Hello, and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast. My guest today is sent parties to the frozen North driven the pies Oh fantasy waggon train to the stars and painted the fortress red. Her successes have come as a writer, designer, editor and developer and whose role as editorial director begs the question of just how many Cobalts are needed to operate the press. Joining me today is creative. And editorial tour de force. Amanda Hammond. Amanda, welcome to the show.
Amanda Hamon:Hi, Adam. Thank you so much for having me on.
Snyders Return:It's it's an absolute pleasure. I'm glad we've managed to arrange to meet with each other.
Amanda Hamon:Yes, we had a couple of false starts there. So I really appreciate your patience as everything in the Warrens. careens out of control in the middle of a Kickstarter project that's actually finishing tomorrow. So
Snyders Return:yeah, that's fair enough. Well, before we touch on to current and future projects and things you've worked on, would you mind give us a little bit of background about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games, please?
Amanda Hamon:Oh, my goodness, all the way back to how I got into tabletop role playing games. Okay, well, I'm really old, so I'm gonna have to think about it for a second. I know I've been playing tabletop RPGs. Since I was about 16 years old, I started with third edition Dungeons and Dragons, it was actually right after the change over to 3.5. So I had some some friends, several of whom were several years older than me, who had whole libraries of third edition books. And they had finally made the decision to change over the 3.5. And that was when I got brought into the group. So luckily for me, I was a very poor teenager without any kind of money, or resources of my own. But I did have these older friends who had libraries of books at their disposal. Also, in those early days, I spent a long time in my friend's basement, going through various different publications, and really just getting a sense of wonder and excitement that I had finally found a game that felt like it was really tailored toward me in the way that I was interested in stories and fantasy and backgrounds, and coming up with my own ideas. And that d&d really allowed me to apply those interests and skills into killing things and taking their stuff and having really interesting tech stories, my characters, and I was one of those people who wrote, you know, a 3000 word short story about where my character came from, before the play started, and nobody cared and never came up. But it was really fun for me. So I did that in high school for you know, a long time. And actually, that campaign ended up going over a decade and ended after I got hired as a full time developer on Pathfinder, first edition at piezo. So that was a very fruitful campaign for me. But I got into other types of role playing games. In my college years, I played lots and lots of detailed games, a lot of World of Darkness games, I'm a big horror fan of big Gothic, Gothic literature, and pop culture fan as well. So I played tonnes of vampire and werewolf on major and changeling and things like that. And then just, you know, sort of branched out from there. But I always really felt very much at home, at the role playing table, whether it was playing characters, or later on graduating to running little games here and there. One, actually several sort of ongoing campaigns after a while that I had going. And then I got into freelance writing, because I was a journalist, right after I graduated college, and really sort of discovered that it wasn't necessarily going to be the right long term career. For me, I was unhappy for a number of reasons. The industry itself was in a lot of turmoil. I worked very hard and worked for a number of different publications, including like the Indianapolis Star, and a couple of other larger news outlets and news wire services. But, you know, I really wanted to be able to apply the skills that I had professionally in writing, and critical thinking and just like storytelling, a world building, which was something that was a personal passion into a career that I was interested in. So I went around Gen Con around home and goodness 2010 2011 handing out my business card to folks and saying, Hey, I'm a professional writer and professional editor. And I've been playing role playing games for you know, even a long time at that point. Who would like to hire me for Lance writer and you know that that went not so well and very well, in some cases and on the very well. And that was with with Schneider, who was at the time editor in chief of piezo was the first year that I had met him there. And what's really opened the door for me, when I explained to him who I was and what I was interested in, and what my experience and role playing games were. He said, you know, that they didn't have freelance editors, which was true at the time, but he said, Are you interested in game design, and me, you know, being a very sort of a, you know, agreeable kind of journalist type was just like, Sure, of course, I'll try that while in the back of my head thinking, I am going to fail miserably. And this is going to be awful. But I guess at least I'll try. Never really having got the game design was an option for me, for you know, just a number of different reasons. It hadn't occurred to me. So that was my very first sort of foray into that. And I met other publishers that year, Wolfgang Bauer was somebody that I met through various contacts, who is the publisher, and Kobo and chief over at kobold, press my current job. So that relationship goes back all of those years as well. And really just kind of went from there. I wrote for Pathfinder, first edition, and worked my way from adventure path monsters and backmatter, to rules elements to campaign setting material, and then larger adventures eventually, and just sort of made lots of contacts, got lots of experience. And then when an assistant developer job opened up in 2015, a piezo, I applied not really thinking it was going to go that far, because I figured there are many other people who are far more experienced than me. But I ended up getting hired and went through many different iterations of working on Pathfinder, and then star finder, and then a little bit of Pathfinder, Second Edition, and then star finder again, and just continued to sort of widen my my scope and breadth and here I am.
Snyders Return:Wow, let's let's go.
Amanda Hamon:Like I've talked forever.
Snyders Return:No, not at all. I mean, I was I was there Gen Con with you for a moment. It felt like it. I mean, that's an amazing life to have laid within the sort of the tabletop role playing sort of community and things like that. It, it begs 1000 questions, but you said you worked on Pathfinder, first edition, and then the star finder stuff. So what was it like taking that sort of fantasy framework that password Pathfinder has and sort of taking that off world as it was? Well, what was it like working on on creating the bad side of the piezo? output?
Amanda Hamon:No, that's, that's a great question. And a very short version is that it's really hard to go from high fantasy Tolkien style role playing and high fantasy, you know, mediaeval style settings in the way that just a generic fantasy tends to be. And switch that over into what the the brief was for starfinder, which was a far, far future science, fantasy, very, very unique, actually campaign setting. They're very, very different from each other from a flavour perspective. But also, when you're working on these properties as a creative, your entire sort of thinking needs to shift, right, I never really realised how rooted I was in that high fantasy, you know, dragons and fighters and wizards and sorcerers and elves and dwarves fighting and and all of that stuff, I never really realised how core that was, to the things that I was creating until I went into another environment, and just kind of dropped straight into the deep end and realised wow, you know, my entire perspective needs to change. And I think the first time that it really hit me was when very early on to the starfinder process before the the full design team was even assembled. So before it was even decided, you know, who's going to be you know, the rules co-creators, which I did end up being but at the time did not know that there was an order to write a bunch of brand new spells and it was like, you know, we're going to be the, the Pathfinder rules team at the time was like, well, we're going to be doing a first pass that conversion of some core Pathfinder spells. Some, you know, Magic Missile, and in blur and some of these, like, you know, more iconic DND type spells, but we really want there to be some very unique, not ported, you know, not analogues, Starfighter spells. So we need, you know, I think was like 10,000 words, we need 10,000 words of that. And that was my assignment. And so I'm like, Oh, my gosh, okay. Well, all of my understanding of magic, you know, which has been a passion of mine going way back is very rooted in this advantium style, high fantasy a type of casting. And so what I did was, I really stepped back and I took some significant time to catalogue what my own fandom looked like from a science fiction perspective, which turns out, I was happy to find like, Oh, I actually do know a lot about various, you know, science fiction settings. I'm a big Star Wars fan, especially the Old Republic in those types of settings. I'm a big Firefly Flint fan. There's lots of I love space horror of super into the Dead Space series and religion, comics spin offs in the anime spin offs and things like that. So you know, I have a pretty wide breadth of fan knowledge of these things. And so I thought, Okay, all right. So let's sort of think back to what is it that I find cool about these settings? What is it that's fun, that's interesting and unique to this flavour of fantasy. And then I just spent, like, I think I set my timer for 20 minutes. And I just wrote down as many crazy ideas as I could for different types of spells. That would be, you know, far future science, fantasy things, things that would never have come out of d&d. Some of them were technology related. Some of them were sort of just like, energy and entropy and force of the universe oriented and things like that. And that was really when my brain turned over. And I thought, Okay, this is what I've got to do. I've got to take myself out of that DND Pathfinder mindset and put myself into what is this setting? And what is it able to do? And, you know, it was it was a little bit of a change ever, but that was how that was accomplished.
Snyders Return:Yeah. Like like Sorry, I'm so in sort of in ratted in it. And when you mentioned influences was one of the your science fiction. Like likes it was Firefly on my mind lit up? And because every time I look at Star finder in the back of my mind, something to me says Firefly?
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, absolutely. The those influences run very deep on various members of the star finder team are big fans of certain franchises. Firefly, I think I was probably the biggest Firefly fan. And you might see that reflected in the fact that inovasi, the iconic envoy has got some threads of mal Reynolds flowing throughout her right. She's a unique character, and I don't know how familiar you are with her. But I actually wrote her backstory, and her stats as an iconic, and I've very much had the sense of like, let's have this anti heroic, really kind of scrappy, good hearted but very much a scoundrel type of character and build from that sort of seed and see what comes out of that. And I know that Firefly very much influence that.
Snyders Return:Absolutely. And so the star finder is had a it's got a stars box been released or being released very soon. And so people should definitely sort of go out and get that a while I mentioned actually about going and getting things. Where can people find you
Amanda Hamon:find me. So I am primarily on Twitter as my public social media. And that's at Amanda Hammond spelled just like my name, I'm on there fairly frequently, I have times where I kind of have to do a deep dive to get something done or just to take a little bit of a break. But for the most part, I'm pretty, I'm pretty there. And you know, I post dumb stuff, I just post a bunch of dumb stuff. I don't know if you've been through my twitter at all. But it's, it's very much a just whatever weird thing I'm working on whatever it kind of comes to mind. And, you know, whatever folks are saying at the time. It's not necessarily the most official thing in the world, but it's the one that I think is best to put out there for folks.
Snyders Return:I shamelessly had trolled through your Twitter, trying to find some information and some not. So some pointed questions, which leads us on to the kickstart. You mentioned a little earlier, I think before we started recording, and we'll touch on that. I'll get to that shortly. But so 3.5 d&d Pathfinder star Finder. You never left d&d entirely, though, having worked on something quite recently, would you mind taking us through your involvement with with a more recent dungeon? Please?
Amanda Hamon:Hint, Hint, Hint, Hint, I see what you're about. Okay. You want to talk about rain with the frost Maiden, don't you?
Snyders Return:I would like to talk about your involvement in rhyme with the frost maiden.
Amanda Hamon:Sure. Yeah. So my involvement with ram the frost maiden and I know this because I just recently came across an invoice to realise that I completed the work a little more than a year ago at this point. And at that time, it was a project that I was brought in to work on from, you know, of course, some of the folks on the DND team over there, and a couple of my close friends who were also freelancers in the business also worked on that book and in our case, that was crystal Frazier and Jessica price. We will were credited as members of the world building team on that book, which is is pretty accurate. what I ended up doing was going into the the wizards office on at least one occasion, and having a creative meeting in which we were throwing around ways to deepen the 10 towns setting and specific 10 towns up in icewind Dale, up near define the world, and just talk about what sort of like setting implications and themes and seeds and fun secrets that we could hint at that we could build into this version of 10 towns. And there was a really great experience, there's lots of wonderful creatives involved in that. Chris Perkins and Kate Welch were in that meeting as well. And it was a very just kind of free form, you know, everybody's ideas are, are on the table, let's talk about what we can do. And so we had that discussion, and there's some cool stuff. You know, that's where it came out of that. And I definitely threw ideas out there that I thought like, Oh, my God, this is never gonna go anywhere. But we'll just see what happens. We'll, we'll let them say no, which is one of my approaches that I'm always sort of surprised when they work. Managing developer for starfinder, I would throw these ideas and just be like, and this and that, and what about next time Alcoa and we could have mechs, in the in the new technology book, that'd be great witness thinking, you know, nobody's gonna want to do these things. Let's have a class called a witch Warper. That is entirely about the theory of infinite worlds pulling magic from various incarnations of reality. And that's how he gains his power, thinking, Oh, my God, that's so nerdy. No one's gonna want that. It turns out that all of those occasions, the folks who were also working on the project went No, that's that's a fun idea. Let's Let's go with that. So that was that was what the experience was like, at wizards as well. throwing out ideas that were super cool. Having there be like a diabolik team that's involved in one of the the towns up there that that was me. So sorry, for when your players get murdered by unexpected ice devils. Yeah, so so that's what that was, like, we had the meeting. And then I went back, and we have taken some notes, but then it was all sort of up to me to spin up some what I think at the time, it was thought to be used for, like a Writer's Guide, like an IP Bible for the Forgotten Realms. And then it turns out that that material was actually put into ram at the frost maiden. And getting credit in that book was was super cool. So So yeah, you know, I'm really happy with the way that process turned out. The way that material ended up getting used in that book, because at the time, I wasn't really sure. Where we really,
Snyders Return:yeah, you just throw in stuff and see what sticks. Mm hmm.
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, absolutely. So it was a cool process. And I'm very grateful to have been involved.
Snyders Return:And you sort of stuck with the D 25. He sort of sort of system. And in a relationship that you mentioned, starting way back at Gen Con you. Yes. joined the COBOL. Press. Yeah, but I saw Phyllis in a bit more about how things have been during your current employment there.
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, totally. Um, so me being the editorial director of kobold press is, I would say a culmination of a freelance relationship with Wolfgang and all the folks over there that did start back in some of those early Gen cons. And so before I got hired at piezo, in 2015, I was a lead editor developer for for cobalt press. I don't know if you remember this, but some folks might remember that. cobalt press used to be a first edition Pathfinder publisher, not exclusively, but primarily, that was what was being put out around that time around the 2012 to 2015 time period. And so there was a book that Woking was bringing together called Deep magic. And there's a fifth edition version of deep magic now, which might ring a bell. But back then it was a Pathfinder first edition book that started out conceptually as being a collection of all of the magic, including some of the settings sort of base magic in Midgard, which is a couple of press, proprietary setting, but just magic that had been published in various PDFs on the blogs and other various books, and bringing all of that together, and maybe adding a few things here and there for cohesiveness. But it was just going to be a compilation of that. And this ended up being the first Kickstarter project that kobold Press worked on and the reception to it, especially that time really blew everybody out of the water. I thought I was signing on for editing a fairly thin volume of mostly pickup work and doing development on a little bit of you know, new things. Turns out that that project ended up making $126,000 and like tripled in size and we had this massive, massive hits but also all of this massive work on our hands. So, yeah, so I really kind of got thrown into the deep end there and ploughed through it and got lots of great experience. Didn't you know, lots of learned lots of things. And, you know, so I was lead editor and developer on that book. That process happened again for another book called self liens, which was a first edition Pathfinder campaign setting book, and then worked on other various projects for kobolds. But it turns out that that ended up becoming what was basically my resume for piezo. When I got hired, I already had all of this experience is doing the exact same job, but for a different company. And so now that this opportunity came up, which I just took in July, it's, um, was, you know, it was it was a great sort of way of kind of coming home. And you know, there's a lot of passion that's involved in making the COBOL press products, it's still very, very fan driven, it originally started out as a company, you know, called Open design that was about sort of collaborative design and having patrons that were backing cash and projects and things like that. And so those those bones and that DNA, still very much there. And, you know, everybody I work with this is a pretty close friend of mine. And so it's, you know, definitely ramped up in the level of publications that are happening and the amount of output that's happening, but I'm happy to be for the task
Snyders Return:that's going on. You mentioned the publication's Kickstarters, and things like that. And I alluded to it in the intro about painting a fortress read. Are you able to tell us a bit more about the Scarlet Citadel?
Amanda Hamon:Absolutely, yes, that is our, until tomorrow, which is Friday, October 16. At 11am. Pacific time, that is our current Kickstarter. However, it does end tomorrow, October 16, at 11am pacific time. So that is a classic style dungeon crawl adventure that is written by a gentleman named Steve winter, who has written lots and lots of things for Wizards of the Coast, in previous editions of the game, but also the current edition of the game, believe he was a co author on hoard of the dragon Queen, if I'm not mistaken, along with Wolfgang. And it's it's a, it's a very cool sort of call back to some of those old school types of adventures in which it is a dungeon crawl. But there's lots of plots that are woven throughout the various levels, lots of themes and different terrain that are represented. There's one big bad guy who is really cool. And every time Steve talks about him, I'm just like, more intrigued to find out exactly, you know, what different PC groups will do once they come across him. But yeah, it's very fun. In fact, there are a lot of echoes of Temple of elemental evil, which is a, you know, Second Edition module that you may or may not recognise. Um, but you know, it's set up in that same way, which is this big dungeon complex. And nearby is a town in which adventurers can camp and get various supplies and learn things about the history of the area in that town is called Red tower, which is, you know, the hamlet analogue, if we're talking Temple of elemental evil. And you know, it's really fun and simple in some of the best ways, I think,
Snyders Return:all right. Well, I'm I'm more familiar with the temple of elemental evil because of Matt Koval and his use of adventure to illustrate points through his. Anyway, that's that's, that's off topic. He's an interesting and great person I'd love to speak to in the future. Again, that's off topic. And he's an inspiration in his own way. So yes, I am sort of familiar with what you're going for. And I think you're right about the writing credits for your, for the previously mentioned authors. So you've, you've written this, or you're part of the Scarlet Citadel, from COBOL, press, and all these other things that you've got going on. Tell me about your writing process. You mentioned there about Star finder, and a few of the Pathfinder things and d&d about just sort of throwing up ideas out when you want to sit and write something or when you honour if you want to answer a slightly different question, when you approach the editing side of things, what's the what's the process you use? How do you get into that sort of creative mind space?
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, well, I think the the simplest answer to that is that I just always have so many ideas that are all over the place for so many different things. And so it's less of trying to come up with something and more where does this fit? What types of you know, what types of products are available? What assignments Am I looking at? The RPG business is very, very assignment based, right? So you've got you know, the developer of a project going to different writers who they think would be good for specific types of writers. And, you know, you sort of work with them through that. It's very rare that there's like an unsolicited suggestion even from a very, you know, prominent and established author that goes to a company and the company just goes, Oh, okay, well write that. And we'll publish it. Because it's largely just a function of schedules, and boring things like revenue flow, and things like that, you know, you sort of pick through assignments that are available and go with one. And so it's very much about a process that I like, which is, you know, fitting your, my crazy ideas and, you know, fun inspirations and things that I would like to accomplish creatively into assignments that, you know, that I think I would be good at, or that folks approached me and asked me if I would be good at work, interested, that sort of thing. Um, so yeah, so it's about having lots and lots of different ideas and kind of fitting them into a product that makes sense for for what's in front of me,
Snyders Return:the sort of the, maybe I've worded the question badly. For example, James hate uses, like a page outline, to help him or nudge himself through writing, Ashley Warren uses sort of picture walls to sort of help draw out creativity and inspiration before she puts pen to people or ink onto the computer screen. I was just your creative process. How will you take these informations, assignments, deadlines, revenue streams, and all that sort of stuff? And how you put that down to something that you would have a first draft of or something?
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, I understand now. No, I'm sorry about that. So once once this, how do you spin up that idea? Right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. No, absolutely. So I would say that I definitely use levels of outlines, if that makes sense. You know, I look at what the what the sort of general brief of the writing is. And I'm an adventure writer at heart. So I'm going to be thinking about this in terms of a fairly, fairly lengthy adventure, usually, I'm looking at, okay, where's it taking place? What types of themes are involved as it's one adventure as part of a series of linked adventures, like an adventure path volume, for example. And I write out a very vague sort of high level outline of the story progression. And I approach everything in a narrative way, when it comes to adventure writing. So you know, I'll do that. And that's often by hand that's in a moleskin. notebook, where, you know, I look at what the assignment is, and what the developer outline is. And so I've got the basics in my mind, and then I sketch out, you know, what would be like a character brief, but for the entire adventure, and I write that by hand, and then, you know, think on that for a little while and kind of think of, you know, various details that I could fit in there. And then I will expand that outline into something that's, you know, digital says something in a Word file. And that will, you know, be maybe a couple of pages. And usually at that point, I will start building in, okay, what encounters are we looking at? And looking at all the number crunching like, well, levels doesn't need to cover how much experience is involved? What kind of treasure? Are we looking at? You know, again, where's it set to what sort of monsters are appropriate? What challenge levels, should these encounters be in building the bones there, then then that expanded outline, I will continue to fill details and until that grows to be several pages, and that's the foundation document that then I use. And I usually start chronologically from the beginning of an adventure, and I just write all the way through, there might be some cases where you know, I'll write through and then there will be like, a bunch of steps that are needed or something so I'll just put a placeholder there. But in general, I don't I don't really skip around. I just like sit and I just power through the entire thing.
Snyders Return:Wow. Wow. fairplay play. Sam, thank you for giving us that. That's what my insight into how you you approach the creative challenge of venture writing and things like that, which sort of leads were the opposite end of the spectrum. So you you know, your work with cobalt press, you're the stuff you're done with d&d and Pathfinder stuff I know and that sort of stuff. That could be it could be a lot of work, or is a lot of work again, I only see snapshots of your life through Twitter and things like that. But what is it? What is it you do for downtime? How do you take time for yourself away from the creative process?
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, Yeah, I do. And, you know, quarantine has obviously changed that situation. It used to be that if I would get a little bit overwhelmed or just, you know, need to kind of take a step back, I would go out and do stuff, you know, and just have fun. And I like all kinds of weird things like I'm, I have in the past couple years been really into, like, indie WWE style wrestling events that I live in Seattle. So there, there's a leak here. I have friends that I would go out to, to stuff like that. And, you know, I'm really into like life theatre, for example. So going out to see a play, you know, I will also like the opera, like lots of different things. And so going out and, you know, experiencing art in its many beautiful various forms was a big outlet for me. And so, you know, it has been somewhat difficult to cope in that those are not options, really anymore. But you know, I mean, I've always, I've always been a tabletop player, I've always loved RPGs. And so I'm actually playing more RPGs. Now, I guess I'm not really playing more opportunities now than I did before. But it's more consistent now. And it's all shifted online. So I'm currently running a Saturday, Pathfinder first edition game that has been going since the end of March. I think we've only missed like two weeks, because turns out when everybody is staying at home, there's lots of time and conflicts don't necessarily come up. Yeah, yeah. So I'm doing that I'm playing in a Sunday game. I have a Tuesday streamed game, that doesn't necessarily always happen. But that's the star finder game. Thursday, Pathfinder, Second Edition game. So you know, I game three to four days of the week now, which you not know that I think about it is about this about the same, maybe a little bit more than I have been doing before, but it's really been much more sort of grounding and a nice outlet for stepping back from everything.
Snyders Return:Yeah, no, that's nice. Let's Let's it's good that you have don't have that consistency and communication and outlet, as it were. A question that you say you're playing more consistently, sort of tabletop games and things like that? Are there any table top games, and you mentioned world of darkness and things like that, that if you had a chance to play frequently, or maybe more regularly, or even just something that's caught your eye? outside of the sort of the piezo? wizard bracket? What? What would you like to play?
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, no, that's a great question. You know, like so many people, there are so many games and never enough time. So there's always stuff that's like, Oh, I'd really love to play that. I would really, really like to get into an ongoing Call of Cthulhu game just because I've, you know, I've played some called Lulu, but I've not been in a long, sustained, ongoing campaign. And I just would really like to, I hope that that opportunity comes up at some point, there was one that was going to start that I was going to be in, and it just didn't happen. So I'm just kind of hoping and waiting. And maybe that's the next thing that I run, you know, when my Saturday game runs out, that would be fun. I've picked up a number of other different type of RPGs for the past couple of years that I'd love to play. I've got things from the flood, which is a things for free league whole hopefully, I'm not mistaken. That's
Snyders Return:really good all freely publish in there. Yeah, yeah,
Amanda Hamon:pick that up. And that you could games Expo a couple of years ago, and have really been interested in trying to run something in that setting with those roles for a while. So I played in a blades in the dark game that was really, really, really fun a little while ago, and I wouldn't mind putting together like a homebrew game for that. So yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that's up there. But those were, those are probably the main ones.
Snyders Return:That some, some interesting and good choices. Definitely, definitely. So we've spoken about how you do what you do and who you do what you do for and and what you do when you don't want to do what you do, or take a break from it. But what if someone wants to emulate what you do, and I know everybody's route into the the tabletop role playing game community, from a professional standpoint is slightly different. But if someone was to look to get into writing safer, one of the the outlets that that you've worked for, or maybe get into the editing side of stuff, what advice would you give them given now your years of experience within the field?
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, so honestly, you know, having the foundation of professional skills, I think, is really what worked out the best for me or what really certainly accelerated my trajectory throughout the industry. And it was just, you know, was having Professional Writing experience, even though mine was nowhere near role playing games. It really taught me the basics of word count and deadline, writing to spec and communicating with editors and just understanding the way that that process works, not only the way that the process works, but why those things are important and why, you know, ghosting your your editor or not communicating or turning over something that you know is twice the word count of what it's supposed to why those things are really big deals. You run into a lot of folks without experience who Will you know, for example, turn over a manuscript that's much longer than it's supposed to be, or includes elements that the developer didn't ask for, or, you know, changes a major part of the outline. And they say, Oh, well, but it's better this way. But what they don't know is what the rest of the project looks like in the fact that they've now duplicated something that another author has created, and the developer has to rewrite it. Or there's word count limits, and there's no way need that will fit. And again, the developer has to rewrite it and everything. Everything in roleplaying operates on such a razor thin line, when it comes to timelines, that anything done to make the developer's life harder, cause more work for them is going to incentivize that developer to not want to work with you. So my biggest advice is just learn, learn how to how to do those things, and why those things are important. And, you know, be somebody that a developer leans on, you know, even getting to that point, which I totally skipped past can be beneficial to you, if you've got that writing experience, if you've got a business card, you know, with the words writer or editor or communications or something on it, can really, you know, kitten can really sort of telegraph to folks that you are a professional, you can be relied on this, you are treating it like a business, you're not, you know, just necessarily a fan who's looking to get their pet thing published. That's something you absolutely can do in this business. But it comes much later, when, for example, you're the managing developer of starfinder. And you propose this concept, that's absolutely ridiculous. And it turns out, but it gets published. So So that's my advice is, you know, be be a professional, keep in mind that jobs are very few and far between when it comes to full time. You know, go through the freelance sort of outlines, get as much experience as you can to make yourself the best candidate that you can when a job does come up.
Snyders Return:All right, well, thank you very much for for offering that out from you know, drawing from your experiences and sort of sharing that with us. That's, that's, hopefully really gonna benefit and focus in people that are listening to this podcast. So we've spoken about a number of different topics. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you would like to, to mention, or bring to the fore?
Amanda Hamon:No, I mean, I think we've covered lots and lots of different things. You know, I've got lots of experience with all over the place. But mostly, you know, I feel very lucky and very fortunate that I've gotten the opportunities that I've gotten, and that I've been able to make a living at this business, you know, which is very fun, and lots and lots of passionate folks. And some of the smartest folks in the world, you know, are my colleagues. So it's just a great, it's a great opportunity, and to be able to talk with folks like you, I do feel very fortunate. So I'd like to mention that.
Snyders Return:Oh, thank you. Thank you. Um, so you mentioned talk to me, would you like to remind everybody where they can go and we're hopefully not disturb you too much, but where they can go and find you and sort of engage with you and the content that that you work on, please?
Amanda Hamon:Oh, yeah, absolutely. So you can primarily find me on Twitter. I am at Amanda Hammon spelled just like my name. And I talk about my projects. And just funny things that I'm thinking about or prepping for my game, or the weird stuff that players are doing or just nerd things. So find me there. And, you know, you can find my work all over the place, including Coble press, and piezo for starfinder and Pathfinder, and a lots of other different places. So, but if you want to keep up on what I'm currently working on Twitter's best place.
Snyders Return:All right. Well, thank you so very much for taking some time out of your busy creative, incredibly busy creative day life existence, to sort of take some time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, no problem.
Snyders Return:I love it. That's right. I, you know, good. The world ever changing. I'd love to have you on again in the future if you'd be willing.
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, absolutely. I would be more than happy. Just let me know. Absolutely. We
Snyders Return:will keep in contact. Well, thank you, Amanda, for for coming on and speaking to me, and I will look to speak to you again soon.
Amanda Hamon:Yeah, sounds great. Thank you.
Snyders Return:Thanks for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter at Return Snyder. We have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon. And we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you