A quest about a grave

I finished a quest this week for the expansion. It's about a man looking for his brother's grave.

That's nearly all I can tell you. I've joked here before about how little I'm allowed to say about my own work, and this is one of the times it isn't funny to me. I'd like to tell you who he is, and where he looks, and what he finds. I can't, for months yet, and by the time I can, you'll be able to play it, which is better than anything I could write about it.

So here is what I can say. It's done. It went through every review it had to go through, and the people whose job is to ask whether a quest is fun asked, and someone said "fun isn't the word, but keep it," which is the nicest thing anyone has said about my work in a year. A designer built the place where it ends, and when I walked through it for the first time I didn't say anything for a while, and she didn't either.

And it cost me something. I knew it would when I started. Some quests you write from the outside: you know what the player needs to feel, and you build the steps that get them there. This one I wrote from the inside, and I can't fully explain why I went there, except that I think the work is better when you're honest, and this was the honest version. I wrote the last scene on a Sunday, in one sitting, at my kitchen table. Then I walked down to the water and stood there until I was cold.

I'm not sorry. I'd write it again. But I understand now why some writers I've worked with keep a little distance from the things they make, and I don't think I'm able to.

It will be out this summer. When it is, I'll tell you a little more.

Have you ever made something that cost you more than you expected it to?