EDITORIAL: Innovation Versus the Merry-Go-Round of the Mind

I have heard rumblings and, dare I say, didacticism, from some that claim that RPG design from the many companies now publishing compatible material should not be about innovation, that it in some way instead equates to a moment which appears to them to be frozen in time.  I will say this in response to those who actually believe this and promote it as truth:  It is the MOST patently absurd idea I have ever heard.

If we had thought that way prior to D&D's publication, the MOST INNOVATIVE GAME in the history of games would have never been published.  That D&D set a standard to be overcome is a matter of historical fact.  The very day that people form companies and cease being amateurs by accepting money for their products they approach the realm of professionals.  There is no differentiating; one cannot slide this way or that by whim nor escape their separate truths while embracing either.  In rising above the amateur state one must embrace a professional acumen that is always being propelled to the forefront and through which you take a hard look at yourself, your philosophies and your ways and means.  If indeed much of what brands itself as emulating the past stands out and proclaims itself as new, then I say:  prove it.  Prove it like the fans turned amateurs turned professionals did to make something innovative, who strived to continue improving upon that innovation, and who continue to do so today.  Embrace professionalism and the future of imagination as the originators of the game did or stop accepting money and remain amateurs--it is not a two-way street of convenience.  It's earned, just as E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson earned it.

To true creators, innovators and those individuals with plans of making careers out of their writing and design like I have done, please follow this advice as a saviour-path to it: Flee!  Run as fast as you can from such abhorrent thoughts and suggestions that your creative paths are best suited to the past.  Separate yourselves from those who do not know or do not care and those who say they do even though in your heart you feel otherwise.  Upon the singular plain of your own creative spirit will you find the true expressions of your soul and mind and not in the endless circling caravan of regurgitated thought or upon a merry-go-round of the mind.  Divorce yourself from the group; for at that time you will have the complete freedom to express yourself; in that hour will come your best work; and in that serene moment you will arrive at your truth.

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"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

Lessons to be Learned

Read this

Which influences every part of our culture, including game design.

"Welcome Back to the Creative Fold." Extracted from my In Progress Memoirs

Copyright 2010.  Robert J. Kuntz.

"... After I quit TSR I embarked upon a massive self-learning and creative phase, with all the joys and bumps associated with it. This included continued world-crafting of my World of Kalibruhn, creation of related and ancillary RPG matter, fantasy- and science-fiction story crafting and board game design. For the latter I finished three prototype designs:  "Ice Age," "Dragons" and "Magus" with the last to eventually find publication in Dragon Magazine 147.  These were in turn submitted to the Avalon Hill Game Company which rejected them, though with a nice letter of response favoring the "Dragons" game wherein one adopted the role of a dragon.  Since I believed through the play-tests that the strongest one was "Magus," I ventured onward, first to Mayfair Games, who took too long considering it, so I finally pulled it back.  I then decided to take the bunch to the Dragon Magazine and therefore arranged a meeting with its editor (who I shall not name, other than it was not Tim Kask, Kim Mohan or Roger Moore, all of whom I had respect for in their separate runs as editors).

I had been out of sight for a year by then, a reclusive artist banging away at the keyboard and filling boxes in my reconverted attic cum office with reams of material. As I entered this editor's office, he said, "Rob!  Welcome back to the creative fold!"  As I sat down I was immediately uncomfortable.  It was a sixth-sense impression that was gathering steam for what I was to later add to the presumptuous and insulting category.  Here I was, I finally thought, in the Golden Halls of Allah, and with a representative thereof whose very chair he was sitting upon was in part due its existence to my prior work as an employee and designer for the company, and quite some time before his own arrival.

Many would be writers would have laughed off the remark, of course, looking to the future sale.  That glorious sale.  The object of desire.  The reason for being.  Being there.  But it isn't, really.  Now or then.  Being a creator, the aftermath of my undertakings have found various coigns:  in publication, in filing cabinets, in boxes, on a bed stand, pinned to walls, and some unfortunately for their final repose found a lone and unexpected fire, consumed from the indited page but not from my minds-eye of experience.  I thought about this meeting for some time afterwards. My coyness at his questions; and my sudden reversal of intent.  I fairly escaped the meeting by promising to be back in touch when I had polished them some more, and he had not even held the designs in his hands.  The "meeting" lasted less than ten minutes.

In retrospect my sensibilities about the ideas of creator and creation had been offended. Was there only one spot on earth for such artificing? Why yes!  The very spot where it takes place at, so there are many "one-spots". . .  My own experience proved an invaluable lesson.  It was about the work.  Good works will always find a place and time to nurture them.  Under Kim Mohan's  capable leadership not too soon after the afore-noted editor's removal,""Magus" found a home. ..."