Spoiler
Do wizards actually exist or are they all like Long?

Wizards are capable of using real magic, but a few decades ago, they seemed to just disappear. No one's sure of the reason.
However, magic definitely still exists. It's just that outside of wizardry, most magic tends to take effect on its own. This has been happening for a long time, but it's a lot harder to deal with a magical problem when you don't have wizards around.

What does darkwood actually do?

I haven't given a lot of thought to it, since it's something made up in a suggestion. So, I'll handle it the way I do in the adventure: making something up on the spot.

As seen in the adventure, darkwood burns very easily. Beyond that, there are rumors swirling around it in the criminal underworld that it's magical, and can enhance someone's inherent abilities. The strong get stronger, the fast get faster, the smart get smarter. This is just rumor, though, and most of the people spreading the rumors have no idea how exactly you're supposed to trigger the enhancing effect.

Whatever the truth is, the Marshguards (or at least their leadership) don't want anything to do with darkwood, despite their criminal ties. Fire is dangerous enough in the swamp without adding possibly-magical wood that can burn even when soaked into the mix.

Are Long and Rider on equal footing in terms of pure physical strength?

About the same, probably. They're both soldiers who make physical training a priority. Of course, just being strong doesn't mean much without the skill to back it up - that's where Rider excels.

Has it been particularly difficult with a text only adventure?

I've been writing daily for years now. So, I'm used to writing.

The biggest challenge with Swamped is that it's serious in tone and I update it every day. Most of my previous adventures that I updated this regularly for an extended period of time were extremely silly, so I could just have anything at all happen.

That wasn't an option here. For Swamped, I have to keep most things plausible within the world - or if they're implausible, it has to be in a way that advances the story. (The desert gateways are an example - they're strange, so I present them as something that the characters find strange.)

Is it hard keeping up with so many characters (there's like, a hundred)?

Not so much. Most scenes only involve two to three characters actually talking, and when a character reappears, it's often due to suggestions.

I write scene-to-scene, and what I generally do is try to make the characters within a scene distinct from each other. That tends to make them stand out from the cast as a whole. The rest is just trying to keep them in-character.

What is Marshall's sexuality?

Marshall is pan.

In the Swamped world as a whole, sexuality isn't really a contested subject; it's not considered unusual in any way that Marshall has two fathers, for instance.

I'm not a particularly romantic person myself, so I probably haven't given this the level of consideration it really deserves. But that's the answer I have right now.

Spoiler
What exactly is the call of the swamp?

It's more or less a homing instinct. Except it's one that drives you towards a swamp that you've probably never seen before.

You have one of the rare adventures that seems to adhere almost completely to what the readers suggest. Have there been any specific moments where you tried to avoid suggestions (like the original flamethrower suggestions and the mallows)?

I use suggestions if they help me think of something, and I skip them or subvert them if they don't.

One interesting case was this update, where I didn't actually follow any of the suggestions. But, thinking through them and why I didn't think they'd work led me to the plan I actually used. So even though I didn't directly use the suggestions, I consider them an important part of how that update came together.

I don't know how that came across to the suggesters at the time, but that was my thought process.

Where do you find most of your inspiration from?

This is a complicated question.

I think the big influences on me overall were Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and the Suikoden RPG series. The latter, in particular, is all about large-scale military conflicts with a focus on characters; each game has 108 major recruitable characters, and the stronger games in the series work on developing them all, even the ones who aren't that important in the overall plot.

Suikoden 5, in particular, really goes in-depth on its characters. The actual plot of the game is a bit weak, but the characterization is amazing. It's definitely been an influence on how Swamped has shaped up.

I think the Discworld books that focus on the City Watch have also been a strong influence. In particular, I feel like there's more a few touches of Sam Vimes in Corvus once he starts being a main viewpoint - both characters swore off alcohol, both tend to downplay their own achievements, both value the people who work for them.

Is Lisa Black the best cards player in your universe?

Pretty much. She does have incredibly good luck, but she's also got skill. Her lucky moments haven't just happened - they've been more along the lines of, she carefully considers her options, picks the one she thinks is best at the moment, and the luck of the draw made her plan work out.

Lisa definitely doesn't slack off. She figures her luck could turn bad at any moment, and plays with that in mind.

Does having different Toms and Johns confuse you often?

The only mixup I've had so far was blending Tom Fifth and Tom Eighth together. I think this is because Fifth was introduced in a suggestion and not actually seen at the time, and I was thinking of the rude guy on the barge as Tom Eighth before naming him in the adventure, so I didn't have a concrete idea of either of them. Then the rude guy blended together with the inventor and I didn't realize I had mixed up the numbers.

There are a few other continuity errors I've noticed on rereads. None of them are very major, and I could probably come up with reasonable explanations for them if pressed. For instance, I initially referred to the giant underground lizards as "burrowers" and later "tunnelers", but this is easily explained as two different terms for the same species.

Spoiler
Who's your favourite character (either personality or to write for)? Mine's probably Corvus. He reminds me of Davos from Game of Thrones (very humble). Stacey is also great.

I like having Crosswinds barge into things. It was interesting seeing another side of them as Yvonne. I'm not sure if I've kept their voice consistent over time, but I do like the character a lot.

Razor is also a lot of fun to write for, and I think that's gotten more true as more sides of him have been revealed.

Do you have bigger plans for Swamped in the future?

I'm working on a draft of a novel. For this first draft I'm mainly just rewriting the adventure in third-person, but when I get far enough with that I might think about changing it to an entirely different story in the setting.
Although, I only recently hit the early rain in the draft, so I'm way behind the adventure in that. I may need to think about it.

Any advice you can give to a novice writer such as myself?

The most important advice is to keep writing.

More specifically, don't wait for inspiration. Swamped came about not because I had a well-designed setting, but because one night I said to myself "I'm going to try to come up with an idea for a setting and do a quick write-up about it".

Here's that write-up. Note to new readers, this spoils some significant things. If you haven't read as far as the rain arriving, definitely skip over this.


As you can see, there's not a lot of detail there. I worked out a few more things before deciding to start the adventure, but not that much. Most of what I have now was developed through the process of writing about it.

Actually, this has never been asked or addressed in the adventure, but does Marshal have a biological mother?

It hasn't come up because, in-world, it's just not an important question most of the time. In general, adopted children grow up knowing they were adopted and they don't give much thought to who they were born to.
I haven't really given much thought to how adoption actually happens in that framework, though. That's something I could stand to develop better.
As for how that relates to Marshall specifically... well, that's something that might come up in the adventure. That's all I'll say for now.