Interview - Ashley Warren - TTRPG Content Creator and Mentor

Today I talk with the phenomenally talented Scribemind - Ashley Warren about publishing D&D and TTRPG Content, Writing in all forms and the ENnie award winning Uncaged Anthology and RPG Writers Workshop. You can find Ashley Warren and the RPG Writers Workshop via the links below.

Website:
https://www.scribemind.com/
https://www.rpgwriterworkshop.com/

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ashleynhwarren
https://twitter.com/RPGWriterWrkshp

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/scribemindstudio/
https://www.instagram.com/rpgwriterworkshop/

DMs Guild:
https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?keywords=ashley+warren&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=&affiliate_id=1643000

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/305360/Uncaged-Anthology-BUNDLE?affiliate_id=1643000

DriveThruRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/267545/Uncaged--Volume-I?affiliate_id=1643000

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Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Ashley Warren

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:28

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Today my guest is inspired DMS and James Wood published works on both drive thru RPG and the DMS guild helped to produce official source material for Dungeons and Dragons. And if all this is not enough, guides, new content creators with the RPG Writers Workshop, the warmest of welcomes to any award winner, describe mind Ashley Warren. Ashley, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's absolute pleasure. Now before we move on to some of the things I mentioned In the introduction, would you mind giving us a bit of background about yourself and how you got into both writing and content creating and tabletop role playing games yourself, please?

Ashley Warren : 1:10

Sure. So in terms of writing, I've been a writer in some capacity for pretty much my entire life. I've been writing since I was a kid. I studied English in college, and I got my master's degree in literary studies. So writing and producing content has always been a very important part of my life. Before I started writing, d&d content, I was a journalist, I taught college English. I wrote short fiction. So in some ways, I've always just been looking for opportunities to be a storyteller. And when it comes to narrative design, that whole journey for me started about three years ago, in late 2017. I had been playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends for a couple of years by then, and was just too totally obsessed with everything having to do with d&d. And I realised that as someone with a lifelong love of fantasy and science fiction, that I could write adventure content. And the whole idea of writing more interactive fiction and things like that had always kind of appealed to me because I'm always looking for ways to write in new and interesting ways. And I thought it was a fun thing to try. And I definitely took it very seriously even though I was still relatively new to d&d in general. And I just started writing adventures for dungeon Master's guild and totally fell in love with narrative design as as a path for my own writing career. And I realised that writing atmospheric adventure content for gaming groups was just became a huge passion of mine and it's been a wild journey ever since then. So I've I've pretty much been on that track for the past few years and I don't really see it slowing down. anytime soon, although the nature of my products has definitely changed over the years. Well,

Snyder’s Return : 3:06

yeah, that's fair enough. And we'll touch on a few of your more notable products, as you say. You sort of go into this and and produce some amazing content that's available in various places. Would you like to take us through maybe some of your more popular works like you, you've just won the Emmy Award for the uncaged anthology and, and stuff like that. So would you like to sort of describe some of your work to us, please?

Ashley Warren : 3:34

Sure. So I would say that uncaged is probably what I'm best known for in the community. I think it's kind of hard to say that as as an individual, but I would I think that project is probably my biggest project. It's definitely the most ambitious project I've ever done. So the uncaged anthology is a four book series that is comprised of one shot adventures that each retell the The origin story of a female creature or monster from mythology and folklore. So it's a project that includes more than 100 creators from around the world artists, writers, graphic designers. And it was a project that I started producing in late 2018. And we produced three volumes in 2019. And the fourth book earlier this year in 2020, which seems like a million years ago, that was right before the pandemic started. And volume three just won a silver any award which you just mentioned, which is a great honour to be recognised in the community. But that is Yeah, that's that's what that's what kind of the lowdown on what uncaged is it's just a big, collaborative project. Everyone involved is just very passionate about folklore and mythology. We really wanted to put a feminist twist on these stories that are as old as many cultures themselves. And it was, I don't know, it turned out to be something so much bigger than me and just the simple idea that I had come up with and I it still kind of takes on a life of its own. But it's been it's been a pretty exciting thing to work on for the past couple years. Yeah, it's an amazing piece of

Snyder’s Return : 5:18

an amazing publication anthologies as it is, and highly recommended. And before I move on to my next question, Where can people find you and your content?

Ashley Warren : 5:29

Sure, so my website is scribed mine calm, scribe mind those words put together calm. And that is, that's my main website, my main hub. I have a Patreon through that and a lot of what I do through scribe mine, which is just my business name, is to work with writers around the world in different capacities. Sometimes I do research for novelists. I often lead writing challenges throughout the year for people in my little scribing community like flash fiction poetry. Just any sort of writing related challenges. So I would say that my body of work is definitely bigger than tabletop RPG content, although that is definitely a passion of mine and something that I continue to focus on.

Snyder’s Return : 6:12

Alright, so the question was going to move on to but I thought it best to signpost where we can find all your work was you have worked on encounters in there's a an official d&d publication with the you're attached to and your uncaged anthology and many other encounters or encounters in should we say, available in various places where where does your inspiration come from when you're putting these publications together?

Ashley Warren : 6:40

My inspiration comes from so many places for the encounters series, which is a project that I have done with the Gilda Depp's which is a group of creators who are selected by Wizards of the Coast to produce supplemental material that coincides with some of the major Book launches. And so we've done like encounters and saltmarsh encounters in waterdeep encounters in sharn, when the first wayfinders Guide to ever on came out, we did encounters in a vernis. So I think we we've always done versions of those books are those supplements to coincide with those books. So when it comes to that, I mean, I usually take inspiration directly from the books that we're writing supplements for, especially recently we did and encounters and therapists and that was a really fun one for me because obviously I have this passion for mythology, and Pharaohs is very Greek mythology inspired. And so a lot of our encounters in that book were inspired by mythology itself. And for me, I'm also really passionate about classic Greek drama. So I wrote like an encounter that was based off of my personal favourite work of literature, which is Antigone. It's an ancient Greek play. And so I often talk about into the real mythology and folklore around the world. And I enjoy applying that to Dungeons and Dragons content, because so much of fantasy pulls from these myths, you know, mythologies and folklore and fairy tales. And so I like to bridge those two together. Because I think that DND is a great way to interact with these stories that we might have been hearing since we were children. So I always look to things like that, but I just try to pull from the atmosphere of a book. I think that atmosphere for me is my one of my favourite aspects of writing, narrative design content in the first place just because it's immersive, and it's interactive. And I think that when you can really capture the atmosphere of a location or a story that really brings it to life for a gaming table, so I pull a lot from just using the five senses. And I try to just really build a setting that feels very real making characters that feel very Real and multifaceted. And music, food, I mean, all of these things really come together to to inspire me.

Snyder’s Return : 9:09

Yeah, and we can really see it in the work you produce in it and it absolutely brings a new element to the table. And I highly recommend DMS go out and get a copy of your works because they really can spark our own imagination as well as drawing directly from the source material. You mentioned there using the senses and and the atmosphere. How often do you get to immerse yourself in a game?

Ashley Warren : 9:34

Well, I do play a game regularly with my friends. Here in Reno, Nevada. We play lately we've been playing every other week. And obviously the pandemic has made it hard for us to meet in person, but I try to play in a game. Often I think as a narrative designer, it's helpful for me to also play the games that I'm writing for because it allows me to Think through the rules and the in the game system and constantly have that top of mind. And it's always a fun way for me to explore different characters and I'm playing and how those are interacting with NPCs and things like that. And I'm actually going back to do I mean, our home game in the near future. So I try to have a mix of plane and dm and usually I'm the player. I like dming. But I think because I'm so often writing d&d content that sometimes do I mean, it takes a lot of my brainpower that I don't really have a lot of time and energy for. And so I like to kind of pass that over to my friends who are awesome. VMs. But I like to I like to do a little bit of both. I think it's important to to maintain those as someone who's writing d&d content.

Snyder’s Return : 10:45

Yeah, that's and you were part of the tausch on the mist cast. So what was that like playing in a different take on that environment?

Ashley Warren : 10:56

Yeah, that was a great experience. I will say that I'm not necessarily saying Who loves to be streamed I don't necessarily like to be on camera. So it was, it was definitely a big decision to agree to participate in a show. But I just knew that the people involved were such great creators and I love ravenloft. I love gothic horror in general. And I enjoyed how our show took classic ravenloft stories and settings and really updated them both for fifth edition, but also just the current modern audience. And so that was really fun to learn more about the setting that I knew a little bit about, but I was able to really immerse myself in a lot of that lore. So that was really cool. And I think that we, we told a really interesting story that was kind of a unique take on ravenloft in general, especially since I played a sonic character and bustani have been portrayed, not always very sensitively in past ravenloft books. And so this was our opportunity to take some of the foundational aspects of that group of people in this classic setting And make it treated a little bit more sensitively. So, yeah, it was a really great experience. I learned a lot as a player about how to push myself as a role player and make not always good decisions, but decisions that would help drive the story forward. So yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun.

Snyder’s Return : 12:18

Yeah, I've listened to it. And I really enjoyed it as well. And it was it's really good. And so you mentioned that of stanny. Traditionally, maybe the wrong word, but in past publications have been used maybe as a stereotype or in a negative connotation, and that's recently been addressed by the revamped version of curse astride, is that something that you're having to see in the way that the hobby and the tabletop role playing community is moving forward?

Ashley Warren : 12:52

Oh, absolutely. I think it's, I think a lot of the older modules that we have, as beloved Some of them are like are fairly problematic. And I think with cursive straud, I think there was a lot of good intent there. But that intent doesn't really matter when harm is being done. And I think the visone were stereotyped in very harmful ways. So I'm definitely glad to see that some of that is being addressed. And I, my understanding is that they've brought in some sensitivity readers from the cultures that are depicted by this Donnie, which most most closely, suppose I mean, my understanding is, is that it's representing a lot of Roma stereotypes, and not very respectful or even factual ways. So I think it's it was definitely overdue for them to address that. So I hope that I mean, I haven't seen the new, the new updated version yet, but I hope that that has been addressed in ways that are satisfactory to those communities who have been affected by those stereotypes being perpetuated because I think in general, there's there's no place for these things in our game. If we want d&d to be truly welcoming to everyone that we need to do the work to, to fix the things that we've, you know, portrayed in insensitive ways, and I think it's definitely a process. And there's there's a lot in the many decades of d&d content that should probably be addressed. But I think as the community becomes more diverse and inclusive, that that will become more of the standard rather than just like fixing things after they've been published. So and I think that that's why having more diverse creators actually creating content from the gecko is is a good thing for everyone involved because we get better and more authentic work right away rather than white people putting their own interpretations on other people's cultures and then later having to apologise or change those things. So I like to think that things are trending in the right direction.

Snyder’s Return : 14:51

Well, speaking of trends in the growing community and things are you are taking a active role by Drawing in and helping these new tabletop role playing game creators through your off duty Writers Workshop. I'd love for you to tell us a bit more about that, please.

Ashley Warren : 15:10

Sure. So the RPG writer workshop started in July of 2018. At the time, I had been producing d&d content for DMS guild for about five months, or five or six months. But I was really, really active. I think I that's really all I did in early 2018 was just write adventure content and publish it. So at that point, I had quite a few titles under my belt. And as someone who has a background in education, that's what my master's degree is in. I used to teach English. I really passionate about working with writers, and I felt that there was a lot that I didn't know, as a fairly new narrative designer that I wanted to also share with the community like I wanted there to be an avenue for learning about these, you know, this this whole endeavour. stream. And I personally had a hard time really finding good educational outlets. Of course, there's a tonne of great like YouTube channels and blogs, but it kind of felt overwhelming to me. And also, like, I wasn't sure like who was worth, you know, watching or listening to like, whose advice is worth following. So when I, I basically put together what I thought was going to be just a small group of people and just call it the RPG writer workshop because I wanted it to be a workshop environment where we could share ideas we can learn together, we could get feedback from people, and I put together what was essentially just an email series. It was basically everything I had learned at that point about writing specifically adventures. And I was very quickly overwhelmed by how many people express interest. I think that very first workshop had 500 people in it so I was very quickly working to catch up with that and I realised that there's definitely a need for a learning programme or a welcoming learning programme. on this topic, and so from there, I also realised that I am not an expert in these topics. I have some expertise on aspects of narrative design. More specifically, I feel like my expertise is process and refining or writing process so that people can get projects done. So that's what I always focus on. But I realised pretty quickly that I would need to really bring other people on board to help build out this curriculum with me. So after that first initial email series, I invited other instructors in the community to help me build up the curriculum, and that's basically how it's operated ever since. And it continues to grow. And this past workshop which just ended last week, it was our write your first adventure workshop, which we do every July and November. We had more than 4000 people take it, which was wild. It was great. We learned a lot every time I do the workshop I learned so much about how to better help the students in our community. So of course, we're making changes before the next workshop. And yeah, that's essentially been the the story and the trajectory. It's just a community that continues to grow. We're working on expanding our course catalogue to offer other courses on, excuse me different aspects of narrative design. And eventually would like to offer things like cartography and all the layout design and all the other things that go into producing gaming content. So yeah, I'm really I'm really proud of the workshop. It's definitely a project that is special to me. I think that even more so than writing I love to work with writers like I think that being an educator sometimes is what I love more than writing itself but of course, those things are fairly equal to me and my life.

Snyder’s Return : 18:45

All right, and I truly hope you're opti Writers Workshop continues on this trend and continues the great success that it's had so far and that continues into the future. With the exception of sign up to the RPG work Writers Workshop If you were to offer a little bit of advice to a new content creator, new writer who's sat there with a potentially blank piece of paper, looking to sort of maybe publish something soon, what little advice or what piece of advice would you potentially give them?

Ashley Warren : 19:17

Sure. So I have two pieces of advice for where I think people should start. One is definitely to read other people's adventures. I think that reading is good for any writer as if someone's you know, aspiring novelists. They should be reading lots of novels like I think if you're a screenplay writer, you should be reading other screenplays. It's it's really important to study this whatever field of writing you you aspire for, because it really does clarify a lot, especially when it comes to adventure content. There's a lot of different ways to write an adventure. But there's definitely some ways that are, I guess, not just necessarily better than others, but there's there's a structure to adventure content. It's like writing a short story, where it's this kind of passive experience that someone's reading, every game that we write is interactive. And so there's a lot to factor in there, like how people are going to respond to different aspects of your, of your narrative art. And so I think the more that you read adventures, the more you your brain starts to think about the different ways that you can tell a story. There's always 100 ways to tell the same story, especially with RPG content. So I definitely think read lots of adventures, download free adventures from dungeon masters guild or whatever your game system is, and just commit to studying them take notes on them. You don't have to like every adventure and my guess is that you probably won't, but the more that you read, you'll be able to identify what you do like and what you think is a strength and what you don't like and what you can avoid in your own work. So I think that reading is just a really underrated way to improve your writing. And then I think also, it's important to start small, a lot of writers I don't even think this is a mistake. But I feel like it's kind of a pitfall where they jump into this huge world building activity without ever having written anything ever before. And what happens is that these writers get discouraged when things start to get hard. Because every writing project is difficult, there will always be a moment where you're like, I don't know where to go from here, I'm not sure how to proceed. And when you have a huge project that you've done for your very first project, it seems overwhelming and it becomes so daunting. So I would say that you should always start with writing a few very simple encounters just to have something that you've actually completed, then you can move up to something a little bit more substantial, like a full one shot adventure. Then from there, you can develop a series of adventures. Then from there, you can develop a campaign book like it's it's a process, and I think that new writers and really writers of any phase in their career do well when they can invest in their own creative process. no one else's creative process will work for you. You can still emulate other people's process as a starting point. But your writing process, what ensures that you will be successful is always unique to you. And so if you've never done any of this before, you do need to treat it like a process and start small and realise that you're building up to something bigger. So I guess, just to recap, my two kind of main points of advice are to read a lot in your field doesn't matter what kind of writer you are, and to start small with a project and build up to those bigger ideas. That's

Snyder’s Return : 22:30

great advice. I think a lot of people will, will take down especially from from yourself a respected and award winning writer, publisher. So absolutely. Can I dig a little deeper into that and ask, if you would put an encounter together? How would you approach it? What's your sort of process if? desire I spoke to James hake? And he said that he never starts with a blank piece of paper. He always has sort of Section heads and things like that. Do you have a process you follow to sort of really gauge your your scribe mind?

Ashley Warren : 23:02

Yeah, absolutely. So this is this is such a great question because I feel like sometimes my process changes but for the most part, my personal process always starts with something about mood or atmosphere. And for me even though I'm a writer, I'm a very visual person. So I love to make what's called a mood board, which essentially is just like a compilation of like images or, or colours that I feel like encapsulate my idea, because for me, ideas are very abstract. And the hardest part about being a writer is taking these abstract concepts in our head and actually putting them onto paper in a way that we're satisfied with and also in a way that makes sense to other people. And so for me, I really need a lot of time to kind of break down abstractions, because I always go into everything with a very clear like mood or vibe or tone that I'm trying to accomplish. And so I always start with a mood board. Usually I use something like Pinterest or I'll browse No photography websites, it's just for my own personal use. It's not something that I usually share with people, but I just start putting together some images that helped me kind of nail down what I'm trying to evoke. Then from there, I also wanted to make a playlist as part of that process, because sometimes music also helps me with the abstraction part. Like it helps me think through like a scene, or a location or like, what kind of the pacing. And I find that music is great for pacing, because a song has its own kind of set pacing, that my build is something epic, or it might be fairly, you know, simple throughout the whole melody or whatever. But different music helps me think through pacing. So if I can nail down the kind of mood and tone and the pacing before I even put words on the page that helps me personally clarify a lot of my thoughts. And I also do agree with James about not necessarily starting with a blank page. And I think that blank page paralysis is something that plagues many authors. One, if I'm really feeling stuck about a blank page, like I still, even after I do these other activities, and I'm still feeling stuck, sometimes what I'll do is I'll record myself talking through an idea, because sometimes when we talk through an idea rather than writing it, it's a little bit more freeform, we can kind of flow with her thoughts as we're speaking through them. And we're not being so careful about which word we're selecting to put on the page first. And so sometimes if I have just like a friend, or my husband, or even just by myself, if I can just get myself to describe an idea, and record myself saying all that, then I can just quickly transcribe whatever I've recorded myself saying, and then I already have something on the page. I actually have words on the page, because when you have words on the page, you actually have something that you can work with, it's really hard to work with nothing. So that's usually kind of my go to strategy for at least getting started. Most of the time though, the the mood boards helped me to at least, start drafting Out of basic outline. So for an encounter, I often start with, like, what's the core obstacle on this encounter? Is it a creature? Is it an NPC? Is it an environmental challenge? Once I'm able to nail that down, that's like the hardest part about an encounter is like what's, what's the core obstacle here? What's, what's the challenge? What have characters have to make decisions about? And so I usually try to write that down first. And sometimes my mood board actually helps with that, like when I was working on an adventure that was like about dinosaurs. I was really stuck with like, what was going to be the central challenge there besides there just being these massive creatures, and it ended up being a little bit more about a volcano. And of course, like dinosaurs and volcanoes is like kind of a classic period. And so I was able to really build out this, this interesting volcano and the lore behind this volcano and the threat of the volcano like if people go into it and they disturb it. How do they escaped from that which became a core, you know, kind of obstacle and puzzle that the characters would have to figure out. And so just from this simple activity, I'm able to kind of pull, you know, different obstacles and challenges to include an encounter. And I would say like beyond that, I feel like it kind of flows pretty naturally after that point. But of course, you know, there's always projects where I feel like I get stuck. And in the event that I get stuck, I usually revisit my mood board and see what I can pull from that. Sometimes it's just a matter of, I'm just going to describe what I see in this picture here just to get myself writing and thinking again, and usually if I just do something really simple like that, it kind of unlocks the part of my brain that feels like it's struggling, and I'm able to move past it. And I don't know at that point, it just kind of unravels from there and I like to think that I am a strength of mine is definitely seen projects through to fruition. So I always try to keep myself inspired, so that I don't have ideas, start them and then drop them and then never revisit them again. So I'd say that this process works pretty well for me to prevent that from happening.

Snyder’s Return : 28:09

All right, the the dinosaur volcanes son dyno was was was that no, but yeah,

Ashley Warren : 28:14

so that was dinos of darkness that I wrote with PB publishing, Phil Beckwith, who wrote the first part of that adventure and I that was really, really early on in my dungeon Master's guild career. Phil had reached out to me super early, I think it was probably the first d&d commission that I ever did. It was and I was, I felt very under qualified and unprepared. And I had no idea how to write someone else's idea, which was a good learning opportunity because I ended up I've done a lot of commission work since then. And of course, I'd have done commissioned work as a journalist and other aspects. So I was able to kind of fulfil professional obligations. But when it came to writing d&d content specifically, I was still very new So I'm glad that my process helps me get through that project

Snyder’s Return : 29:06

Do you offer than the uncaged Anthology, you've had a number of other smaller works that have been brought together. The escapes me the lady with the lamp, the lantern, a lot of smaller ventures that you've written. So there's, there's so much of your work out there too, for dmws and gems to draw.

Ashley Warren : 29:28

Sure, and I think the one that you're referencing is probably I recently, a few months ago, I compiled all of my DNS guild titles together. And just as a bundle on dams Guild, just to make it easy for people who wanted to just check out all my work in one place. And that bundle is called lantern in the dark, and it does feature a woman who is holding a lantern. And that was kind of one of my favourite characters that I like to play is I have a warlock character and so I like to put my Warlock into different things. And so that's what that cover kind of evokes for me is, is my favourite Warlock character, but I just I love imagery of, you know, cloaked mysterious women holding lanterns or something magical. You know, it's just it's just that imagery that I appreciate

Snyder’s Return : 30:11

them very somatic. And it certainly sets a tone. So you mentioned just before there a an environment that was volcanic and dinosaurs. Recently, you've been working on an environment that is very harsh and frozen, and very much in the north of the Sword Coast. Are you able to talk? Tell us a little bit more about that?

Ashley Warren : 30:35

Yes, sure. So I believe you're referring to icewind Dale, which is the setting of the upcoming book by Wizards of the Coast called icewind, Dale reima, the frost Maiden, and that is a horror adventure set in this frigid locale. It's also it's a really interesting book, I think, because it's also kind of a an allegory for climate change. Which is how the project was first pitched to me, and actually really what got me excited about participating. And it's really cool, unique book. And I feel like I would feel that even if I wasn't involved in it, but I think that it has is really interesting story. There's these really beautiful moments in it too, that I'm excited to see how these how these moments play out for players around the world. But I'm trying to think what else to say about it. That book was announced in June during the online DND live. And I worked on it alongside an amazing group of writers. And it had been my goal for a few years to write for one of the major book releases. So I feel very grateful that I had the opportunity to contribute. And I feel like I followed a similar process on the chapters that I contributed to that book. As I was just talking about, like I I definitely did a lot of research. I read Through the some icewind Dale books, I purchased a lot of the old icewind Dale supplements on diems Guild, not necessarily for lore continuity, but just to inspire myself and just to really get into the mindset of this place, which is a, you know, a very classic location and the Forgotten Realms, and I made a lot of mood boards, which show lots of wintery scenes, and I wanted to really, really hone in on how cold this places because that's really a huge part of this book is, is this really unforgiving? atmosphere and landscape and how challenging that is for everyone who lives among it. So I really wanted to hone in on that and I tried to really use strategic words that would capture what it feels like to be frozen and cold and you know, the crisp air and I yeah, I really I made a lot of playlists, a lot of mood boards, a lot of things to really capture the atmosphere because atmosphere is so important in this book. I would say that that's the atmosphere itself is really the kind of the main obstacle, the main, I guess, foe in this book. So it was important that I felt like I was I was contributing to creating that and making that easy for dungeon masters to convey to their tables. But yeah, I'm excited about it. I can't wait for it to come out.

Snyder’s Return : 33:19

So my I've already pre ordered it, but that that's, that's all about me. And so that was something you've been working, that you've worked on and roll looking forward to its release. What is next for you and for the RPG Writers Workshop?

Ashley Warren : 33:38

Sure. So there's another project that I've been working on since late last year with a company called hitpoint press. They do the deck of many animated cards, they produce, wrote and produce humble wood and lots of other really great projects, but I've been working on a book with them that was recently announced called hecka. And heck now is a dark Carnival circus setting with a titular character named Peck nod. He's basically a clown. But he's like the creepiest clown you'll ever meet in your whole life. he's a he's a unique kind of clown. He has a very dark sense of humour. But I've been writing a campaign book with them about heck now for the past several months. And actually, I don't know 100% sure when that will be kickstarting. But I think it'll be later this year, hopefully in the coming months. But that has been a really cool project. I think I've contributed to, you know, other books, including obviously writing with a frost Maiden, but this one I wrote the majority of and so it was definitely one of the biggest books that I've ever written. Of course, I'm working in conjunction with the hitpoint press team, but I feel like I, it was a really cool experience because I feel like I had a lot of creative freedom and I am really proud of what we've put together. So I'm excited about that. So that's been that's taking up a lot of my time in the past few months. And then when it comes to the RPG writer workshop, We like I mentioned, we just wrapped up our write your first adventure workshop in July, it was a great experience, we are working on building out our course catalogue, we've been talking to some other instructors. So hopefully we'll have some new courses coming out soon, we plan to do the right your first adventure workshop again in November. Typically, that's a six week workshop. But we're still trying to figure out what the timeline will be for how long we want to do that, given that there's a lot of weird circumstances in the world right now. And we want to make sure that the workshops are very approachable and achievable for people who want to participate. And I think just in general, we have a lot of cool, cool things in the works, some other programmes that we want to continue or start, like doing a ttrpg book club and some other just fun and probably free activities, ways to keep our community you know, working with each other and making sure that everyone's still feels empowered to create no matter what's going on in the world. So yeah, feel like there's there's only so much in the works that so much to do. But those would be my main projects, I think for the for the foreseeable future.

Snyder’s Return : 36:08

Alright, so between herkner Writers Workshop and another things you've worked on or are working on, what is it you do for downtime? How do you unwind and relax?

Ashley Warren : 36:20

downtime was one of the loose of concepts. I mean, I I do have downtime. And I actually do think I feel like a misconception about my creative life is that I'm always working and always working around the clock. And that's actually not the case. And I think that even though I'm always busy, I do factor in downtime because it's important for creative people to rest and to refill their creative buckets. So I will take this opportunity to clarify that I actually do have hobbies and interests outside of these things. And I'm very firm about getting my eight to nine hours of sleep per night. And I would say downtime. I really enjoy knitting I'm not the best knitter, but I've been knitting lately. I love history. So I'm always constantly like immersing myself in different time periods and just learning whatever I can about history. I love to garden I have a pretty big garden this year. And I'm always interested in ways to just live more sustainably. And then in general, I'm just really fascinated by culture and travel. Obviously, I can't travel as much right now because of COVID. But in general, like travel is important to me. And I'm always learning more just about my own heritage and sharing that with you know, my husband who likes to partake in his and we'd like to cook and learn languages and I just feel like I'm, I don't know, I just I consider myself kind of a renaissance woman in in the things that I enjoy, not because I'm good at a lot of things but just because I like a lot of kind of classic traditional things I love languages and food and music and art and history and so I try to fill my time with with all The things that bring me joy. Most of the time, I'm just trying to learn something new. I am eager to learn how to sell, I might learn how to make some face masks. And usually what happens is when I'm learning new things I am inspired to write. So I feel like a lot of the things that I do as a hobby and my downtime end up, end up finding their ways into my, into my published content. So in some ways, it all comes back around. And I mean, I do write in my downtime, I love to write, it's who I am. And I love to journal. I think journaling is a great outlet for writers because it's private, but it still allows us to use, you know, our chosen artistic medium to express ourselves and yeah, I mean, I guess that's a long answer. I feel like I do quite a bit. And I also like to sleep. So I guess that's a good downtime activity.

Snyder’s Return : 38:55

Don't go far wrong asleep and between the paper machine masks and zucchinis Time. You mentioned there, you enjoy writing as part of your soul downtime. I'll probably start using a different term for that. Are you releasing anything that is not tabletop related?

Ashley Warren : 39:15

Sure. So I have been. I mean, this is indicative of how busy this year has been. But about a year ago, I think in September, I had released the first part of a series on Drive Thru fiction. It's a series called The ones wicked ones. It's just kind of a fantasy, kind of mythology inspired story. It's a novella that I was releasing in parts. Of course, part two has been finished for a few months now, but I have not yet had the time to actually plan on the release. So I do write a lot of fiction. I love to write fiction. I love to write dark fantasy fiction. I have a lot of those kinds of projects in the works, but honestly, tabletop content has kind of taken over so much of my creative time. That I just it's not that I'm not always constantly working on something else. It's just a matter of trying to find time to actually produce things, determined how I want to publish different projects if I want to go a more traditional route or if I want to self publish. So I would say that that's probably my main, non ttrpg project is this novella, and I do want to have the second part out sooner than later. But that's, you can find the first part on my website. What's really cool about that is a friend of mine did the audiobook version. So there's like a little audio version that is really beautifully recorded. And so if you want to listen to it, rather than read it, there's a really cool version of that to listen to. And I will also say that I have been writing an email series for my scribe mind group. That's called identifying your creative heartbeat and it's just basically it's a 10 part email series. It's almost done, but it's about how to develop a creative process because I realised earlier this year That in so many aspects of my, you know, creative mentorship or the ways that I worked with writers like a core, I guess, problem or obstacle was that people don't really know what their creative process is. And they don't really know how to discover that. And so early on in the pandemic lockdown, I felt like I needed a creative outlet that wasn't about gaming. And so I started just kind of reading about creativity and the creative process. And I put together this email series. So I've been working on that also for the past couple months, and releasing that every week. So I would say that those are kind of my main things that aren't gaming related. And to me, like my love for narrative design is part of my passion for literature and writing, and storytelling, like these are all these all come together to be parts of my creative identity. So even though they're separate, and they might appeal to different audiences, I like to think that all these things help to make me a better writer, and all aspects of my life. So I try to find a balance all the time between writing a little bit of everything nonfiction fiction RPG content, you know, and so on.

Snyder’s Return : 42:04

Yeah, you say you have time for sleep, but I'm not sure. Would you mentioned a lot of things in the email series book release and things like, would you like to remind people where they can find you or get in contact with you? Should they want to sort of join you on this creative journey?

Ashley Warren : 42:23

Sure. So my website is scribe mind.com. And I have a Patreon which is patreon.com slash scribe mine. And usually what I do with my Patreon is to develop creative challenges throughout the year. So I mentioned that I've run a few this year, including a flash fiction challenge, where people wrote a short piece of flash fiction every day in February, and we put together a little compilation of those stories that we published to drive through fiction. Then in April, we did a poetry challenge. In June we did a journaling challenge where I share journaling prompts everyday in June. I have a cool and coming up soon in September. That's all about writing short stories that people can hopefully submit to literary journals are their choice. And so that's what I use my Patreon for is just to help support these, you know, community writing challenges, so that people feel like they always have a place that they can share their ideas and ambitions and hopefully work towards some of their creative goals. And I think that most pretty much everything I do is should be available on my website, but I'm also on Twitter, at Ashley and H Warren. And I think that's probably my most active social media account. I'm also on Instagram. I love Instagram. Like I mentioned, I'm a very visual person. So I like Instagram for sharing photos and things like that. And I share a lot about my garden there. So if you like gigantic zucchinis, you can follow me on Instagram. My handle there is at Ashley scribed mind. And I think those are kind of the main places that you can connect with me and if you want to send me an email, you can do so through my website.

Snyder’s Return : 43:58

All right, well, I'll make sure links to As much as that as I can possibly find in the description below. And actually we've sort of touched on a number of subjects. Is there anything that you would like to bring up any information releases or anything that we've not touched on?

Ashley Warren : 44:17

I think I covered most of it. I guess in general, I just want to always encourage my fellow creators, to be nice to yourself. This is a really weird time in the world. I know a lot of writers are struggling to write there are some days where I definitely struggled to write. And I think that's okay. We just kind of have to write out this, this wild, weird year. And there's always a community there to back you up and support you. So I guess that's more that's not really a specific thing. I guess. It's more just me trying to impart some positivity.

Snyder’s Return : 44:52

As you say, we could all do with someone at the moment.

Ashley Warren : 44:56

Yeah, absolutely. And plus, it's just it's a good reminder. for ourselves, I think it's easy to forget that it's easy to see other people seemingly doing well or able to create and feeling bad about our, you know, the days that we're having a hard time but I just I think everyone is going through a weird rough time. So be kind to yourself but I think that if you let it creativity should be an outlet that you can always rely on to give yourself some some peace and some purpose. So if you're able to maybe disassociate creativity from success or ambition and make it more of a personal outlet for you to find some level of joy, then I think it's actually a great time to be creative. If you know you're using it as a way to just be be good to yourself and to honour your ideas.

Snyder’s Return : 45:45

What I recommend people take your advice and buy a journal and just put things down and just keep creating.

Ashley Warren : 45:54

Yes,

Snyder’s Return : 45:56

actually, it's been a absolute pleasure having on the show and learning stuff. So much about you and the RPG Writers Workshop and all the projects you're working on. I'm definitely looking forward to Heppner as that gets kick started and subsequently released. So thank you for taking the time to be with me today.

Ashley Warren : 46:15

Thank you for having me. It was it was great to talk to you.

Snyder’s Return : 46:17

I'd love to have you on the show again in the future.

Ashley Warren : 46:20

Sure. Yeah. Let me know. I'm always happy to be back.

Snyder’s Return : 46:23

Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you for your time.

Ashley Warren : 46:26

Yes, thank you.

Snyder’s Return : 46:39

I thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of us or to get in contact with us, you can find us on Twitter at Return Snyder. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and also if you wish to support the channel on patreon@patreon.com slash nice return music and sound effects provided for this episode. From epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai