Editorial: Immortal RPGs?

d6ideas dice5That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Roleplaying games are a little bit like the great Cthulhu in that regard. Just as the Old One lies sleeping beneath the waves, awaiting a time when the stars are right, so do the tattered rulebooks rest beneath book stacks, awaiting a time when the dice are right.

No matter whether it’s old or new, a thin booklet or a mighty tome, a single rulebook or a veritable library of supplements and sourcebooks, current edition or playtest copy – we can game it as long as we want to.

That’s why I never quite got my head around two things:

Neither the theatrical “oh no!” reaction of gamers when a game is cancelled, nor their frenetic “hooray!” when a new edition is announced seem to really justify such intensity and earnestness.

Yes, it’s sad when a long awaited book doesn’t see print after all, and yes, it’s nice to get a surprise addition to a beloved game line, but to be perfectly honest… …we could do without. As long as we are actively gaming, there will always be new stuff, no matter what the publishers and designers do and decide. For there will always be that, which we create ourselves for and at the table.

Which brings us neatly to those things, we thought up here at d6ideas, the five articles of next week:

English articles
Tuesday, we take a look at space travel in Blue Planet with „Shooting the Hole“.
And on Thursday Nogger will present his thoughts on independently operating Space Marine Killteams in “The Deatchwatch Sandbox”.

German articles
On Monday we return once more to Unknown Armies. “The Lovers“ is an archetype with a twist, written by Krath, Hasran and blut_und_glas.
On Wednesday we ponder the question “What is… Totenmedizin?“.
Thursday sees the German translation of Nogger’s Deathwatch article.

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