Let’s do something a bit different today.
A few months back To Hunt a God received one of my favorite reviews of my work. It’s critical, and it’s correct. So let’s talk about it, see how the book’s flaws came to be, and see what can be learned from this review and my experience of the creative process.
To be crystal clear, I don’t want this to be defensive, call someone out, or any garbage like that. I might disagree with the reviewer here and there, but I value criticism like this and think there’s utility to publicly thinking “aloud” about it.
Disclaimer: I’m the type of clown who will put disclaimers while talking about my own work. Also this article contains spoilers for the adventure.
The Review
Right off the bat, I have no clue how the file’s formatting messed with copy-pasting images and text. Good to know for the future, but I haven’t the foggiest why that happened. (Dear reader, if you do, please do give a shout in the comments.) I’ve since divested myself of Adobe and switched to Affinity Publisher. So unfortunately, I don’t really have a way to edit the layout files anymore. Alas!
Encounter maps—gah, of course! In my mind the final fight with Hrunda doesn’t involve complex terrain and so can be handled either theater of the mind or with a simple sketch by the gamemaster. The playtest included the prior. While the reviewer’s working from the perspective of a gamemaster on virtual tabletop (VTT), that’s not the only reason a map would have improved the climax.
Ambiance.
A suitably ominous or creepy forest map for the final throwdown establishes a particular tone. This would have enhanced the gamemaster’s experience as a reader, and given the players more sense of danger and drama as they finally confronted the Half-Mad God.
I love playing RuneQuest as a “Maps & Minis” game. However, I don’t think its systems for movement and initiative (strike ranks) are great for that play style. RuneQuest is solid for dramatic duels or quick fights. When playing more extensive fights, every group I’ve played in for more than a couple sessions has relied on house rules. Combined with RuneQuest’s evocative hit locations and damage rules, a more tactical set of house rules is deeply satisfying. This is part of why the playtest ended up using theater of the mind and strike ranks. The other reason, well, is that we were playing during down time at my workplace! There was no space for a large map, hah.
The Rivals
Looking back, the Rivals are clearly the biggest flaw in To Hunt a God. I still like them, but I absolutely fell for a classic trap in writing them. Don’t write adventures like a novel.
My goal was to provide the gamemaster with different options, to use as they felt best fit. Descriptions of what’s happening to the Rivals then allows the gamemaster to interweave their story with the adventurers’ through Complications sidebars. Originally I conceived of To Hunt a God as some sort of sandbox heroquesting adventure. I ditched the sandbox idea because I couldn’t figure out how to make it work without writing up the entire Old Woods.
(Which I almost did—that’s why the back printable pages have a short bestiary-style description of the Bear People.)
Wanting to retain that sense of “openness” and “utility” which I love about sandboxes, I wrote the Rivals. And wrote. And wrote. There’s WAY too much about them! In hindsight I absolutely could cut Vinshana, and regrettably I could probably also cut Bozfani.
And see, that’s the problem—“regrettably.” I liked her too much; the subplot about why the heck a dark troll is in an elf forest tantalized me. This is born from my deep-down need as a gamemaster to bother my players. I knew Bozfani would unsettle players, and she very much did during the playtest! But that session-level success doesn’t mean she was necessary for the published product. Focusing on Finstaval—an arrogant jerk—would have provided an interesting antagonist for the heroquest. He’s an Orlanth initiate, traditionally the “good guys,” so I quite liked the idea of him as an opponent for the players.
Today, I probably would still keep Pelnor. He was my answer to “What happens if the players refuse the Call to Adventure?” The character is my sort of reimagining of King Pellinore from Arthurian legend. (Well, most precisely from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.) He’s got far too much backstory, but the core idea isn’t all that rotten. Give a poorly-equipped non-player character the Quest if the players refuse, and then horribly murder him in front of their faces.
What may be more interesting is that, by the time I released a Beta Edition for people who had purchased To Hunt a God all the way back in 2021, I was fairly sure that the way the Rivals are presented was a flaw.
How to fix it? Well, I didn’t see a way to fix it. I still don’t! At least not in a “quick and bloody cutting” way. Removing the Rivals removes the emotional structure I intended in the adventure. The problem is, that emotional structure didn’t provide support in the right way! This does, frankly, connect with some mental health aspects of the creative process. At the stage that I realized this, I just didn’t have the energy to rework the manuscript. Because I had released a “Part One” as my final volume of MOTM, I also felt I didn’t have the time for such a revision. I made a choice and, as this reviewer correctly pointed out, it’s left a flaw in the book.
In hindsight, my most substantial mistake is describing the Rivals activities rather than giving stage directions to the gamemaster. The approach I used turned them into something close to fiction characters rather than the gamemaster’s finger-puppets.
Plot & Organization
I find it interesting that this reviewer wondered if To Hunt a God is a race. It’s a contest, but I didn’t envisage it as a race. Rather, I viewed the heroquest as sort of a “prove your worthiness, mortal!” Clearly, that didn’t come across as intended!
As an aside, a tip to other writers—any time you get a critique like this point, assume the writing partner, professor, critic, customer, etc. is correct. Sharing how they understood a piece is so, so valuable. Don’t brush it away. Took me ages to recognize the defensive habit. Still do it now and again.
The Rivals are the cause of this flaw, too. Again, the whole “description versus directions” element. That’s also why the Complications sidebars don’t work as intended. They created too many options rather than the illusion of a sandbox.
The Encounters chapter was kind of my way of trying to fix these elements. I wrote it after I’d finished the main section, after the playtest. Some of it is born from playtest elements, others from different scenes or ideas I’d gamemastered (like Yama-kisintha the Spider). To be honest, I think it’s the finest writing in the whole book. It’s quite a lot more concise and directed than the adventure, with a lot of ideas per page compared to the Cult of Hrunda (which I like, but is a bit stylistically long-winded). While I did try to call out the Encounters in the Complications sidebars, I didn’t do a terribly consistent job of it.
Excluding a random encounters table was intentional. I’m not sure if it was correct, but I’m inclined to think yes. The goal of the Encounters chapter is to provide additional material which, flexibly, could be used by the gamemaster to sculpt the heroquest. That did fail. The concept, I think, is solid. Each encounter, in my mind, is essentially a Rune. If I had expressed that in the actual chapter and then reworked the sidebars to indicate useful Rune/emotion-associated encounters, this concept may have worked.
The goal was for the gamemaster to use the encounters intentionally, not spontaneously. For example, if the players just had a big fight, a more peaceful encounter gives space for less martial adventurers like Yanioth to shine. It also helps combat be punctuation. This retains excitement through variety. My execution didn’t work, but I still think this basic idea could be useful when writing out a heroquest.
The only plot element I think I actually disagree with the reviewer about is the Talking Tree. As noted yes, I wanted options to be flexible. But whereas other flexibilities weakened the adventure, I don’t think this one does. Creating a situation in which the adventurers have to make a promise and then are confronted with breaking it feels, I don’t know … almost too easy? (As the writer or gamemaster.) Quite linear. It creates a sense of railroad tracks, almost as a “Gotcha!” moment.
I like the reviewer’s goal of creating situations which are difficult for the adventurers. Throughout To Hunt a God I feel like I did this fairly well with future consequences, but failed to make actions have immediate consequences during the adventure. Stuff like the Wise Beast getting secrets to foil adventurers in the future aren’t as evocative as using secrets to help the Rivals foil the adventurers right now. In To Hunt a God my most obvious use of this was crossing over into Death. If the players are creative, they might cross over symbolically. Otherwise, of course, someone can just get stabbed! (Guess which happened in the playtest…)
Wanna see the book for yourself? Despite my grousing and self-loathing I do actually think it’s worth buying. Well, I’m biased, but these lovely folks ain’t! I’ve knocked $5 off the hardcover, too, since you’ve indulged me in reading so far. Thank you!
Chatting about the Brain Stuff
It’s been a bit over a year since I got my physical copy and washed my hands of To Hunt a God. Distance helps look at the work more kindly in some ways, more critically in others.
The way I currently look back on these flaws in To Hunt a God is that they were unavoidable. Releasing the book was important to me. I’d already had people purchase the first half. I anticipated the second half taking around three months (not a year and a half). Unrelated to my writing or gaming, a collapsing workplace deteriorated my mental health. Combined with two deaths in the family, the start of 2023 was the lowest I’ve been in well over a decade. I’m still recovering from the combo of depression, burnout, and grief. I’m not “fixed” and I genuinely wonder if I’ll once again ever be firing on all cylinders weekly. (The therapist would scold me for that one.) But before anyone clutches their pearls, yes, there’s genuine improvement.
This stuff is uncomfortable. That’s why, when I do bring up the Brain Stuff, I try to ensure I’m as open as I’m comfortable with about it. More openness encourages more people to talk about it and bolsters everyone’s ability to understand and endure.
And again, I don’t want the Brain Stuff to be a justification for flaws in my creative work. My successes are mine, and my failures are mine.
So how does the Brain Stuff play into To Hunt a God? Why do I view these flaws as unavoidable? Well, it’s not the best version of this story I could have ever created. It is, however, the best version of To Hunt a God that I was able to create within the life I was living. And I’m OK with that. I made choices which resulted in a book with flaws. Those choices weren’t defeatist. I chose how to expend what energy I did have, to achieve a goal which mattered to me.
As a creator, I felt it was more important to finish To Hunt a God than to perfect it. (That said, good luck finding a typo—currently I’m only aware of two in the Print edition.) Because I released the first half all the way back in 2021, I felt it imperative to make good on my promise to my fans and customers. I had promised not to release other RuneQuest work prior to completing To Hunt a God, and I kept that promise. I’m not proud of how long it took me. I am proud of my integrity. Slogging through the adventure was hard. It was never going to get the full revision which the story deserved. I didn’t want to be a creator who moved on to brighter pastures and left fans with an incomplete story.
Finishing To Hunt a God may be the most difficult task I’ve ever done.
Today, the book’s bittersweet. I’m not exactly “happy” with it, but I am proud of it. A lot of those emotions are in the afterword. Go read it. I’m out of emotional battery for Brain Stuff in this article.
Yes, you can call me a tease. I’ll allow it.
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