When you run a blog for several
years--and spend too many years abusing your head as a young man--a terrible thing starts to occur: you start losing touch with
the things you wrote about. It comes way too often these days but
long into gaming-related conversation in a strike of blindingly
internal light I will suddenly find myself thinking “waitttt, didn't I write a
whole mother-flippin' series of blog posts about that three
years back?”
To stave off that “all that is solid
melts into air” feeling, I've finally started on my
long-procrastinated annotated blog index. As I do each chunk—and
they are pretty much going to follow in the order of what I consider
the best or most useful of the posts here—I will post about
them and add them to a larger index page. Likely next is the long index of pointcrawl and wilderness posts.
First up is one of my favorite (and
neglected) groups of posts: the on-again/off-again interview series.
A series which under pretext of presenting ideas, recollections, and
analysis to a broader audience, selfishly allowed me to dig into the
brains of people I have found interesting or critical to our hobby.
The Interview Series (in
Chronological Order)
Jeff Berry
The first interviews on the HC where with Jeff Berry aka Chirine Ba
Kal, a longtime player in M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel campaign and for a
time a mover and shaker in its business end. I had originally reached
out to him with the intention of doing a one-shot little piece on
what the early Tekumel games were actually like. The ongoing
conversation was so incredibly rich with insight and Jeff's memory so
exact in the amounts of detail that it spilled over into several
encores, all of which I still enjoy reading today.
David Dunham
If you pressed me for all my all-time
favorite computer game it would have to be King of Dragon Pass. Not
only was it a near-perfect blend of handpainted art, strategy,
roleplaying and big ticket mythic themes it was set against the
worldbuilding of Glorantha that I love (mostly from afar) so well. A
huge treat to interview David Dunham, creator of the game, and pick
his brain about the connections to KoDP to tabletop roleplaying.
Magira
Digging into the altnerative paths that roleplaying could have taken
in the 1960s and 1970s led me to places I had never known about
notably such great “world games” as that of Magira in Germany. An
interview with one of its participants.
Jeff Dee
Looking back at this interview three years ago which focuses on Jeff
Dee's then beginning drive to get his Tekumel rpg published, it makes
to happy to see that it is not only sitting on my shelf right now but
is helping re-raise the flag of Tekumel after Barker's passing.
Kyrinn Eis
Kyrinn Eis talks about her fascinating worldbuilding and quirky
attendant game.
Robert Kuntz
One of the more controversial outings of the blog but one I am still
proud of running. The interview sprawls over great length but there
are fascinating bits spread through out. While one may like or
dislike the man, his recollections are important to our understanding
of the early days of the hobby.
Dan Boggs
A look at Champion of Zed and its creator before it became another
casualty of the rpg crowd-funding bubble.
Trey Causey
One of my favorite interviews with one of my favorite people from our
side of the hobby. Trey on his post-Weird
Adventures victory lap. You better believe I will be banging on his
door again when his 70s space opera book Strange Stars sees the light of
published day.
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