I love you, man...

Okay, this doesn't really fit in the Bar thingy because the moonshine I'm drinking isn't really a "mixed" drink. (Not until I decide to pour in some flat, two-day-old Dr. Thunder [Wal-Mart's Dr Pepper rip-off] into it, to create, I don't know--oh! I've got it! Dr. Moonthunder! Cool. That'll be my next one-shot game, after the vampires-and-autoduelists-on-Jupiter's-Moon game, and of course Luchadores en Infierno [Pro Wrestlers in Hell].)

Okay, so here it is. I'm stuck here in Salisbury, and the folks I know around here are great, but It hasn't happened yet. You know, It. When it clicks. When your gaming group creates something, that ephemeral though it is, you remember for a lifetime. Back home in Regina, it happened with Sim, Basic Roleplaying in H�rn. My Edmonton group with that Sabbat campaign, Crazy Little Thing Called Life, that got us in the gut. Kult. Fallen Suns LARP. The LARP Cthulhu of In Media Res that creeped us the hell out. The games my friends in Seattle would run of Cthulhu, using crazy-ass props, until they finally gave up, saying, "We couldn't make them realistic enough." ("--Without hurting anyone," one of them added.)

My spine has not tingled, friends.

But there is hope. That hope is the Forge. I read something back in wherever (could've been Seattle) about Dunjon Krawl, that seemed such a fun and cool riff on roleplaying. And Clinton R. Nixon (who has the coolest name ever!) mentioned a thing called Sorcerer. So I look it up, and I see references to some damn White Wolf thing, and Mage was a slap in the face to those of us who wanted mysticism in our gaming, and some reference to real-world occultism, or at least dare I say it A GODDAMN PLAYABLE GAME, Goddamn you white wolf goddamn you all to hell, I mean I played one of those Dimension X guys, Parthimedians, what do you call--yeah, Sons of Ether, and I kept joshing with the GM, pointing to the illo in the book, "Please Trent can I have a gorilla with a fucked-up head?" and he'd say, "No you can't have a gorilla with a fucked-up head, and stop saying the pizza in Regina is so much better than the pizza in Edmonton," and I kept going on about Dimension X, and he got angrier, and I bought Ether Goggles for one background point, and said, "they look into Dimension X," and that was it. So I had this guy with a Glock in a gymbag, and he was the most effective character in the campaign, and it was because that game was such a mess no one knew how to use magic, and paradox ate your head, that you just shot everything. (Note to White Wolf: Ars Magica 4th avail. as free PDF. Read it.) (And I mean really, Unknown Armies, with their pornomancers and whatnot. I mean Shadowrun had better occult cred. Though I love John Tynes like the brother I never had.)

Oh, yeah, so, The Forge. People on rpg.net mentioned this like it was some secret club. And it's kind of like it was: a secret club for people who gave a shit, who wanted to KNOW that there was a Better Way to do RPGs, and people who knew probabilities cold from a standpoint other than min/maxing (there's a min/max board on the WotC boards, no crap). And people who knew games, who loved games, who wanted to make games that encourage It to happen.

Ron, I love you, man. The GNS structure allows us to stand like academics outside our own experiences gaming, while simultaneously shedding piss and blood *having* those experiences. When I embark on a gaming experience, I think, WWRD (What Would Ron Do?). When thinking of a gaming design, rather than release a heartbreaker into the world, I ask myself, FCSW (For Christ's Sake, Why?).

You make it better, Ron. Clinton, you're the Good Enabler.

All gamers can benefit from you. From Us. From Raven to clerich (the only cleric worth being), from Walton to West, we are out in the sands of the wilderness digging at sites that might contain the grail.

To everyone I say,

I love you, man!

It (I mean It) can happen, again, to all of us.

Design when you can, and in the meantime, find a part-time job that allows you to drink moonshine at work.

For embarassing posterity,

Dave Panchyk
http://www.mandrakegames.com

EDIT: to cover the one fuck-up I made while drunk