A few months back, I heard that Wizards of the Coast had announced an open call to be a writer for the Dungeons and Dragons Adventurers League adventures. I thought that sounded pretty neat; I play and run a bit of fifth edition, but I'm pretty much committed to writing for Pathfinder. But  I thought it might not hurt to look into it; I regret passing on Green Ronin's open call for monster authors near the end of last year; I had a few neat ideas for that I didn't pull together in time. Anyway, I looked over the Dungeons and Dragons open call instructions pretty carefully, did some research, and actually got a little excited about it.  I put my submission together over one long evening. I sent it in, and was determined to be content whether or not I was picked.

The next I heard was a polite email alerting me I'd made it into the top 43 or so entries. Huzzah! I thought that sounded pretty good, and it sounded even better when I heard there had been over 250 entries received. I thought I had been included into a rotation of 43 freelancers, which would not mean a lot of writing in such a large pool., but still neat

Turns out that top 43 or so was just the first cut; WotC corporate was reviewing as well. I next found out that I'd made the final cut, to 9, out of the initial 250+. That was pretty surprising to me; I thought my entry was solid, but had assumed that others with greater system mastery would be plentiful.  I wasn't really surprised to make the top 20%; I hadn't expected to make the top 3%. But there I was.  And I knew I'd be getting some writing assignments pretty quickly in such a small group.  In fact, I had to turn down the first question to the group of us winners, "who's got some time for a quick turnaround project?", because I was wrapping up my Paizo adventure path.

Yesterday, though, I received my first writing assignment. As with most freelance gigs, I need to turn over an outline in very short order--by the 29th, actually--which means I've got an awful lot of reading, digesting, and designing to do. And I can't do much of it this weekend, because I"m off to PaizoCon. But I'll dig in, push through, and come out a freelancer for fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons!