|
|
Post by robkuntz on Jun 8, 2018 15:48:58 GMT -5
"Being involved in the RPG industry as long as you have, surely you’ve collected bits of wisdom and knowledge along the way. Is there any advice you could give to budding game designers?
"RJK: Seriously: Throw out everything you think you know, including the rules. Challenge established norms, redefine what imagination and creativity “really” are, ignore the jealous and the pundits (re: critics), push past the mundane and open up possibilities, don’t close them, no matter how absurd someone says you are, or how off base they say you appear to be. With that, follow the words of my oft-quoted author, Orson Scott Card: “How can we experience the literature of the strange if we stay in well mapped lands?”-- my advice from one of the many interviews I've given.
"If we all think alike, if we all become uniform and bland, we shrivel up and die, and the great process shudders to an end. Uniformity is death, in economics or in biology. Diversity within communication and cooperation is life. Everything your forebears, your ancestors, everything you have ever done, will have been for naught, if we ignore these basic bacterial lessons." Autopoiesis and the Grand Scheme, Greg Bear
"Most of the time I look at my work as an ocean of missed opportunities...My lack of talent & knowledge bedevils me no end... But I realized a long time ago that my art is a race I run alone..." Michael Bair
|
|
|
|
Post by Admin Pete on Jun 10, 2018 18:45:10 GMT -5
Great quotes robkuntz, and a great thread title. Really what does it say about you if you don't want to leave the well mapped lands behind and good adventuring. Whether you are writing or gaming it still applies. Exploration is what drives advances in every field known to man. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2018 19:11:21 GMT -5
Do what makes you personally happy. There is no money in the art of RPG design, so there might as well be pleasure.
"You too can make Tens and Tens of Dollars as an RPG writer!"
|
|
|
|
Post by robkuntz on Jun 10, 2018 19:49:22 GMT -5
Do what makes you personally happy. There is no money in the art of RPG design, so there might as well be pleasure. "You too can make Tens and Tens of Dollars as an RPG writer!" Well yes, if RPGERS continue with the formula established by 1978 TSR to present, that fringe will dissolve into nothingness. If they break back to form, like Arneson did by shaking up the market, then a new paradigm occurs and the hobby is revitalized. The chance for the latter, IMHO, has been fast dissolving. The problem being is that design has been isolated, and in fact embraced, in this particular hobby as a formulaic routine that has in turn bourn literal (designers, players and publishers) and figurative (low-end philosophical) clones of itself up and downstream. IOW, sameness has occurred and with little difference in resulting forms; and the event horizon for such difference in design trajectory has been getting narrower and narrower over the years as it appears to be moving to full closure. Then again, it only takes one person like Arneson to make that open again. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 1:25:36 GMT -5
There is much to what you say, and a lot to unpack.
First, Dave Arneson created his open ended game system because he wanted to play a certain kind of game; selling it was secondary if he even thought of it at all. That "lightning struck" was fortuitous.
RPGs are now an "industry," which is a banana of an entirely different color.
Also, entertainment is now all about derivative material. Tonight the "Tony" awards were on, for theater. I was disgusted at the enormous number of rehashings of old plays and musicals. The US consumer market doesn't seem to care much for creativity or originality.
|
|
|
|
Post by robkuntz on Jun 11, 2018 4:27:40 GMT -5
\ First, Dave Arneson created his open ended game system because he wanted to play a certain kind of game; selling it was secondary if he even thought of it at all. That "lightning struck" was fortuitous. \ Apparently paraphrased from my book Dave Arneson's True Genius, but at least you are starting to use my nomenclature. As I noted in the book, he was not concerned with selling it as he was creating it; Dave did not have the market mind, he had the inventor's mind. I fail to see what connection this has to my assertion that people have to create another paradigm shift like he did in order to revitalize the hobby. Whether he wanted to promote it or not to the market it did end up there in fact, so that is the main point. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 13:16:21 GMT -5
My point is that there are a number of people trying to create games because they want to sell them, not play them.
|
|
|
|
Post by robkuntz on Jun 11, 2018 14:22:33 GMT -5
My point is that there are a number of people trying to create games because they want to sell them, not play them. Well. Yeah. The point being since the advent of POD our niche market has been splintered into oblivion. There is such a glut that people have so much back product that they can never use it in their life time. That does make it ripe for innovation, however, as the splintered niche, as I noted, is not differentiating itself in the rush to SELL. |
|
|
|
Post by Crimhthan The Great on Jun 11, 2018 14:48:40 GMT -5
My point is that there are a number of people trying to create games because they want to sell them, not play them. Well. Yeah. The point being since the advent of POD our niche market has been splintered into oblivion. There is such a glut that people have so much back product that they can never it use in their life time. That does make it ripe for innovation, however, as the splintered niche, as I noted, is not differentiating itself in the rush to SELL. They not only have more than they can use in a lifetime, they have more than they could read in a lifetime in some cases. |
|
