Matt Lichtenwalner

OTR guy for Kett - roaming the US and Canada constantly. Maybe a bit of art and/or writing here and there to spice things up.

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My Glamorous Life and Wealth! Matt Lichtenwalner 1/4 '26

Teaser doodle for Caravan! the Solo TTRPG Journaling Game I'm developing.

Potential Work

So a friend directed another friend to me. The third party is offering (what sounds like) real money for the project - between $1k and $2k.

They sent me an early edition of the book. It's a collection of magic items. Between 3 and 4 / page. There's about 100 pages. And they would like a full color illustration for the front cover.

So the math breaks down to about $6.66 dollars / image if I assume only 3 images / page AND they go the full $2k.

And that's without a cover illustration.

*le sigh*

I (sincerely) appreciate that laying out a couple grand out of your own pocket feels like a lot. Hell, it is a lot. But the amount of work he's asking for...

More info as I have it.

In the meantime, the gooder news:

Caravan!

I'm working pretty hard at a game I'm creating and I'm currently calling Caravan! The idea behind it is really pretty simple:

Create a simple character, who agrees to join a caravan that's going on a 30 (or 31) day trek to provide support of some kind. Use random tables to determine a daily prompt and then write ~1,667 words on that prompt. Do that every day for a month. It's like a hybrid of NaNoWriMo and some of the journaling games I've been seeing that seem popular right now.

It all evolved from my efforts during the NaNoWriMo of 2022.

I'm pretty stoked about it. It's a very simple concept, but I feel like it has a lot of potential flavor without a lot of crunch. I'm not a crunch guy.

How about you guys - what are you working on?

1/4 2 Comments

I’ve always tended to write short rather than long. I might end up writing thousands of words total, but only a little bit at a time. Remind me to keep thinking about it, though.

nerdsholmferret

Yeah, I think I'm more like that, myself. Little chunks. It's actualy what inspired me to do it this way for NaNo in 2022 - I needed something fresh to think about or I kinda knew I wouldn't make it all the way to the end.

Matt Lichtenwalner

NaNoWriMo in April? Matt Lichtenwalner 4/8 '24

Do any of you recall my brief attempt at NaNo back in 2022? I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

Why? Well, it's because I'm being... condescending. Not my proudest moment, but if I can't be honest with you folks, who can I be honest with?!

Condescending how, you ask?

Well, I've been listening to a lot on Audible recently. (Yes, I know there are other, ostensibly better audio book storefronts out there. Yes, I should give them my business.) Like, A LOT of audio books. I stopped listening to podcasts altogether for a few months. That dumped a lot of listening time back into my schedule. On top of that, the hours for this 'new' job are... significantly longer.

If I'm doing the math right, I've listened to 42 books since starting the job in November. Some of these are pretty lengthy.

All but two of them are in the LitRPG genre.

I'm kinda fascinated by what I'm hearing. Partly because it fits that ooooold fantasy trope that I so enjoy - someone from 'the real world' going to a fantasy world. This trope is not the newest thing in the world (the Guardians of the Flame series was one of my favorites as a kid) but the LitRPG genre is at least new to me.

So I'm making a little 'study' of the genre. Trying to figure out the similarities and differences between the different authors. Figuring out what the audience of the genre expect.

From what I can piece together, the LitRPG genre is to fantasy novels as streaming is to video game playing. There's this sense of 'no real start or stop - just follow along with out hero on the adventure!'.

Some series even seem to eschew the whole 3 act format. More than once, I found myself surprised by the Audible Guy saying "Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program." Side note: if you see me in person? Ask for my imitation of that guy. I have heard so many audio books, I feel like I can actually nail his every nuance.

What's more, the writing is... not amazing. Some series are better than other, for certain. And the voice actors really help here. Still.

Seeing it yet?

My NaNo thing was fun for me in part because I used a randomizer to create a kind of prompt for that day's writing. That, in turn, made the whole thing a bit like a solo TTRPG for me.

And I think that the audience for the genre is so hungry for MOAR they don't care that it's not as polished. Call it the YouTube-ification of novel writing.

I say all of this to simply say that I write moderately well during my first draft of most creative writing.

In other words "I could do that. Maybe better than that."

A novel series (especially in an audio format) is obviously a looong way out. If I was to get a three book series completed, it would arguably be the biggest accomplishment of my life.

But I'm looking at NaNo 2022 and thinking...

Did you read my efforts in 2022? Would you like to see Morgan make a return?

ETA: Looks like I never posted the words I did for Day 4. I'll see about doing that asap.

4/8 '24 11 Comments

Oh wonderful!

I have the solo adventurers toolkit (I find the tables so useful when I’m at an impasse for where or how to progress a story) and yes, I definitely use it more for writing than I do for playing 😬😊

I’d be interested to read along with your NaNoWriMo

Beth Adele

Ohhhh... I don't know about the SAT. I might just have to check that out!

Also, in that vein - PLEASE check out perchance.org if you haven't already. It's amazingly simple to create random tables of your own that you can use for whatever. That's what I did for NaNoWriMo2022. I _definitely_ use it more for writing than I do for gaming.

I'm detecting a trend here.... Hmmm...

Matt Lichtenwalner

This exchange makes me so happy! <3

Also, I loved Guardians of the Flame too! I forget the books themselves except the premise and that I liked them a lot.

Shelle Klein Houser

oooh checking out perchance.... thank you for that.

Beth Adele

Absolutely. It's entirely too excellent to be free. It's like Tom made it or something. ;P

Matt Lichtenwalner

wait what?

Shelle Klein Houser

Perchance.org prompt "cosy tea shop frequented by odd patrons", style = Fantasy art.

Shelle Klein Houser

Perchance.org, prompt = "cosy tea shop frequented by odd patrons", Style = Fantasy Painting. The prompt that I modified was "interdimensional tea shop frequented by odd patrons", which was very cool, but not cosy enough.

Shelle Klein Houser

Oh it’s wonderful!

Beth Adele

Ok so perchance.org is not a Boutell jawn, which doesn't surprise me because it's cool, but not THAT cool. I kept trying to get it to make a coven picture for us, but every prompt I put in for "group of women" yielded white faces unless I specified "mixed race". I might drop them a line if I can find a way to say it effectively and not "hey did you know your app is racist?" People respond poorly to that.

Shelle Klein Houser

I haven’t messed with the A.I. stuff yet. Still a bit too jaded for that. Not surprised it works well though!

Matt Lichtenwalner