Essentially the reason I chose that word, or the "why" of my project is that I think that today, with the inception of the internet and the ability to instantly access almost any sort of entertainment you could possibly want, from games, to movies and videos, and so forth, I think that people in general are losing their imagination.
I'm going to don my "old fogie" hat for a moment and say that back in my day, kids didn't have cell phones that they could connect to the internet with, if they managed to have a cell phone at all, not too many kids had Gameboys or other handheld entertainment devices, they couldn't easily access the web due to the vast majority of internet connectivity being dial-up, and so forth. To entertain ourselves, we had to actually get outside to play kickball or something, or if we didn't have enough people, we had to invent some way for 3-4 people to entertain themselves for the next couple hours. Sometimes we would come up with some weird sport similar to "Calvinball" from the popular comic Calvin and Hobbes, sometimes we would pretend that we were robots or pirates or ninjas and run around someone's backyard fighting each other with sticks, however, as we got older and these things became more socially unacceptable, we began looking for other things that we could do.
This is where my fascination with tabletop roleplaying games came into play. A roleplaying game is essentially an imagination game, where you create a character who you take the role of and then as for what happens next, relies entirely on your imagination. There are some mechanics in place that allow you to succeed or fail, usually in the form of rolling dice: roll a high enough number and good things happen, roll too low and terrible things happen. The most popular example of this sort of game would be Dungeons and Dragons, but many many more exist.
I think that these sorts of games are beneficial for people for multiple reasons. First and foremost, they require you to flex your imagination, to create situations, people, and places that don't actually exist and tell stories with them. Secondly, you have to play with at least one other person, so it forces you to interact with others, and if you want to succeed, to work as a team. Finally, it forces you to think abstractly and solve problems in unconventional means. All of these things are why I enjoy tabletop roleplaying games, and why I decided that I wanted to do one for my capstone.
So now that we've got all the back story out of the way, let's get to the meat of the whole thing: the golden circle.
- Why - People are losing imagination, and we as a society need to somehow rekindle it.
- How - By creating something fun and exciting that encourages and rewards them to use their imagination.
- What - A tabletop roleplaying game with simple rules and mechanics that allows them to create and have fun doing it, without getting bogged down by too many rules.
Now, as you can see, the arrow is going out from the middle. This is because when I was originally working on the idea, I had thought of doing a board game, but after some thought, I realized that a board game, although it works the imagination in its own right, is far too rigid for what I wanted, and decided to instead do a roleplaying game, which is much looser and more cohesive to imagination, since it is essentially a massive game of "pretend" like kids play, and I don't think there is much out there that's more imaginative than games of pretend.
I think that using the method of why first will make explaining it a lot easier, especially to people who don't know what a roleplaying game is, or who dislike the idea of Dungeons and Dragons, passing it off as "the devil's game". (Yes, there are still some people who believe that even after all these years) I think that explaining it this way will remove a lot of the aversion or distaste that might be towards these sort of games. I also think that it's the easiest way for me to explain it, if I went the other way, I don't know if I could logically explain my capstone to the people I was presenting to. Maybe I could, but it wouldn't be as succinct and clear.
Now, as for what I would like to do after I finish this project, frankly, I'm not sure. I do know that I really enjoy working on board games and roleplaying games, as I've been making them in my spare time for a while now, so if there's some way to do that for a living, I would be more than overjoyed to do it. Personally, I would love for the capstone to be a marketable product, perhaps put it on Kickstarter and get it funded and start a small start up with the people on my team. I think that would be the best possible scenario, however I think that it might also be the most outlandish, as I'm not even entirely sure how good the game will turn out.
I think if it came right down to it though, what I would like to do after all this is to somehow keep creating games, and get paid for it. I think if that was something I could do, it would make me happy.
