I’m An Imposter

In honour of the Imposters funding (Todd Crapper and Josh T. Jordan on the same project? The collected awesome of that project will undoubtedly create a singularity of awesome, but instead of nothing escaping the event horizon, it will constantly release awesome into the universe), let me put on my imposter hair-shirt for just a moment.

Recently, people gave me a bunch of money to update Sword’s Edge. They continue to drop money they have earned with their hard work to get me to ship physical products to them. Somewhere else on the internet today, somebody bought a bunch of adventures I wrote between 2004 and 2005 (with a slight detour into 2008). Every time I look at the amount of money somebody spends on my stuff I get the feeling that they are going to be the one to realize I am a fraud. That they are going to turn around and say: “Why am I paying you for this shit? You suck at this.”

I was the spotlight author in issue 79 of the Canadian speculative fiction magazine On Spec and I described myself as a hack. That’s kind of how I have always envisioned myself. I am a worker, not an artist. If I get paid for stuff, it’s because it’s good enough, not because it is good.

I read games that other designers create and I read fiction that other authors write and I am often inspired to attack my own work with more gusto, but then I look at my stuff and I compare it to their stuff and I often think that the world would be better off if I just stopped.

The weird thing is that while people paying money can trigger this, the fact that people will pay me money is one of the signals that I use to continue to work. There are people who have bought all my games, and that boggles my mind. There are people in this world that actually see my name attached to something and decide to buy it. It is really weird to both be terrified and energized by the fact that people pay money for my stuff, but there it is.

I’m an imposter. Please feel free to be that person who calls me on my BS.

You can find out more about the Imposters here.

The amazing Josh T Jordan runs Ginger Goat.

The awesome Todd Crapper runs Broken Ruler Games.

You can read some reviews of On Spec issue 79 and my place in it, both complimentary and not so much.