Obscurity

 
Oh the dreams of my youth - 

Fritz Schwimbeck

I imagined a book set within the crazed city of the Dero, layed out like a garbled choose-your-own-adventure book, with no index and no contents, and with at least some looping paths (the book would never tell the DM or the players when these had locked into place), some places and encounters simply images, tables, lines of text, single questions - an old man approaches and looks at you with a queer look. An automated service which would text your phone from an untraceable number, asking for information from the Dero city, which you could then text back and which would lead to new combinations of possibility. 

A character in the book whispers to the player and asks them to make a call..

Trapped inside a city of the mad, layered with conspiracies, illusions and false realities. Stage sets, brain engines. Both the DM and the Players would fall into an indescribable relationship of exploration, deception, fear and mutual suspicion. (but always with the promise, the temptation, the possibility that you could perhaps escape) "Give me the book!" a player would cry - reach out and take it, making themselves the DM, but quickly becoming utterly lost in the text. 

And yes you could turn the book upside down - differing encounters and an alternate page system, the sense of being trapped in the city of the crazed mind-wizards and the frustration of dealing with this impossible and nightmarishly obscure text, all merging into one glorious whole.

Such dreams I had of the artistic utility of incoherence

It was a different age, a time both darker and more pure, and I a different man. 

Fritz Schwimbeck

I have a strange relationship with obscurity. Its only really that stygian shield that makes something special, notable, rare; the rites of the Orthodox church, happening behind a screen so you can barely see them. Without that, we decay into Critical Role, into 5e, a system which I don't loathe, but the perceived culture around it......

In fact I need the stygian shield of obscurity, even as I try to throw it off. Peering out of the shadows before slinking in again, gesturing mysteriously with a pale finger. What a performance.

I really wanted to make books that people actually used. I fetishize real-life books and fear PDF's because I am dogged with the fear that they will become dead files simply resting in a drive somewhere and doing nothing. As I currently have a tonne of unread and unused files cast across multiple drives.

So I wonder now, if more people have actually played old DCO rather than new DCO? Probably yes - partly because new DCO is designed specifically for in-person play and in-person leafing through - and that is a situation which will rarely be occurring becasue of Corona. My imagined perfect state of play cannot take place. But even without that, what if it becomes simply a fetish book for the shelf - the physical version of the lost and hidden PDF?

In furtherance to that trouble; a querying lance of light; questions for YOU, yes YOU, the reader reading this..

Horacio Salinas Blach

1. What games are you actually running or playing in?

2. Are you playing in person or online? 

3. How many people?

4. How regular?

5. If online, how long* is each session?

>6. And what combination of digital and material tools and sources are actually being used and HOW?

*Personally I find playing online for more than two hours often sends me into what I call 'the death zone;, where I find myself making more and more self-destructive decisions. Three or more hours and, if the game has been a frustrating one, I can find myself creatively shot for the rest of the day.

If I'm playing online I now usually play with a paintbrush in my hand - strangely its easier to focus on the content of a videocall when I'm actually doing something tactile and visual-cortex-based (but not text, voice or systems-based), at the same time.