Games without Frontiers
Oct. 21st, 2024 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipLast weekend was PAX Australia in Melbourne, a convergence of speculative popular culture and gaming of all stripes. With that came a number of interstate visitors and I was quite pleased to host a dinner for Conan of the Sydney-based Exiles gaming group and his fellow-traveller, Jade. The weekend was also time for the RPG Review Cooperative committee meeting and, subsequent to that, a release of the 56th issue of RPG Review; which will be added to our collection in the National Library of Australia once we get past a little technical issue that they're having. RPG Review has been around for sixteen years now, which, I believe, makes it one of the longest-running RPG 'zines in publication, although nobody will ever catch up to Lee Gold's monthly "Alarums and Excursions" which has been running since 1975! The next issue, which will come out by the end of the year, will be a double issue focussed on "Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons"; which incidentially is the unambiguous title of a new book by MIT Press.
It is pretty obvious that my interest in the hobby has waned in the past few years. During this time, over half of my collection has already sold, and the proceeds to various charities (my favourite, due to their maximum life benefits per dollar spent) are Effective Altruism. Nevertheless, as founding president of the association and editor of the 'zine I have certain responsibilities up and until I find someone else to be torchbearer of the Cooperative, it's journal, our extensive gaming library, various publications, repositories, and activities carried out under its name. Fortunately, I am also blessed by one of the best committees that any volunteer-incorporated association could ask for; they are intelligent, dedicated to helping out the cooperative and put in the effort to ensure our activities are a success.
For my own part, I am far from leaving the hobby in its entirety. Every Thursday, I alternate between running a game of classic "Call of Cthulhu", and playing "Wanderhome", a narrativist story-game with an anthropomorphic setting, explicitly stated as "inspired by the works of Brian Jacques, Tove Jansson, and Hayao Miyazaki". Tonight I have just restarted, after an eighteen month break, of my QuestWorlds Glorantha game which started in 2007! Further, just for the sheer joy of it, I have begun converting the famous-notorious "HeartQuest" interactive novels published by TSR into an online version (courtesy of copies gleaned from archive.org). Given their target audience, the stories were pretty simplistic to the point of being condescending, didn't exactly sell well (even if they are collectables today), and the series was cancelled. Nevertheless, it an interesting, even curious, part of RPG history and as such, deserves to be available in a more accessible format.
It is pretty obvious that my interest in the hobby has waned in the past few years. During this time, over half of my collection has already sold, and the proceeds to various charities (my favourite, due to their maximum life benefits per dollar spent) are Effective Altruism. Nevertheless, as founding president of the association and editor of the 'zine I have certain responsibilities up and until I find someone else to be torchbearer of the Cooperative, it's journal, our extensive gaming library, various publications, repositories, and activities carried out under its name. Fortunately, I am also blessed by one of the best committees that any volunteer-incorporated association could ask for; they are intelligent, dedicated to helping out the cooperative and put in the effort to ensure our activities are a success.
For my own part, I am far from leaving the hobby in its entirety. Every Thursday, I alternate between running a game of classic "Call of Cthulhu", and playing "Wanderhome", a narrativist story-game with an anthropomorphic setting, explicitly stated as "inspired by the works of Brian Jacques, Tove Jansson, and Hayao Miyazaki". Tonight I have just restarted, after an eighteen month break, of my QuestWorlds Glorantha game which started in 2007! Further, just for the sheer joy of it, I have begun converting the famous-notorious "HeartQuest" interactive novels published by TSR into an online version (courtesy of copies gleaned from archive.org). Given their target audience, the stories were pretty simplistic to the point of being condescending, didn't exactly sell well (even if they are collectables today), and the series was cancelled. Nevertheless, it an interesting, even curious, part of RPG history and as such, deserves to be available in a more accessible format.