It's Fun to Have Fun
The Lessons I Learned Writing Blades of Power
Blades of Power: Synth & Sorcery Roleplaying has just seven days left on Kickstarter. We’re well past funding, but still have a few stretch goals left to unlock - so give it a glance and if it looks like something you’d have fun playing then join the adventure.
I started writing Blades almost two years ago and in the beginning it was a different game. It was, quite literally, just another B/X clone. I started writing it because with Old School Essentials announcing they were going to stop producing their Basic version of the game, I saw a gap in the market. It began as purely a business decision. But, then, something strange started to happen along the way:
I started to have fun.
Like real fun. I remembered how much fun I had playing B/X as pre-teen. I remembered how much fun fantasy was when I was a little boy. I remembered staying up till 2 AM admiring the art in the Rules Cyclopeda. I drifted back a bit further and I recalled the exilleration of watching The Neverending Story on cable TV. And then, I remembered Castle Grayskull. The jawbridge opened for the first time in 40 years.
I was a Masters of the Universe kid. I’ve said it before, in my review of the recent film, but as RetroQuest evolved into Blades of Power, I stepped into Grayskull’s hallowed halls and found The Power. I found six-year-old Jimmy, a sickly kid, playing on his bedroom floor with He-Man, Battlecat, Mekaneck, and the rest of the Masters of the Universe. And I remember just how much fun I had. Those memories of that pure, unfiltered fun, drove me as I continued to develop Blades of Power. I remembered the cat’s claw gauntlet that came with the Lion-O figure and how when you touched it to his back, his eyes lit up in real Sight Beyond Sight action. I remembered never having Lion-O, but my best friend at the time Brian Pugh, having him and thinking he was almost as cool as He-Man. I remembered pulling the rip cord on my Battle Rim and watching it zip down the hall with He-Man aboard as he crashed into Webstor. That led me to recall how Orko had a rip cord too and how much I worked to try to get that damn hat off his head to see what he looked like underneath.
With all these memories flooding back to me, my wife sent me off to the theater to see Masters of the Universe - you can see my review here. I saw it Friday night of its opening weekend and since then I’ve been absolutely electrified. I’ve dived back into those classic Filmation cartoons, watched the 2002 Masters series for the first time, been devouring documentaries, and been absolutely consumed by all things Eternia.
Just like when I was 6. Before Dungeons and Dragons. Before the internet. Before there was such a thing as a “fandom.” And I realized something: It wasn’t that things were more innocent or pure in the 1980s. Masters of the Universe was excplitly designed to sell toys to children. To part their parents from their money. It doesn’t get more cynical than that. But that never crossed 6 year old Jimmy’s mind. He was too busy defeating Skeletor.
The era then was as impure then as it is now. I’m the one who changed.
But this trip 40 years into the past has taught me one thing: You can go home again. You just have to let yourself have fun again. You don’t need a fandom. You don’t need engagement. You don’t need anything other than your imagination. In fact, everything else is optional.
I think that’s what’s got me so excited about Blades of Power as the final days of the Kickstarter roll around. I’m already 30 pages into Champions of Ultimos, the first supplement. It’s full of Mind Knights, Mechanoids, adventures, optional rules, and tons of other fun stuff. All present for no reason other than because it’s fun.
When I was a little boy, I had fun with action figures. Forty years later, I have fun wtih roleplaying games. And that’s what Blades of Power: Synth & Sorcery Roleplaying is for me: Fun.
I hope you’ll support Blades. More importantly, if you do I hope you have the kind of fun you left on the kitchen floor when you were six years old, smashing together musclebound action figures in an epic battle of good vs. evil. And if you don’t support Blades, that’s okay too. Find your fun. It can be really hard to do. In fact, the world seems obsessed with taking our fun away with fandoms, YouTube reviews, and box office pontification.
Screw that. Search hard. Find your fun, grab onto it as hard as you can, and refuse to let it slip away again.