I haven’t written anything in a while, have I? Sorry
about that. Life problems, lack of inspiration, excuses, excuses, excuses. But
hey! Here’s something new!
There’s been a bit of talk, lately, about failure. The
big primary is the Angry GM, who wrote a Strong Article about failure in terms
of the game itself, and how accepting it as a possibility can make you a better
DM. He also touched on it later in a couple pieces, and I’ve seen the idea of
allowing players to fail at tasks tossed around a bit on other blogs as well as
on forums and facebook.
One thing that wasn’t really talked about is how to
accept failure as a designer. Not necessarily as a DM, but stepping even
further back into the role of game/campaign designer. I’ve always considered
myself a bit of an amateur designer. My design work has never been published,
but I’m still constantly designing new things, so I’m a designer. Ever since my
very first game of D&D, I wanted to play with the system and make things my
own. It, of course, manifested as a desire to carry around the same cool
weapons as my favorite characters from fiction (in particular, I wanted to
wield the Soul Edge from Soul Calibur when I was a kid). That desire shifted,
however, as time passed and I learned more about the game in which I was
participating. About the time I bought my first core rulebooks (edition 3.5), I
had finally taken the step from player to DM. And as a DM, I wanted to make
everything my own. I introduced new magic items, new classes, and new systems
from my earliest days. I remember lancers, dragoons, hunters, mages, dark
knights, and something I called the “Fearless” (a concept I’m still trying to
make work). My first campaign boss had a Final Fantasy limit break (he was a
dark knight riding on a nightmare, and he shot a giant purple laser beam). And
this desire to create new and expanded options only grew as I got more and more
involved in the games I played.
Pathfinder was a particular area of creation for me. Once
the concept of Class Archetypes was introduced, I went wild. The archives of
this blog are a testament to how much I wanted to create my own work. However,
with that desire to create comes the inevitable result. Failure.
If you decide to create anything, you are going to fail.
A lot. And that’s okay. In fact, it can be a good thing. It can be clarifying.
Take, for example, my attempt at Stunt Dice in D&D.
