ThinkingSkull.com

In the movie The NeverEnding Story, the hero Atreyu must seek a human child which can only be found beyond the borders of his world, Fantasia. Unfortunately, he is about to be killed by his enemy, the G’mork, when he learns (spoiler to follow) Fantasia is the world of human fantasy; it has no boundaries, so Atreyu can never get beyond them.

As some of my acquaintances know (and for those who do not), I not only write here and for MovieCrypt.com but I also lend my time to the role-playing game industry. No one enjoys telling people that your ‘hobby’ is writing when they darn well intend to make some money at it, yet the truth is that very few purists can make livable quantities of money on a constant (and regular) basis in a nich industry. As proof of role-playing’s ever-ellusive quest to become taken seriously, consider than whenever people with colorful books running an adventure while rolling dice, any such game is “just like Dungeons & Dragons” while the term ‘gamer’ has been stolen away to describe anyone with a game console who spends their nights happily killing weed rats so they can buy a proper sword and load their next graphical mission.

So, aside from a day job that ensures I cannot live too far beyond my means, I have also been developing Kindling Moon, an Arabian fantasy with elements of altered reality. Like anyone else who has migrated from running a character to presiding over an entire game can tell you, all game masters aspire to see their personal game world or idea published. I myself have been kicking around ideas for years, but most systems (including every incarnation of D&D) simply don’t fit the way I like to play.

This is where many say, “Oooh! I can make my own game just like [favorite game here] except for [cool rule] and make hundreds of dollars… TENS of hundreds!” Somewhere, Charles Bronson is holding a harmonica and saying, “They call them ‘thousands.’”

No, if it were a rule or two, maybe. I realized I didn’t want to change one thing or just create just another setting; I needed something that worked with the way I enjoy running a game. If nothing more, it’s an exercise in applying my thought processes to the interworkings of such a system from the ground up: what dice to use, how they work, what the rolls mean and when not to use them. Deciding how random numbers can be translated into affecting the reality of your own private universe can be frustrating when it fails and intoxicating when it succeeds.

This past weekend at a convention called Grail Quest, I no longer felt the need for frustration. Check it out; I’ll wait.

I’ve always had plenty of plots and characters, but creating the rules upon which others can quickly and easily share in my ‘Fantasia’ was always the goal. This was the third year I’d ran a demo of the system, but it was the first year that no major breakdowns of the system occured; it performed as intended. The ‘fantasy physics’ rules that determine how reality functions are now in place.

This isn’t just important in terms of running or playing the game. In fact, it isn’t important to the sale of the game itself. What makes it important is that everything I write from that moment on has a tangible boundary that keeps everything believable even when the fantastic occurs. It doesn’t matter if it’s another realmbook, a novel, a short story, or a movie script; the boundaries of this portion of my imagination has been defined and can be explained to others willing to learn.

Ask anyone who’s favorite comic book has been ruined by a new writer that never read their favorite character’s background and history, doing things they wouldn’t or have no ability to do. Ask any moviewatcher how dull their big summer action flick is when the director blew $150 million but none of it makes any sense because every whim is up on the screen instead of a coherant story and character development.

All creativity needs rules and boundaries. Once you reach them, of course, there’s no one to say you can bend the rules or push the boundaries back a bit; after all, you set the limits.

Kindling Moon: my world; my rules.