How did Elish?
I do not want to dwell much on Elish. I think that talking about an RPG is like telling a show or a movie: the dissection of a corpse, the stuffed animal. You can describe each bristle of hair, every internal organ, even the emotion that gave the movement of its tail, but the anatomy of a body is not the body and do not reproduce the complexity.
I'm a big supporter of the theories Artaudian and I can not help but feel a sense of nausea in the synthesis of complex systems and rhizomatic (from Rizoma Deleuze and Guattari) as those behind the structures of a stage direction or role-playing game.
For many it will seem a way to exaggerate the importance of role-playing games and giving him a magnified this value because the market of the Italian game has devalued the role-playing games (behind the same old, boring and old logic of money) to sales brochures continues, forms, manuals, miniatures, various gadgets. No. The role-playing games are a lot more and should benefit not only more famous but a higher development and a critical eye.
In Italy there are few researchers of the game, few scholars writing interesting and very rare.
Elish born as a gamble, a kind of scream to give a jolt to an environment a bit 'slow and stagnant.
The market, embody one of the many arms of kraken, Power / Violence / Oppression, generating less and less dynamic in the sense of Dionysian rituals and rites increasingly leaned toward Apollonian, routine, restorers, it soon ensnared the role-playing game in a logic of addiction, not creation.
Like a perverse reading of the method of Moreno, instead of stimulating the "healthier side" to create fantastic new tools and give yourself the opportunity to create the mirrors, the objects of care and refraction of themselves, the sense was reversed, the role-playing game has turned the paper and the king has become the "mad-merchant."
The player is no longer a demiurge, can only create within the limits set by the manual as well, violent wave of creative energy, continually asking new writings, adventures cooked, expanded rules and expansions. I do not mean a game without rules, speak of a pervert play, where the rules are created not to protect the internal dynamics and space / time of the game, but just to sell more, only to be improved or expanded.
is happening to role play what happens to computers that are in their nature require the purchase of new products for use in time, otherwise their progress is blocked by the programs unusable because destabilized by the limits of the market.
"In the beginning there was the dragon 'returns the cover of the first manual Dungeons & Dragons . When the audience rose, swelled like a tidal wave ready to break free, a wise move would be to give away all, to communicate, "you go ahead, invented the innovations of our game, this is just an idea! "but the market has begun to reverse the logic game and has evolved from ludens in" Eraser. "
Thus began the long and endless monologue of the vendors and the Dragon has also become Gargoyle (expansion expert of Dungeons & Dragons ), then Beholder and so on according to other variants.
Today, every role-playing game owns not less than 50 expansions of each type (regulatory, scenery, environment) to feed the rounds of money-market role-playing game .
Elish wanted to break the wave and, as a small or tiny, he succeeded. The great role-playing game in Italy, those who studied and talked about it for some time as Luca Giuliano, Piermaria Marazziti, Andrea Angie, Beniamino Sidoti (to name a few, those with whom we have had more contact), they turned and watched with the raised eyebrow, a bit 'annoyed and very interested, this tiny entity.
Elish was simply self-handling, infinitesimal in the market complex role-playing game, a book that contained a way to play existing in Italy, but of which we spoke and wrote little. The regulation stated: "We publish very little, we will not make major expansions or more! Therefore appropriate for these pages and invent, experiment, feel free to create. "
It was not a real innovation or revolution, but there never was a gesture so visible, political, declared and practiced in a manner so direct.
Mille games pushed the game to wide fame, to a second corrected edition, selling over 1200 copies, the output of the second volume, but all materials published by Elish have always been tied to the desire for independence. There is no true submission
between authors and players, each player Elish creates new races and new lands, he became the author! It is so ridonava
authority and power of independence to users. The player took over the reins of an "artistic direction" of your imaginary world.
Elish conceived evolution of the sectarian world of games. The market (again, damn!) Had not used the players to be amateurs, but connoisseurs of deep manuals, books, fields of fantasy.
was born the ghostly figure of the Nerd (remember the movie), the loser in life who throws himself on the imaginary (with dependence) of comics, games or hobbies and there lies his redemption and his happiness, but He was not born in no soundness, no care for their illnesses, there is instead the divertissement the game as a hobby and distraction from the real.
power, as Dario For often says in his writings, he loves that kind of joke very Apollonian, linked to the joke, entertainment (more or less cultural), which precisely distracts for a while 'time from the problems and suggests joyfully. A pause. The deep as if there is no sense of pause, it is rather defined as a different breath on reality and all the joy that you can try to live it in is given a taste of knowledge, from a rite of training and socialization. Happiness is not a distraction, even to concentrate and form new bonds with a lot himself and with the outside.
Elish therefore declared that the doors were wide open, that the role play was wide open to all and gave us practical reason (as he loved to experiment Moreno). We took the gaming tables of improvised spontaneous and immediate role in the public gardens, schools, involving people of all ages, even in the subway. Everyone was playing. This was and is Elish.
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