Once upon a time, Zarathustra lived in the woods with a cool religious dude, and things were good. Then Zarathustra had the strange idea that he needed to give man a gift; he left the woods and the cool religious dude, and things got weird.

This Gen Con saw the end of the Forge booth as a place where wild haired designers, who don’t have strong connections to our community, could come and sell their first game at the largest RPG convention in North America, maybe the world.

I place no blame on Ron, or Vincent. Ron has been saying that the Forge will slowly wind down, and eventually come to an end, for years now. It started with jettisoning the more established folks, and this year the less established folks got the George Jettsons.

I wonder though; Is this what we want to see happen? Do new designers need to go back to starting their own booth, or trying to befriend one of the successful cooperatives? Two of those collectives disappeared this year, Pirate Jenny, and Play Collective, and last year we lost the Ashcan Front booth. Maybe Pirate Jenny and Play Collective are due back in the future?

I wonder if our community can survive the attrition of established designers that is due to occur? Or have we done like Punk, and Alternative, and gotten large enough that like minded weirdos formed their own thing, and splitting is just going to happen. The Kumbaya is over, and I go back to being a scene traveler?

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