Welcome 2020
A new year brings a chance to work on new projects, or at least bring fresh ideas, while reflecting on what may or may not have worked in the past.
It also brings the opportunity to think about things that have been learned over the year. Something interesting came to my attention yesterday.
In 2019, I had my first year as a teacher. During this time, I mat some great students in a rural community who haven't had the some opportunities that city kids get. Many of these kids have great potential, and many of them are really smart, some of them are gamers. One of the kids who I've come to know pretty well lives on a farm of 150 acres, his parents are often away, problems with government bureaucracy and climate change have led them to not have enough water to irrigate crops, so he has basically been living thirty kilometres out of town with no transport to get into town, looking after the surviving animals while his parents are travelling all over the region doing odd jobs for other farmers to make enough money to buy hay and fuel a pump for limited water. This is a kid who should be focusing on education to get off the farm, but most of his life is focused on holding the family legacy together. He isn't doing well at school because he doesn't have time to get homework or assignments done. His life is focused on the immediacy of the farm, he rides a motorbike, fixes cars, welds, and looks after the animals. He doesn't game, at all.
Last night I had a New Year's Eve party. A bunch of the students I've met over the year took it as an opportunity to say farewell to me, including the student I've just described. Many of the students who came along are a part of the local town's D&D group, but that particular student just didn't get the idea of games. Maybe that's not the best way to put it, but in his words he basically said that country kids don't have time for games, they spend their lives doing stuff to survive.
It made me think that maybe RPGs and gaming in general is a pretty privileged activity. If you've got your priorities of shelter and food taken care of, then you can start looking at entertainment forms. It kind of leads back to those Maslow Heirarchy things raised in one of the issues of BG&S a few months back. One of my reasons for writing "Familiar" was to create a game that would be meaningful for a wider variety of people, to provide a wider cross-section of community representation... but maybe I'm looking at things from the wrong perspective. An alternative way to look at it might be that this game puts privileged gamers in the shoes of other communities that they don't normally see in gaming.
Maybe I'm just overanalsing again.
I'm sure this will linger in the back of my mind and continue to inform the design process of Familiar as I go forward... I'm not sure how that influence will play out. Even more, I expect that my encounters with this student and the community of local gamers will have a major impact on Walkabout when I move back to that project.
Hopefully the character creation rules for Familiar will be ready by the end of the week... I'm throwing together the non-pretty version of the PDF now.
(Yes, even though half the country is on fire, Sydney still had fireworks)
It also brings the opportunity to think about things that have been learned over the year. Something interesting came to my attention yesterday.
In 2019, I had my first year as a teacher. During this time, I mat some great students in a rural community who haven't had the some opportunities that city kids get. Many of these kids have great potential, and many of them are really smart, some of them are gamers. One of the kids who I've come to know pretty well lives on a farm of 150 acres, his parents are often away, problems with government bureaucracy and climate change have led them to not have enough water to irrigate crops, so he has basically been living thirty kilometres out of town with no transport to get into town, looking after the surviving animals while his parents are travelling all over the region doing odd jobs for other farmers to make enough money to buy hay and fuel a pump for limited water. This is a kid who should be focusing on education to get off the farm, but most of his life is focused on holding the family legacy together. He isn't doing well at school because he doesn't have time to get homework or assignments done. His life is focused on the immediacy of the farm, he rides a motorbike, fixes cars, welds, and looks after the animals. He doesn't game, at all.
Last night I had a New Year's Eve party. A bunch of the students I've met over the year took it as an opportunity to say farewell to me, including the student I've just described. Many of the students who came along are a part of the local town's D&D group, but that particular student just didn't get the idea of games. Maybe that's not the best way to put it, but in his words he basically said that country kids don't have time for games, they spend their lives doing stuff to survive.
It made me think that maybe RPGs and gaming in general is a pretty privileged activity. If you've got your priorities of shelter and food taken care of, then you can start looking at entertainment forms. It kind of leads back to those Maslow Heirarchy things raised in one of the issues of BG&S a few months back. One of my reasons for writing "Familiar" was to create a game that would be meaningful for a wider variety of people, to provide a wider cross-section of community representation... but maybe I'm looking at things from the wrong perspective. An alternative way to look at it might be that this game puts privileged gamers in the shoes of other communities that they don't normally see in gaming.
Maybe I'm just overanalsing again.
I'm sure this will linger in the back of my mind and continue to inform the design process of Familiar as I go forward... I'm not sure how that influence will play out. Even more, I expect that my encounters with this student and the community of local gamers will have a major impact on Walkabout when I move back to that project.
Hopefully the character creation rules for Familiar will be ready by the end of the week... I'm throwing together the non-pretty version of the PDF now.
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