessions began for adventure books, and an old story came calling:

“They fell in love again, and again, in other towns…”

I fought for my space story to be one of the first three we released, not knowing why or even what the final product would end up looking like. I was acting off the gut instinct that the story would play well as a game.

The “Other Towns” project became Escape From Atlas 9. If Atlas 9 had been produced as a film, the surface of the moon would have been the only aspect explored, and little attention would have been paid to the rest of the galaxy. Developing the project as a game, I’ve had the chance to create events, species, rebels, worlds, and mysteries, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

But none of it has compared to the external experience of working on this adventure.

Once a week, I’ve had the chance to sit in on playtests of the game, for players located around the world, and see the joy on their faces as they explore the galaxy I’ve been dreaming of since 2015. There isn’t a feeling like it, and each session serves as both the fuel to keep writing, and a reminder of why I create to begin with.

I have dabbled in a number of mediums over the years, from screenplays and novels, to comics and radio dramas. Out of all of them, writing adventures has felt the most natural. Had I never made the leap, I could have gone my whole life without knowing that.

As writers, we tend to confine ourselves to the things we feel comfortable with.

• The word processor we know.
• The coffee or tea we like to have in that special mug.
• The right music to keep us from being distracted.
• That one brand of pen that writes better than every other brand of pen.

If nothing else comes from the telling of this story, I hope to inspire you to branch out. Experiment with different styles, different mediums, and maybe even new forms of art. Words are undoubtedly where I belong, but you won’t know what you're capable of until you try. Beyond the comfort of the known could lie your next love.

If you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear about your own creative exploration, and the journey of finding the right medium for your voice. Keep searching, keep trying new things, and keep creating. The adventure is part of the process.