Eye of Newt, Drop of (Mountain) Dew, and Three Pages From the Thesaurus

They say that great minds think alike. It’s not really true. Crazy minds think alike—and often produce something great. At any given moment, you can walk through the Writers Block here at the En Masse offices and hear zippy retorts, uproarious laughter, and plaintive cries for HR. If you’re in our IM group, it gets even wilder. Conversations about plot development, questlines, or Elleon suddenly give way to a scholarly discussion about how fantastic Interplanet Janet is.

Her awesome level is double rainbow, by the way.

All of this seemingly random talk and mind-melding is part of the process. Some of our best ideas are spontaneous. A flippant remark or reflexive comment inspires a really great idea and everyone stops for a minute.

"Oooooh!"

Then the insanity resumes.

The Writers Block includes some amazing minds. If you don’t bring your A-game, you can be outclassed rapidly, and that’s a great thing! We challenge each other, keep raising the bar. We work on many projects alone, but rarely without input from the others. We consult race and class shepherds, we humbly submit ideas to our lead writer for review (he incinerates them with his brain amid cackling laughter), and the Wall Street Journal would kill to have our painstaking fact-check process.

When we’re working together, there’s an energy in the air. It’s exciting. New ideas get thrown out, concepts get tested, puns are made, and everyone has a great time. What matters, however, is we’re stronger as a group than we’d ever be alone. Everyone brings something different to the table. We need that admixture of talent, perspective, and mind madness. Fran Stewart can be incredibly detail-oriented and grasps systemic ideas crazy fast. She also channels Nikola Tesla—which is a boon because a lot of her ideas pay off. Bridget McKenna is our Swiss Army Knife. She can do it all, and she generously spends a lot of her time making us better at our jobs. Scott James Magner is our control rod. Depending on his position, things can get pretty atomic in a hurry, or they can settle down as he points out huge flaws in our thinking (No, Robin, we cannot have flying, transformable mecha in this game. It’s a fantasy game. No, that’s a different definition of fantastic. Go back to your caffeine.) and brings us back to reality.

It takes a lot of things, working in concert to make TERA happen. It’s a team effort—not just in the Writers Block. That collaboration is what makes this such a unique experience, such a privilege.

Plus they let me write about the castanics!