Monday, April 28, 2014

Sellsword Special: Non-disclosure agreements

In my day job, I've been working under NDAs for nearly 10 years. The main reason for NDAs in my line of work is outsourcing/subcontracting/partnerships between companies. The client companies, which may be in IT, healthcare, telecommunications, military technology, and many other fields, outsource some functions to other companies so they can better focus on their core competencies.

With most customers, I don't have to sign a separate NDA because the company-level agreement already covers everything. Some customers, however, have much stricter policies, and they may require not only an NDA but also a background check.

In the RPG industry, it's also common to outsource work to freelancers. The work often involves confidential information, such as details about future products before the products have been released or even announced. This article discusses NDA both within and outside the RPG industry.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Loot & Experience part III: Making of House of the Serpent's Son map

In this article, I'll discuss the process of making the map for my round 3 entry in RPG Superstar 2014. While round 3 was by far the most stressful round, and a round full of self-doubt, in the end, the encounter took the round by storm.

This is not a tutorial or an advice article (though there are some design tips there too), but rather, a description of some parts of the process I went through while designing the encounter and location. 

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Serpent's Stash, part V: Spellcracker's Tools

Here's a bonus post for this Saturday! I recently posted it in the Nine Blazing Months thread. Wink wink, check out the link on the right. -->

Serpent's Stash part IV: Fleshbinder

In 2011, I made the "top 36" in RPG Superstar, i.e. I was an alternate. Just like everyone in the top 32, the alternates also created archetypes and the judges commented on them. Around that time there were no official summoner archetypes, so any similarities between my entry and the synthesist archetype published later that year in Ultimate Magic are coincidental. Which archetype do you think is more balanced, this one or the official synthesist?

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Sellsword, part I: March-April 2014

In this new series of articles, I'll discuss actual freelancing projects and other related things I've been up to. I'll probably be posting these updates rather randomly, whenever something new and interesting happens.

Upcoming updates

So, recently I've been slowing down the pace to just one post per week so I can keep up.

Here are some of the upcoming articles I've been planning and preparing (they won't be necessarily published in this order):
A Sword for Hire