Taking a short break for the day.
I'd been writing nonstop for over two months. I needed to catch my breath.
P.S. To all you smart, outstanding, well-read readers: if this book were to get a different name, do you have any suggestions?
Ever since this book began, I'd been getting flamed over whether it counted as D&D.
What remained in the comments was only part of it. There had actually been a whole heap of outright insults, which I quietly deleted.
Honestly, I didn't really understand it. Of course it was fine not to like it, but jumping straight to personal attacks was pretty strange.
This was how the book came about.
At first, I'd only come up with the concept of using programming to create magic. Then I thought about how to give programming magic a reasonable shell—what could grant the protagonist this ability, and how that ability could continuously improve through research.
Then I thought that making it a system outright would feel a little too much like a wizard stat-allocation leveling novel.
So, to dress it up a little, I came up with the concept of a sect master.
And thus, the Warlock was born.
From the very beginning, I never intended to write a D&D novel. I was only borrowing D&D elements.
At the start, the [pseudo-D&D] in the synopsis wasn't even there.
Because I knew this wasn't D&D either.
Then, during the new-book period, someone said:
"Since it's a Warlock, why isn't it D&D?"
I thought about it. I had indeed used D&D elements, so I added pseudo-D&D to show that this wasn't proper D&D.
Then someone else said:
"What right does pseudo-D&D have to include so many things that aren't D&D?"
And that left me utterly awkward.
In the end, after tracing