Eulogy For My Abandoned Ideas

[[ This Eulogy was compiled to submit to the Lost, Broken, Unplayable Jam ]]

I've been making tabletop games since I was 11. No art form quite scratches the sublimely multi-media itch as writing and then running the game. Since the dawn of humanity and the advent of language we've gathered around fires to craft stories of heroes that never were, to tell tall tales and craft new narratives together. We've rolled bones, howled songs, painted our faces in any number of ways. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, I am of the opinion that the tabletop game can be considered nothing short of a very modern iteration of a deeply spiritual practice. The difference is that now we write things down, stow them in books and sometimes even sell them. But that's not where the game is.

The game isn't in the book anymore than it's on the table. It doesn't live on a character sheet or move by the roll of a dice. No, the game is something amorphous that flows through you via the transcendent experience we like to call play. And play has many forms.

For me play has often taken the form of one-shot playtests, fleeting design docs and light late notes for longer than I can frankly remember. Sometimes these games make it to the table, sometimes even beyond. But more often than not their embers go cold before they're given a chance to shine.

This is a eulogy for those games. A proper burial. A funerary rite to pass their soul onto better places.

There isn't much in the sense of order or layout here. Just these works presented in their most raw form. 

Visit these bodies if you'd like. I have a few words to say to them myself. And maybe these works will speak to you from beyond the grave, and spark new fires or fan new flames.