For the past several days I’ve been on something of an RPG jag. Well, I should say more correctly an RPG nostalgia jag. I haven’t played any pencil and paper RPG in years, and I wouldn’t have anyone to play with even if I started again. In spite of that fact, I’ve been busily acquiring all the relics and books of my youth; I recently finished downloading about 3 GB of GURPS 3rd Edition sourcebooks in pdf form, not to mention the complete body of material ever published for the Paranoia RPG. Not only those, but in fact I even ordered a first edition Toon book from an internet seller.
I can’t quite say what the appeal is; It’s still fun, I guess, just to read about all the universes that these people have created. On some level I suppose I would like to be able, if circumstances should so conspire, to start an actual game with friends at some point in the future. Failing that, however, I can (and have) spend far too long just reading about all the races and creatures, laid out in pleasingly orderly, encyclopedic form.
That’s something that’s always really appealed to me; detailed lists of things, catalogs: reference texts like philosophical dictionaries or coffeetable dinosaur books. Or, for that matter, the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual that I got when I was like 12 and used to pore over four hours, even though I never actually played the game. I liked the density of information; they were appealing in their richness, and in the efficiency of their construction.
That’s the kind of book that I would, and do, buy—a work of fiction, unless it strikes some deep chord in me, I’ll read once, but might as well just take from the library; there’s no use in keeping it once its read. But I love to stock up on encyclopedias, like the encyclopedia of heresy which I ordered earlier this year, and the like; they are exceedingly useful texts. That appeals to me, in the same way that Minimalism appeals to me. There is a sense of crystalline density of information, and cataloguing the 6 subtypes of Eastern European vampires scratches for me the same itch as the densely packed rhythmic and harmonic changes of an hour of Philip Glass arpeggios.
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