(Damn it! Not that Genesis! Now anybody who's a fan of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis is going to hate me.)
Last winter, my opportunities for gaming fell to pretty much zero. A combination of school, school-work, work and home life got in the way of putting together a group and coming up with stories to tell. For a while, it got depressing.
In early January, when classes started back up, I picked up a "writing techniques" workshop as one of my options. I didn't exactly know what to expect; the description had been vague, its focus seemed to be all over the place, and my first glance at the reading material left me with a bad impression for a number of reasons. But the first hour of that class changed my opinion from apprehensive to positive. By the third week, it was probably my second favourite class of the semester (Ms. Silas' Tuesday class was still the best; so many quotable moments).
At that point, I got a little better; my spirit was up, and I felt the fog of my seasonal depression lifting. I figured that, while I did not have time to game, I might just have the time to come up with something worth playing once my schedule cleared up. D&D Next had been announced, and every word coming out of the designers' mouth (or their respective blog post, interviews, etc.) turned me further away from whatever game they were producing. While I was still willing to listen to them, I knew that the next iteration of the game I liked the most would most probably not interest me, would not suit my particular needs as a GM.
I spent a solid week scribbling concepts and ideas in notebooks and loose sheets before one Monday evening that changed the way I was envisionning my next gaming endeavour.
"It's like a storm for your brain"
I have a very averse reaction to the expression "brainstorming". It puts me on edge. It reminds me of corporate speech, and the time I spent working for big telecoms. It brings to mind sterile, air-conditioned rooms with bad coffee and "workshops" led by middle-management types in ugly shirts and uglier ties trying to get us pumped up about the "Next Big Thing" we were going to be asked to shill for our customers. Mostly though, it does not bring to mind any sort of "innovation", any sort of "idea". "Brainstorming" meant "tell the guy shouting in front of the (glitchy) Power Point presentation (that only worked 33% of the time) exactly what he wants to hear so you can go back to your desk and attempt to have a good day". It meant not bringing anything new to the table, because that's a "creative's" or a "management's" job. It was all about uniformity, conformity, ostrasizing the different. This isn't what I got from that class.To be honest, after the first few brainstorming exercises, I had no idea how far those 20-30 minutes spent shooting ideas at the teacher and at other students would impact my creative processes. It did not start to sink in until much later, during a break in my Thursday evening class. I had nothing to do: my water bottle was almost full, my mp3 player was dead, so following the Habs game on the radio was out of the question (if they even played that night), all my notes were in order... so I grabbed a piece of paper and started jotting down words. At first, I wrote full sentences, cobbling a story from idea fragments that had been floating around in my head for a week or so. But then I stopped and remembered the lessons from monday's class.
Words came quickly; fantasy tropes and personal favourites from fictions flowed freely onto the page. Themes began to emerge, names of places I did not know yet appeared, and a list of peoples that lived in this land that was slowly coming into view. And then one sentence, one unbroken string of words came. It took a full line on the page, written in my blocky, clumsy script: The gods are dead, and we killed them.
I stopped writing at that point. That sentence, to this day, still hits me. Hard.
I folded the piece of paper and slipped it in my bag; I could not let it distract me from the rest of the class (linguistics is hard, people). I would not touch it until late on Friday. I was reassured in my sanity when I read its content aloud, that evening; it had seemed like a dream, and I had come to actually doubt its reality.
The Oath
I wasn't sure what I held in my hands, that weekend, but I knew it was different from all of what I had done in the past as far as RPG design went. I made myself swear that I would hold on to this, whatever it was. I also swore that I would not design anything relating to mecanics until the picture became clearer, until I knew how deep this rabbit hole went.So during that weekend, whenever I had some free time, I went and typed up whatever came to my mind: I would brainstorm for 15 minutes, and then elaborate on what I had just thought up. I refused to censor myself, letting go of ideas only when they failed to inspire me or when they lacked any connection to the core of what I was slowly developping (in the early evening, many of the things I thought up related to food, strangely. One day though, I might come up with a campaign world where Piri-piri chicken and pizza feature prominently).
On Sunday, I had the broad outlines of a world. I imagined it dark, dangerous, filled with secrets, lies, corruption and conspiracy. A fantastic world of valiant heroes, exotic locales and infused with profound mysticism. For the first time in a long while, that world lived and breathed inside my mind. All it needed now was a name. Strangely enough, it would take me a solid month to figure that one out. Guess brainstorming can't be good for everything.
Next up, we look at the world of Forbidden Skies, its themes, and its many sources of inspiration.
Thanks for reading and be well.
E.L.F.
AKA The Choice
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