There are some things you should know about me, dear reader.
Like you, I find role-playing game books to be catnip to the imagination. In my case, I scroll through the PDFs and think about them for days. I buy expensive books and tell myself that someday I will use them, that I will run a game. I jot down ideas for settings and campaigns. I develop intricate opinions about the relative merits of systems I have never tried.
But I came to the hobby in the wrong season of life, for I now have young children, and no time to play the games I read about.
It occurred to me, dear reader, that rather than pretending to understand the value of role-playing game books for use at the table, I could approach them as artifacts in themselves. That is, I could unapologetically take the position of the non-player critic. If I can take Palestrina's music out of its liturgical context and consider it purely aesthetically, I can certainly take Gygax's modules from the table to the armchair. The non-player critic subjects his (or her) game books to literary analysis, marks their peculiar qualities, and considers whether such qualities could elevate the work to the position of the novel or the poem, should a Shakespeare of game design appear on the scene.
I must also confess that my political commitments may be the opposite of your own. For the purpose of amity, I shall endeavor to obfuscate my positions to the greatest possible degree. I will also moderate all comments: this is my blog, and I don't want any of your political enemies to ruin your chance to be edified by my humble critical project.
I'll drop the act for a second, because I'm not actually as weird as I'm pretending to be. The truth is, I wish I could be a player instead of a non-player. I have played in a few play-by-chat 5E campaigns that eventually fizzled out, and I've run some one-shots in other systems for my friends. But, realisitically, between work and family, I don't know that I could spare more than an evening or two each month for gaming. Play-by-post tends to turn into an unsustainable distraction for me, but if there's an open table that would have me near Asheville, NC, or online, I'd be interested.