An Epiphany

The Article That Started It All (TATSIA)

You know, I'm surprised that I've been in roleplaying games for this long without realizing an important fact. I'd like to warn my readers that what I'm about to say may come as a bit of a shock. Hopefully, though, in the spirit of this Thursday, you can manage with it. Let me know if this upsets you at all, I'll do what I can to assuage your concerns. But it's still a pretty big paradigm shift.

I'm quitting RPGs.

See, up when I read TATSIA (see top of page), I found it to be really, really shocking. You know me: I'm a sucker for good story. I looked to RPGs as a source of interactive adventure and storytelling. I really, really liked the idea that you could have an interactive story that has an uncertain outcome, where players and a game master work together to make a cool story. TATSIA took that idea...well...

It kinda threw it for a major loop. I'd assumed that you could come up with a story outside of the game, where you didn't need to rely on rules for a cool story. In fact, part of the appeal of RPGs, to me, was that you can't really make a good story without human effort. That there's something there, something that can't be qualified by rules or dice or Wizards. It was really cool that, in an age of the machines, an age of the digital, an age of rules, restrictions, people telling you what to do...that the human spirit still clung to something greater. I believed in that something greater.

I believed in the power of love.

No longer. TATSIA has seen to that. What is love? I read this article, and I felt the love slipping away, out, trodden beneath a pale of caltrop-like d4s. There is no love. We are all slaves of the machine. Rules, regulations, these are the ways of TATSIA. I believed in a great world of roleplaying. I loved roleplaying. TATSIA has shattered my love...and I'm really just...

I need perspective. To get out, breathe.

I think I'm going to take about a three-month break and go to the mountains, kill a few bears, get out my emotions. Then I can return to this blog.

In the meantime, there will be an automated android taking my place and blogging, he tells me his name is Hal. I really don't care. Just expect a slightly different tone to my articles for some time. I need to go deal with TATSIA. Expect a normal schedule again, starting Tuesday.