The Publishing of Sir Ashby Phipps

On Sunday night I finally hit "Publish" on The Perishing of Sir Ashby Phipps. It's been seven eight years in the making.

Behold, The Perishing of Sir Ashby Phipps

From my own old blogposts, I can see that I started work on it sometime in early 2014, making it one of the first things I tried to write - possibly the first, in fact? Not sure. Either way, I was inspired by a short story while I was alone on another continent and killing time.

As tends to happen to me, things spun a bit out of control as I wrote, expanding the cast as I thought about the NPCs that players might logically want to speak to when investigating a mysterious death. What's actually in the house, other than Clue A? How might [redacted] affect someone's behaviour, and what kind of testimony would that lead to?

This was designed as a fully investigation-based adventure. I planned it for Call of Cthulhu, which often tends to wind up in knife-wielding cultists and tentacled monstrosities that need a shotgun to the mandibles. This wasn't meant to be that kind of adventure, but one about looking around to see what has happened and why. That meant a heavy focus on clues, because information rather than events should guide players. There's no specific path to discovering the truth, and no set sequence of events; instead, I set out to ensure there were multiple clues connected to each major deduction. Whether I succeeded in that, only other people can say.

The other reason for the explosion was research. I'd chosen Lincolnshire in the late 19th century for my setting (for reasons connected with the plot) and picked up a second-hand copy of White's Lincolnshire. The sheer depth of information there inspired me to expand on the people and places to be found, as well as to include a setting guide intended to introduce people to Lincolnshire in the 1860s. I didn't want to assume that anyone who picked it up would have the same kind of basic familiarity I have through reading historical fiction and, well, living in Britain.

Progress sort of stalled through a combination of things, with significant ones including moving continent three times, house seven or eight times, job several times, and bouts of illness. I worked on some other things that I had more inspiration for.

A couple of years ago, a complication got thrown out in the shape of an offer from a publisher. I'd probably have been happy with that - give someone with more skills the responsibility for handling layout, artwork and so on - but communication fizzled out despite my best efforts. It had left me in limbo for a while though, and I kept trying to get back in touch.

Eventually, this year, I picked things back up. I've managed to publish a few small things already and that gave me some confidence to try a larger publication. I've also had very nice comments and support from people, which is a huge help.

Depression will do this. I am not used to having any confidence in my abilities, and what I do have is usually fragile; it will shatter at the first criticism. Validation from people has been incredibly important in overcoming that to the extent I have. That plus the extensive counselling and mind-altering drugs.

Perishing fell by the wayside again because finalising things is extremely hard work (the old 80/20 rule). However, I had a bit of annual leave recently and set myself an unofficial goal of Getting the Damn Thing Finished before the end of it. I did it with a few hours to spare. Microsoft Word did its best to stop me, including breaking a near-final version of the document entirely and forcing me to redo hours of work, but I made it. Go me.

The Perishing of Sir Ashby Phipps clocks in at 120 pages and about 50,000 words. It's taken a huge amount of work, and sure, it's an amateur work, but my time has value. So I've set it at $10 - more than indie scenarios tend to go for, yes, but I don't want to contribute to the mindset that RPG products should always be $1 apiece unless it's a $400 Kickstarter. Let's see how this goes.