Thread by @colewehrle

I just finished Kim Stanley Robinson's somewhat recent novel New York 2140. It's buzzing in my head at the moment and resonating with some design work I've been doing this week for a project that I've been provisionally calling "Saga." 1/x

The book is quite old fashioned, espeically for KSR. It's almost like a 19th century novel, filled with coincidences and dozens of characters who all seem bump into each other constantly. If you squint a little, you'll feel like you're reading Balzac on Paris or Dickens on London

Let me tell you though, the novel is brilliant and an absolute tonic to our own vexed political moment. All science fiction ultimately says more about the period in which it was written than the one it describes, and New York 2140 doesn't pull any punches. It's wonderful.

It also says a lot about the process of looking backwards and how we go about understanding the past and making sense of a present. It's that particular aspect of Robinson's novel that has me thinking about my current game project.

Lately in the office I've been bringing various staff folks in to see parts of the design and to talk about what this strange game might demand in resources and how we might show it to you all. In this process, I end up refining the games pitch mostly because I can't help it.

My shorthand pitch for the game has usually looked something like this: Root is a game about politics. Saga (or whatever we decide to call it) is a game about history or maybe historiography itself.

During all of these little informal meetings, I've started to realize that really this game is a civilization game. For some reason, I had never considered this obvious fact. Why did it take me so long to realize this? Well, I think I have an answer.

Most civilization games are really bildungsromans at heart--that is, stories about growing up. They are about how a little city state grew up into an empire. They are relentlessly progressive and growth orientated.

But the course of history isn't like that. It's filled with reversals and complication. For this reason the "history" presented in Civ games always looks goofy. They are a veritable "Now That's What I Call Civilization" greatest hits album: pyramids to airships in 60 minutes flat

I suppose there's nothing wrong with this. A game doesn't need a theme any more than a room needs wallpaper. I enjoy plenty of civilization games that are done in that style. Sometimes I just want a game to skip the longue durée and play the hits!

At the same time, the fact that the whole genre of "Civilization" games has nothing to with the mechanisms of history does bother me. I want to believe that there's room for different kinds of stories in that genre--that we might get out of Sid Meier's historiographic shadow.

So, Saga eschews the big sweep. It's central aesthetic technique is intimacy. Everything about the game is tuned to put the players close to the tension of a time without the ability to take comfort in any assumption about the course of events. It's the churn of history up close.

It has been a very tricky game to work on, probably the most demanding thing I've ever tried to build (though much of the complexity will be hidden). Often I've felt like I was building some grand folly that nobody asked for. And, the design still has a very long way to go.

So, I was espeically grateful to have time to sit on the porch tonight and and read. KSR's New York 2140 reminded me of the importance telling the sorts of stories that I want Saga to tell someday. Like Root, the game is often silly but can sometimes strike a profound note.

It's exciting to work on a project of this scope and a privilege to have the time and resources to do it right. There were many safe projects I could have signed up for, but I love that when I first pitched this crazy thing to Patrick he gave me the green light to explore it.

So, kudos to @LederGames for the faith and kudos to @d20plusmodifier for wanting to share this work with me. I could tweet all night about how fun it's been to build this with Kyle. I'm sure we'll say more when we get further along, but I wanted to express thanks early and often.

Anyway, if you want to read a crazy encyclopedic book brimming with environmental collapse, popular political action, and resourceful orphans and don't feel like reading Charles Dickens, check out 2140 at your local bookstore. kimstanleyrobinson.info/content/new-yo…

And if you're intrigued by my current project just stick around. I'll be writing more about that in the coming months. It's an odd duck, that's for sure. I can make no further guarantees.

I suppose I should properly tag this thread as #oathBoardGame