This is RPG-ology #88: Celebrations, for March 2025.
Our thanks to Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition for locating a copy of this and a number of other lost Game Ideas Unlimited articles. This was originally Game Ideas Unlimited: Celebrations, and is reposted here with minor editing [bracketed].
A year has passed. On June 1, 2001, the first Game Ideas Unlimited column appeared on Gaming Outpost, an Introduction [preserved on the mark Joseph “young” web log] to what we intended to accomplish, and this installment is the fifty-second in the [original] weekly series. [The] [n]ext [week’s series] article will be the first of a new year.
This seems something to celebrate. Not all writers who start out writing a weekly series last a year, even if that is their stated intent. Our stated intent did not include a time factor; we set out a year ago to explore the creative process. Thrice since then we have reviewed our progress–looking Over My Shoulder at the first dozen articles in the thirteenth, considering The Process and how the next dozen illuminated it in the twenty-sixth, and using Flashbacks in the thirty-ninth to review the third quarter. And now we have reached the end of the year. We should do something to celebrate.
I am particularly excited about this accomplishment because as I look back over this quarter, I, at least, am comfortable that the quality of the ideas and the articles has not deteriorated; they have not repeated the same ground significantly, even when they have hearkened back to earlier entries. There is every reason to believe that the series can continue with new ideas and directions into the future. This quarter has brought us these ideas:
- Derivative recognized that our ideas often owe much to those whose creations influence us, but this does not make them less great–even the greats owed much to others.
- Wounds explored how our characters through their adventures may acquire battle scars on their bodies and their souls.
- Faith suggested that characters with a simple trust in a deity may find within that a well of strength that is surprising.
- Vivid [preserved on the mark Joseph “young” web log] wondered what made some role playing game moments so memorable that we can still see them in our mind’s eye years later, as if we had been there–and suggests some possibilities.
- Words discussed how language helps us communicate, and how it sometimes hinders.
- Wizardry gave us insights into how a little magic is used to give the impression of greater magic.
- Knowing poked at ways to distance players from that unrealistic total knowledge of their characters.
- Tactics was our first admission that role playing games come from wargames, along with an effort to suggest ways in which players can help their characters fight more effectively.
- Possibilities attempted to expand our understanding of how we use inductive reasoning, inventing information that enables us to solve problems, and how that can lead to wrong conclusions.
- Common suggested that we are all alike, at least sufficiently so that we can understand how to play each other, or people like us or very unlike us, in our games.
- Uncertainty considered the tactical importance of preventing the opponent from accurately assessing your abilities.
- The Alien provided a peek at how the Bah of Multiverser’s Bah Ke’gehn (in The Second Book of Worlds) were created, suggesting that very alien minds are created by providing very alien worlds.
So how do we celebrate?
How we celebrate, generally, is often connected to what we celebrate. Americans celebrate Independence Day with fireworks, almost universally, reminiscent of the war fought. Although people joke about why Easter involves eggs and rabbits, these are emblems of new life, and so celebratory of the resurrection. Similarly, Christmas involves gift giving, and the evergreen symbol of ongoing life and hope. Chanukah remembers the eight days that the lamp burned (on one day’s worth of oil) by lighting candles each night; and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a solemn day of fasting and reflection.
Yet our celebrations are just as often incongruous. Memorial Day, set aside to remember the deaths of all those soldiers who fought to defend America, usually involves parades, sometimes connected to feasts, fireworks, and picnics; for many people, it’s the day to open the pool. Labor Day is a day off, which might make sense; but for many people, it’s also the last day to get ready for school, the last day of freedom, of swimming, of summer, before work resumes. Similarly, we may appropriately mark Thanksgiving with a harvest feast, but we also mark it as the beginning of the Christmas shopping rush, the brief four weeks in which many retailers sell as much as they will in the rest of the year combined.
Celebrations take many forms. Purim includes a carnival; the highlight involves reading the book of Esther aloud, with the crowd cheering each time the heroine’s uncle Mordecai is mentioned and hissing at the name of the villain Haman. Haman is also featured in the dunking tank at many of these carnivals. It is said that at the Celtic New Year (at Samhain), all fires were extinguished and re-lit from a grand public bonfire, so that everyone would have new fire in their homes as winter approached. Just as Jews set an extra place for the prophet Elijah to dine with them once a year, Celts were said to set a place for their ancestors that night.
As for me, I will be celebrating by compiling this year’s articles into a book. Those who have subscribed to Gaming Outpost will have the pleasure of having read them all; but whether you have read them or not, you are invited to participate in the celebration by obtaining your copy from Valdron Inc. Like a yearbook, it will be a way to remember this time even if in twenty years Gaming Outpost or the Internet itself is no longer with us. Maybe it’s not the most creative way to mark the occasion–but it’s practical.*
Elsewhere I published a list of imaginary holidays for use in game worlds. It suggests ideas for holidays ranging from celestial and religious events to political memorials to the simple need once in a while to have a holiday. It recognizes that in a big world not everyone celebrates the same holidays, and even when they do they may do so at different times or for different reasons. The New Year is celebrated at several different times in our own world, and has been marked by celebrations at yet other times in the past. There are many reasons to celebrate, and many ways to do so. If you explore these, they may spark more ideas for creative festivities for your worlds.
* The first six months of the series was published as Game Ideas Unlimited Volume I, but is out of print. Several of the recovered articles were published in RPG-ology: Volume I: The First Five Years, and it is hoped that there will be a second volume a few years from now.
[Next week, something different.]
Previous article: The Alien.
Next article: Characterization.