I know that the last bit sounds like a lot of hubris, but it isn’t. Honestly it isn’t even my opinion. I’ve always thought I was half a hack, at least. However this is the opinion of a friend and editor of mine. Not even the one I used to be married to. It was offered as an opinion in a completely inappropriate place. We were standing in the Diana Jones Award party. It is one of those places where I feel like a complete fraud. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that I don’t think I can write at all. I just don’t feel like I can carry most of these people’s water, much less stand as an equal. I mentioned this quietly to myself; or so I thought. I was given a stern speaking to by my friend. It wasn’t expected at all. That made it even nicer.
I started out writing Close to the Edit in a very different place. I wanted to define a lexicon, and use those terms to explain what exactly I was trying to do as far as roleplaying was concerned. Then the column sort of morphed into situational reviews and axe-grinding on certain philosophical points of gaming. I wandered off into a couple of one-shot ideas, and I have spent an awful lot of time talking about various iterations of Traveller. All of these ideas and experiments have yielded fruit so far, and I have really been pleased with the way a lot of them have been received.
With this being the 51st column, I think it might be necessary to evaluate what I want to talk about going forward. If you’d like to participate in that discussion please send me email, private messages, or message me on any of the forums I frequent. I am frighteningly easy to find online. I am sure that no one here needs any help, and if you do need help then god bless you.
As a complete non sequitur, I still think that “The Flat Earth” is Thomas Dolby’s best album. Even though “I Scare Myself” is probably his greatest single song. I miss Dolby, and the irrational exuberance and ominous apocalyptic visions of the 1980s. When I played and ran games back then it seemed that ideas just came to me every single day.
A friend asked me today, while I was lamenting over this column, if I could write about the “good old days”. He didn’t use those words, but I think that was what he was talking about. Maybe it was just that I was younger and more focused, or maybe it is just that we are older and busier, or maybe we’re just getting lazy. You see sometimes the columns just seem to jump forth from my forehead like a certain Greek god. Other times, like the last week, it seems that every single idea is a great effort, like another.
I think the least attractive option may be the one most likely, that when we as players become older we become what we never wished to be. We become set in our ways and manners of thinking. That we want to be fed our ideas, rather than go out and hunt the wild beasts ourselves. As I run my own Traveller series today, I think it is pretty likely. I have seen it continue to be more and more common as I have gotten older. I see it mostly in myself. Other people we all tend to give the benefit of the doubt, or we should. Within ourselves we see the true picture. If we are honest with ourselves at all we see all of the things we hide from other people.
-Where I used to be able to come up with ideas and NPCs in seconds, it now takes hours. Where I used to run almost completely unprepared I find myself writing scene notes and outlines. Where I used to remember what happened over weeks, I now need to be reminded and note things incessantly. Back then I knew what it was like to rage against the machine, to explore new things, to take big chances and big risks.
These days my tastes are a lot more mundane in most things. Those of you in the back who have known me personally for decades can stop laughing now. In a great many things it very much is true. Much more so than I ever thought it would be, to be sure.
Which brings us to the 800-pound gorilla that has been staring at me for a month. Starblazer Adventures is that 800-pound, or rather the 600-page, gorilla that I have been struggling with since GenCon. As I mentioned before, many of us are very lazy in our gaming. I think this is why FATE isn’t more popular, Why FUDGE isn’t (wasn’t?), and why legions of fans don’t play Fantasy Hero. It takes hundreds of hours to build a campaign using these tools, and even if the book includes four settings, and bunches of examples of almost all of SF’s tropes, designing your own series is very intensive. Everything I have read is great, and I love FATE, but “Joe Gamer” wants most of their games served up on a Kaiser with relish. I can’t review Starblazer Adventures in full because it is taking me too long to read, so let me hit some highlights.
This is a huge book with multiple settings and tons of crunchy stuff. Well, FATE crunch is a little softer than D&D crunch, but you get my drift. If size matters buy Starblazer Adventures, this book can stun an ox! The art is fantastic and evocative, but more importantly it is consistent through the book. All of the bits I have read, and I have gotten impatient and jumped around a lot, seems to be pretty cool. I just wish I could wrap my head around the whole thing. Of course I am still trying to wrap my head around how lending a guy who makes $50,000.00 a year $800,000.00 on a mortgage, and expect him to make payments, since they’re more than he makes in a month.
See you next month!
