Leon Dale Photographer calls out the Goblins

I just got an awesome boost from Leon Dale Photographer. He hired local writer Janean Brown to do an interview and an article for him, and did all the photography for the article himself. The result was quite salutory!

Good thing the goblins were fed before I arrived!

Read more »

The Red Baron of Failure and “Consider the uses of adversity….”

I used to do Rune readings using Ralph Blum's system of runes.*

One of the reading elements that used to come up a great deal for me was a rune that meant "Consider the uses of adversity." Something I always took as a euphemism for "you're screwed!" But lately I have begun considering it as a literal concept.

Ryan Macklin was on a podcast I enjoy just recently (no, not his own, although I like that one too), one called Stabbing Contest where he talks about failure in game design and how it's a good thing.

I think this dovetails also into the rather poignant interview Jeff and Judd had on their podcast Sons of Kryos with the folks who did the Ashcan Front this year. The AF guys were reporting that sales of ashcans were down, and that designers who weren't at the Front didn't sell as many games as those who were willing to sell the ashcans in person. What was also discussed was that only one of the 20 or so games that have gone through the ashcan process has "graduated" into a published game. (I suspect that Rob Bohl's game "Misspent Youth" will be the next game that graduates, but that's just me.)

What struck me was that the Ashcan Front people say that they don't count success as being that 1 game, rather, they won a mental victory by getting people to agree to draw out their game design process and craft a complete, well-put-together game instead of rushing it to completion before Gen Con.

I myself feel shot down quite a bit when either a.) I find out that the idea that I had spontaneously and was in love with has already been done by people like Luke Crane in "Burning Wheel," Vincent Baker in "Dogs in the Vineyard, or Fred Hicks et al. in Spirit of the Century and b.) when a line of design just doesn't go anywhere useful or c.) I get told that the game I made wasn't a game even though I think it's perfectly playable.

Getting shot down means you failed, and you have to take off again to the skies to try again. I hear a lot about the idea of "Fail Early, Fail Often," concept and, at least, I can be assured that I am following this maxim!

I am still, however, committed to bringing the visions I've had of games to come to life. I've made a good effort in good faith. If I hear the Red Baron of Failure's bullets rip apart my engine, if the black smoke of failure starts billowing, that just means that I've just got to learn from that impact, and try again.

So here I go again...wish me luck, I'm off to find another Sopwith Camel.

*Now, Blum created that system out of whole cloth, utilizing other oracles like the I Ching to help him figure out what each of his 25 runes meant. I've had practitioners of Asatru tell me that his rune interpretations are full of crap; however, I think that what I've learned from interacting with all such oracular systems is this: Tarot, astrology, I Ching, etc. - these are all just means for the subconscious mind to talk to the conscious mind. All mysticism aside, this is a psychological tool for me to get at deeper structures in my brain.