About
A table, and what it made
Every table ends. Someone moves away, someone has a child, the dice go into a drawer, and the best story a group of friends ever told together is left with the handful of people who were in the room.
Chris Kwasny was the one behind the screen at that table, rolling for the monsters. Now he gets to write it all down, starting with A Worse Thing to Carry.
Chris Kwasny
Chris Kwasny has been writing since he was small, poems first and then short stories. Then a group of friends sat down at a table in his basement, before the world shut down, and tabletop roleplaying gave him a bigger canvas.
He ran that game for five years: a thousand hours at the table and hundreds more of preparation behind them, all of it kept from the first night. The books are not a transcript. They are the best of it, chosen and rebuilt, the way he always built the game: for the people in the room, and now for you.
By day he is a professional facilitator, which is to say he helps people make incredible things together. He treats game mastering and storytelling as one craft, a practice he means to keep improving, and he does the work because he can, as an offering.
How this book was made
I created this story first as an adventure, next as a long living game table for five years, and later as an archive: seven full binders of prep, world building, and session recaps, videos, and what happened when the dice fell. Every chapter of this book is built from that context.
I outlined each scene, summarized every encounter, read every draft aloud, edited each chapter by hand, and recrafted each section numerous times over until it meant what I wanted.
To turn this project into a real novel for you and my players, I first built my own AI fantasy studio. It helped tie my words together by drafting prose, and coached me on how to edit and how to review. The maps are mine, drawn by hand. AI helped me convert them. The cover is my intention. AI helped me create the meaningful visual expression.
Overall, I needed help and I built that help in my studio. The story is mine and I'm telling it for you to enjoy.