As of late I have noticed that my particular brand of creativity seems to be focusing on one very specific target. Normally this would be very good for a writer; it implies focus, dedication, and the ability to string together a project. Unfortunately I have noticed that I have a single character which I solely enjoy writing for these days, and oddly it does not matter the setting. He always has the same back story, there’s always a progression of events that leads to his being somewhere else.
And that somewhere else is where I have been picking up projects.
I have on occasion been involved with a group of people who would consider themselves writers in a free form writing project that some others would consider an absolute waste of talent, but it has opened creative ideas to me that I had not considered before. So I have started enjoying the idea of writing multiple ‘endings’ as it were, for my most popular character of all time, ‘the Operative’. He is a character that is very dear to me, if such a thing can be said about a sociopath.
I truly enjoy writing him in all forms. It gives me an excuse to delve into the ideas of another person, write about what they’re thinking as opposed to what they are doing. Recently I have had a few small writing exercises come together because of NaNoWriMo— a thing that I am certain you are familiar with if you are reading this post –that have made me realize that sometimes the specific actions in an action scene are not always the best part of the scene.
Recently I began playing a very popular cyberpunk RPG with a few friends, and of course I couldn’t help but include ‘the Operative’ as my played character. There are some definite differences to him this time, but we’ll gloss over those for now. It is worth noting that I am a fan of the metagame; playing the game while the game isn’t necessarily being played. So I asked our Runner if there was some stuff that could be done in the mean time to build resources or provide backdrop, any number of things to simulate the rest of the week while we weren’t in active session.
In response, he provided the Dramatic Interlude rules for a different game that could actually blend very well to our campaign. So, because I have a habit of carrying a deck of cards with me everywhere, I figured I would give it a shot.
With such, I present Five Card Draw. This is raw and unedited, for the record, but as I have said before, go look at this thing I wrote.
— Vid