4 April 2024: Manifestos for All

Some people find the word manifesto to be off-putting. It’s just a mission statement when you come right down to it. The definition is something like “a public declaration of goals and policy”. Of course, there can be a political connotation, usually ascribed by people whose political agenda revolves around accusing everyone they disagree with of having a political agenda. These are the people that think Star Trek and X-Men only became progressive, like, last week or something.

Anyway…

There are folks who associate the word manifesto with a call for revolution. If you’re happy with the status quo and the way things work is working for you, great. Go with grace, and have fun. Using a loaded term like manifesto can lead people to think you’re an edge lord seeking attention, or a poser acting as if their ideas are wonderful and original or they’re more important than they actually are.

In truth, I use the word manifesto because I’m kind of pissed off and I’m not shy about letting people know it.

When I first started roleplay, I just wanted to play games with my friends and be left alone. Back when I entered the field as a professional, I just wanted to make stuff and be left alone. The internet, for all of its promise of bringing people with common interests together, kind of ruined all of that for me.

It’s not just the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, [insert-bigotry-here] crap that killed any and all interest in participating in social media, conventions, and local game days. For all of the talk in the early days of how to grow the hobby, when the obvious solution of diversity and representation came to the fore, a lot of folks were like, “Not like that”. No, if all of that could somehow be set aside, there would still be edition wars, styles of play, and other “one true way” nonsense.

The capitalists within the hobby get mad at me when I make creative choices that will hurt sales. The art-for-art-sake people get mad at me for having the audacity to set aside creative choices in favor of things that will help me make rent that month. Our culture, such as it is, has constructed itself around the idea of seeking out things to be mad about.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been told I’m doing something wrong, I could probably afford to rent a small studio apartment in New York City. The game has to have this. It can’t have that. You need to run a crowdfunding campaign. There has to be a metric ship-ton of artwork. People only want this. No one will buy that. You have to do it this way. Never use big words.

As of the date I’m writing this, I have paid my bills solely on the income I earn from roleplaying material for 94 consecutive months. That’s 7 years and 10 months, or 2,861 days. Yet people think I don’t know what I’m doing, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, because I don’t do things the way they think they’re supposed to be done.

And people wonder why I’m pissed off all the time and call my newsletter a manifesto.

Here’s the real mission statement, the real manifesto:

I’m gonna make what I want to make, the way I want to make it, and if you like it, cool, but if you don’t, I didn’t make it for you.

I hope you’re doing well today.

Berin