Exhibit A: http://www.principiainfecta.com

Question: what is it that I'm doing in Exhibit A?

I believe I know what I think I'm doing, which is to say I'm finding it an amusing thing to do. It's not really world building, although there's certainly an argument for saying it is - after a fashion, at least. I do say as much, as a matter of fact, but largely for lack of a better description. It's certainly not game design, although I would expect one of the few uses it could be put to would be as a remote adjunct to that process. It's not really GM assistance by airdrop of random ideas, save for those few folks who like to extract information from freeform puzzles, or read the sort of science fiction that drops you into the deep end with no armbands. It isn't really publishing short fiction, nor is it putting out teasers in service of something larger - there is no something larger outside my head (in that part of the world that is much more uncertain), and since matters evolve as they move forward, one could argue that there is no something larger inside my head either.

It's never going to be finished, per se. The same goes for any given part of it; very liberating to declare that at the outset, by the way. You should all try it.

Principia Infecta is not a bunch of things. But it's certainly something - it's an awful lot of spilled ink to fail to manage to be something that has a name to it, that other people are out there doing in similar ways. The question would be what that something is.

Have at it.