Found a great binder of my old stuff (Today the binder itself would probably be $15). It was 4 or 5 inches thick and had multiple inside cover pockets.
It contained exceptional world building notes written when I was 12. Detailed national, regional, and local area maps.... Incomplete, sadly, but interesting. It was me creating without deadlines, though as a coping mechanism to deal with growing up in Hell. Handwritten notes with illustrations (artwork or organizational) showed my manufactured world. Some of it was even typed out and preserved in plastic slip sheets (sadly, not all of it). Still, nice. It was something to keep my mind off the problems I grew up in and around. All I needed was light and paper and a pencil.
The illustrations were usually fairly crude topographical maps, but useful for determining elevation and tree positioning (game wise for landscape). I had difficulty knowing which lines were peaks and valleys back then and actually labeled them as such sometimes. So, that's actually an old problem I've had for years. Keep in mind, this was hand drawn with pencil and in the 90s, and perhaps some of the early 2000s? It isn't exactly dated.
What strikes me is that it is old. By the standards of those days, it was ground breaking. Keep in mind, this was before World of Warcraft (WoW) came out at all. "Open World" wasn't a thing yet. The notion of much flexibility in a pen and paper RPG was all but unheard of practically speaking (Yes, it existed. No it wasn't common or done well, usually. Certainly not by today's' standards). There absolutely are mistakes and misspellings (pencils don't have spell check).
Sadly, I'm missing some of the organizational documents that bind it all together, but you can see what was going on there. Still, interesting.
I used to love doing a lot of work organizing things. Today, everybody asks, "why do ______?" Because it's the right thing to do and also because it's about creating a quality finished result, that's why. Practically speaking, a poor kid from the middle of nowhere was never going to revolutionize jack crap, but it was exceptional back then. It's sad people asking "why?" don't examine why they are asking why, because their motive (conscious or unconscious) matters. Making people question their tasks is NEVER a good idea. "Innovation" is short sighted, because it can't happen every second and if we spent 1/2 the time arguing about it just getting it done, then we'd be finished already. Also, poor poor Blockbuster Video. Without their innovations of movie and game rentals, your netflicks would've never existed, but now we make fun of that basically dead company. All their "innovations" were forgotten. That'll happen to the person asking the "why are you ______" question that makes me hate them too. Innovation is vital, but 99% of it is forgotten, passed over, or made useless. We're not the 1% that matters. Chill the hell out already.
It was wonderful to be completely alone and creating just because and as I wanted to. The friends I shared RPG sessions with loved it for the most part (there was one guy but there's always that one). No one asking me why. No one butting in with their suggestions. Just me, going into what others might consider unnecessary detail, and I never would've cared what they thought or considered if they thought it. Those select few who saw my finished product overwhelmingly considered it great, and a nice way to spend a Saturday after working our crummy jobs.
The God Awful actual or equivalent of Internet Comment Sections didn't exist for me to have to ignore.
It was satisfying.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 14562148 times)