The Business: Historical Products Should Get More Attention

There has been a couple of attempts, but I think there is one product that merits a deeper inquiry for fitness as a Real Game.

There needs to be far more appreciation for historical and contemporary adventure gaming. The biggest benefit is that it is far easier to publish; you need only focus your design efforts on the key rules and procedures, with little or no need to publish Endless Product Slop to support it because you can just point to non-fiction publications that address the need.

For T2K, that means a lot of Osprey Publishing purchases leading up to the start date of the campaign coupled with a lot of declassified papers and properly-vetted biographies and narrative non-fiction work. The same would be said of fantastic adventure games, even those that would possess other-than-ordinary powers or technologies (i.e. certain Hero Pulp characters like The Shadow), because the non-fiction publications provide the player all of the information--complete with citations, in better publications, for those seeking to follow up--that otherwise is wasted on Endless Product Slop.

The catch is this, and it's the same as playing in a campaign with a well-developed canon: start at the end of the timeline, and never publish anything that advances it.

You will note that most publishers fail at this simple thing because they want Endless Product Slop.

This hobby does not need useless status-striving Art Table vanity products. It needs lean, mean rules manuals and campaign briefings. It needs hobbyists teaching others how to play the game, not shilling Endless Product Slop. It needs less product and more service, and it needs to take Muh Commercialisms out into the courtyard, lined up against the wall and shot.

Let's see what else is out there worthy of consideration.