Many of the once-brilliant creators I follow are so plainly done. Compare this, which came out yesterday, to Danskin's earlier work. Compare this, from a week ago, from Olsen's earlier work. Compare this, from gawd knows when because it took so long for Rowntree to put something up, to his earlier work. All three examples represent enormous amounts of effort; plain evidence of comprehension and purpose; unquestioned ability and skill. And all three are absolutely the creator going up his own asshole, for lack of having anything relevant left to say. This isn't a recent problem. All three have been struggling for years now. Since the onset of covid, none of them have remotely produced the relevancy of work they once created. And that is the key word, because the fault in their work isn't their artistic ability, but in their inability to be relevant.
How I pray I'm not them.
I don't know that I'm not ... but it has been explained to me that part of my path is that I'm not casting around each time I post, or each time I imagine a project, for something new to write about. I can, at a whim, sit here and write about dungeons and dragons for an hour, easily, on any part of the game, on the spur of the moment. I'm not trying to write reviews of things, which forces me to go out and find things to write reviews about. I'm not dependent on gimmicks like "30 things that begin with an 'N'" that I have to write about every November. I can make maps every day for a couple of months ... and then not. I can work on the wiki everyday for a couple of months ... and then not. I literally have no end to the open-ended projects that exist in my setting, that I can't possibly ever finish, because they're monumentally huge. I'm not dependent on someone else's movie, or someone else's recent release, or someone else's questions and involvement. If the Q&A lies empty, so it goes. It doesn't make or break my presence here.
And I have only myself to thank for that. The teenager me went at this game's design with hammer and tongs from the beginning, certain that I could deconstruct every element in it and make it better. Gygax's DMG had so many faults and failings that I cheerfully set out to rewrite tables and expand portions of the book. Single sentences in that book led me to projects that I've pursued for thirty years, some with mixed success, some with startling results. I may be tired; I may not know, for a week or two, how to create a given table or explain a set of proposed rules, but I'm not bored with the work I do. It seems all the time that the path in front of me is ready to be trod upon and the direction plain ... and all in all, I don't feel irrelevant. Most of the time.
I've had moments, certainly, expressed on this blog, when I've wondered if AD&D itself has become so irrelevant it won't survive my lifetime. I've had moments of enormous blind rage at various successful toadies who, unlike those respected persons I began this post with, do not have ability, skill, insight, a willingness to work or a purpose ... except, perhaps, to bilk people out of their money for shit content. I have definitely felt ignored. Painfully so. But it still feels like the work that I'm doing has application and value.
I can't begin to guess at what to say to those creators who are losing their verve. I don't believe they know it. Or perhaps, the well really is dry and this is all they've got left. In either case, it's a doomed situation. If they've lost their sight regarding their own work, then nothing anyone else says or does will ever reach through the fog of self-righteousness that a creator has to wrap tightly all round as protection against the slings and arrows of ignorant critics. That fog is critical. If I keep insisting that you, dear reader, don't understand what I'm doing, and that you can't understand it because you haven't the ability to do so, then I can sustain myself and my "vision" until the day it all collapses and I collapse with my arms around a horse's neck, gibbering out promises that I'll protect it.
On the other hand, if I've lost the sight, truly lost it, and am unable to see my way to any content that doesn't wallow in the mire or insignificance, then gawd, what a pathetic case am I. Like a professional guitarist adrift on a desert island without a guitar. Don't look at me. Please don't suggest anything. Please, I can't bear it. I can't bear what I've become.
It is the most miserable fate I can imagine ... to want to create, for these fellows plainly want to create, though it takes them a year to create and edit just two hours of minimalistic content, in some cases using a team of four or five people helping them. I can edit 15 minutes of video in an afternoon; I can write 15 minutes of dialogue in about 90 minutes. Yet these poor souls must needs 7 months to find a subject, read books on the subject, carefully craft their dialogue, purchase props, angst over their camera angles and costumes, painstakingly edit and so on, to deliver a video for youtube that's not quite as long as a feature film, with only one performer and the most minimalist of lighting or movement. The agony they must go through, questioning every line, reshooting or rewriting every facet of ever second's delivery ... or perhaps the months and months of dreary wall staring as they furtively seek something to film or deconstruct. I am so glad I'm not them. Go up my own ass I may, but I don't take 9 months to do it.
Before encountering these recent works from these other creators, I was having my concerns about my own recent efforts. Does it make sense to run myself in a randomised game system? The combats are fun, reassuring to see posted, and I look forward to another; but is this whole thing just a weird, mastubatory debacle that I've talked myself into following the collapse of my offline game campaign? I can't lie to myself, this might be the case. I'd considered doing something like this before, more than a year ago, but I couldn't see having the time, nor really the motivation to do it. I had players already. I could play test stuff with them.
So, perhaps, I've gone off a deep end somewhere. I admit I'm not finding the randomness "easy," especially the wilderness, which is vastly more difficult than a dungeon. I reassure myself that it's because I haven't been doing it very long. There are a lot of twists and turns to account for that aren't second nature, in this format. I want to get going, but I have to keep stopping because some table needs making. It's frustrating that I can't just play.
But am I losing my marbles? I'm not asking the reader ... after all, my own fog of self-righteousness is firmly in place. I'm taking a moment and orienting myself, looking at the various familiar benchmarks and deciding if these unlikely places really do need to be surveyed. I'm checking my instruments, my calculations. Hell, I'm popping my finger into my mouth and using it to test the wind.
Am I losing my marbles?
I don't know. But this seems like what's next. I have a lot of other things I could be doing; and happily, I got a lot of solid work done on the Guide this week. But this, this weird random thing ... this seems to be next. I don't know what it will produce, I don't know what inspirations it will give me. I'm trying to trust myself, my instruments and my calculations. I'm saying out loud, I'm not these others that I used to respect, but have since begun to wonder about. I think.
I'll have to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you wish to leave a comment on this blog, contact alexiss1@telus.net with a direct message. Comments, agreed upon by reader and author, are published every Saturday.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.