Tuesday, September 17, 2024

The Culture: Elfquest Gets An Anniversary Re-Release

We interrupt our regular posting to boost the signal on this classic's anniversary reoffering.


This is not going to be some mind-blowing work of game design; it's going to be Conventional Play because by 1984 the Cargo Cult's throwing the Real Hobby down the Memory Hole had been completed.

What is notable is that this is a piece of hobby history, both as a work of technical design and as one of the pre-Star Wars examples of tie-in products using IP from outside the hobby that would set the stage for West End to make an offer at Lucasfilm a few years later.

It would be worth studying it and comparing it to proper games to see (a) what is lacking and (b) how--if desired--that lacking could be remedied.

1 comment:

  1. "...by 1984 the Cargo Cult's throwing the Real Hobby down the Memory Hole had been completed."

    I'm not so sure... It seems to me that once D&D broke containment out of wargaming groups - no one had any idea how to run D&D the same way Gygax and a few of his friends did.

    And they never corrected anyone.

    IMHO; I think Gygax did a lot of assumption when he talked about "RPG's". His later game designs show that he was on a island of his own, and was largely unaware of what was going on in the wider hobby.

    It's hard to blame the wider hobby for embracing the 'cargo cult' when the founders just 'assumed', and didn't really record their processes for future reference...

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