Working Notes 04: Refreshment
So what am I talking about when I say I’m refreshing old titles? I don’t want to call them new editions, but I also don’t want to imply that I’m not doing anything more than slapping new covers on them. A lot if it has to do with creating unified narrative roleplaying terminology, moving away from what I think is tabletop roleplaying baggage, and trying to make all of these books written across a decade and in various states of mind all feel like part of a coherent body of work.
Replacing a single word, like difficulty to pressure, changes the whole perspective of roleplaying. You’re not trying to succeed at a task based on how hard it is. What you need to do is accomplish something in spite of all of the pressure that’s being put on you. Your own feelings about the task at hand, the stakes, how people might see you if you fail, how you want them to see you when you succeed. There is storytelling in what you attempt, how you attempt it, what happens if you pull it or fall flat on your face. That’s the interesting part. How you win. How you lose. What happens next, in either case?
So refreshing the books does make them look pretty, and giving them another editing once-over in search of lost typos is a good thing. What’s more important is that they align philosophically with what I’m trying to say, about the hobby, about humanity, about the setting and the people in it, whatever those might be. Think bigger. Broader. More deeply.
