Finnian Burnett

Welcome to the 5 Questions Series. Each week, I’ll ask five questions of some of my favorite authors, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. This week, I’m talking with Martin Greening about Roman mythology with a fantasy twist, what crowdfunding a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) actually teaches you, and the joys (and heartbreaks) of editing a shared world anthology.

Ruma: Dawn of Empire combines Roman history with fantasy mythology—and launched as a successful Kickstarter! What inspired the setting, and what did the experience of crowdfunding and publishing a TTRPG teach you about creative risk?

Originally the Ruma setting was created by a few friends of mine for a tabletop miniatures game. Unfortunately, that project never took off. I had always liked their idea, so when I decided to write a TTRPG we worked out a deal to use Ruma as the setting for the RPG. Setting a game in a historical period, even while stretching the reality of that world, gives the creator a foundation to work with. You’re not creating things from a blank page. I found that appealing since this was my first foray into writing a game.

As for crowdfunding, I have been active on Kickstarter as a backer for quite some time, especially in the TTRPG category, so I had a good idea of what was needed to conduct a successful campaign. For anyone interested, there are primarily two things you need to do so: 1) build a following before the campaign so it hits the ground running and funds quickly (everyone likes a winner), and 2) invest a little in artwork/graphics so your campaign page has a polished look. So even though I had spent a little bit on some artwork prior to the Kickstarter campaign for Ruma, I didn’t feel like it was a huge risk. Especially since I had planned from the start to use print on demand for any physical copies of the game. Shipping never entered my equations, and shipping costs are the bane of crowdfunding campaigns. (OK, I lied, there are three things you need for a successful campaign. Make sure your shipping costs are covered!)

Tales of Ruma expanded the world through fiction, pulling in Greek and Roman mythology. As an editor, how did you approach curating stories for the anthology—and what was most rewarding (or challenging) about building a shared world across different voices?

I hadn’t originally planned to do an anthology for Ruma, but the Kickstarter campaign was far more successful than I anticipated and I had no idea what to do with the extra funds. I certainly didn’t want to pay taxes on all of it. Over the years I’d made a few connections with writers, mostly from the Superstars Writing Seminar, so I thought an anthology would be a good avenue to spread those funds to writers while creating a companion product for the game.
I knew I wanted a few anchor authors. Established writers with name recognition. So I asked several I knew if they’d be interested in the project. I also knew that I wanted the anthology to hold the works of fresh voices. Unrecognized names looking for a chance. So I placed submission calls online.
Let me say that reading through a slush pile, even one as small as mine, is greatly rewarding. You see the entire gamut of stories. Great ones, good ones, some not so good. Some that show promise with a little guiding hand and some that, sadly, just aren’t publishable. As an editor, you often have a limit on word count. In my case it was limited by the budget, so I had to make some hard decisions on what to include and a few very fine stories didn’t make the cut. Often there will be submissions with similar content or themes and because of limited space not all of them will be accepted. This is a hard lesson to learn as a writer so I was grateful for the experience from the other side.

You have a free short story available for all your mailing list subscribers. Can you give us a teaser on what the story is about?

Thanks for asking. It’s a very short story called Park Rules, about the social dynamics and politics of dog parks and how one finds their place. I wrote the story for a competition for the AutoCrit Community and was happy it earned a spot among the winners. The competition’s theme was, perhaps not ironically, Community, and at the time I was taking my dog Arya to a park often. Just goes to show you never know when inspiration will strike or how such a mundane thing as taking a dog to a dog park can spark a story.

You’re also a flash fiction writer, which is such a different scale than worldbuilding for games or anthologies. Do those forms feel creatively separate to you, or do they feed each other in surprising ways?

I suspect I share a common trait with many people in our ever-increased pace world—a short attention span. Writing flash fiction is a method to create small wins. Projects you can finish in as little as a few minutes (although they often take more than that) as compared to writing a world guide, or a novel, or even a short story.
But writing flash fiction and writing game rules do share a common trait: brevity. In a game, the rules need to be clear and concise. Long explanations can lead to player confusion. So I think they do feed each other in that respect. You can see this in action with recipe-style flash pieces. They perform much the same as game rules. Do this, then do that. If this, then that.

Do you find yourself bringing any influences of mythology into your flash fiction writing?

Honestly, my flash fiction is all over the place. And I find this is one of my favorite aspects of them. They can be about anything, any genre. I find many of the pieces I write to be more like glimpses or moments of some mundane thing. I do think that using mythology in a flash piece can help alleviate the need for heavy world building in a piece, which is hard to do when you’re focusing on a small word count.

BONUS Question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

If you looked at my phone you would think there are two things that exist in this world and nothing else: tabletop miniatures and my dog. So sorry, no bird pics from me. Now, there were a couple of pigeons on my fence the other day . . . until Arya chased them away.

Find out more about Martin Greening on his website.