#RPGaDay2022 – Day 17: When 3?
We are seventeen days into the thirty-one days of #RPGaDay2022, and we are hitting Wednesday which is a day of struggle for many hardworking people, so it is a question which can be taken very, very simply. It is perhaps best to approach it that way, actually. Of course, we are gamers, though, so the sky is the limit on how detailed and far-reaching the responses to it might become in the right hands. What is the question you ask? Past, present, or future, where are your favorite games set? In my response on YouTube, I went into a fair bit of detail about the preference and the reasons for it, so this time I will focus on the lure of the preference instead.
Of the three options suggested by the prompt, I find that my interest has generally been for games set in the future. Don’t misunderstand me, I derive a lot of enjoyment from many different periods of history, particularly in periods before, during, and immediately adjacent to the now. I think it is likely that I have more gaming experience with the setting being framed in the recent past than with games fully set in the near or far future, but such settings never fail to catch my eye.
I am drawn to things like starships, both big and small, to FTL travel, as well as to the challenges of generation or sleeper ships. I am curious about sunsets on distant worlds, about the will and vision it takes to stay united across such vast distances, and about what happens when the will falters and the vision is lost. In my mind, I see all of humanity as Icarus, drawn to the heights, chained to the ground, and needing to learn the real path to flight.
I feel that our small blue world here is a cradle that we could leave if we could just grasp some painfully simple concepts such as cooperation, that people are people, equality, and to prioritize things which are actual priorities. Call me a crazy optimist, but I think we have such capacities within us – somewhere.
Of course, games of the future are extrapolations from the present, colored in reflections of the now, and spread across a canvas of our limited understanding of our own time and place. As such, they are full of conflict, open warfare, and impossible machines of mass destruction. Also of course, to our current sensibilities, such things are desperately cool, aren’t they?
Casting Shadows 