Why a Toymaker Dreams

So far as I'm aware, the name isn't taken yet, for one thing.

However, as you've probably guessed, the name runs a little deeper than that. It's an oblique reference to an old essay I wrote that nobody, other than my mother, read.

In said essay I make the assertion that when society wants to make little of someone's profession they call him a toymaker. This is most common in this era with the art nearest and dearest to my heart, that of designing games.

Furthermore, I went on to declare that all artists are really toymakers, and we should stop being offended when a so-called intellectual attempts to rob our work of meaning by calling it a toy. As art engages the mind of an adult, a toy must engage the mind of a child, but the line between children and adults is not so clear as we might like to make it. The distinction between the two is necessarily blurred, and the very best toys are works of master artists.

Thus, as a man who spends his free hours contemplating and laboring on the interplay of rules and playstyles, I embrace the title of "Toymaker." I'm proud to be a toymaker, and hope to someday be able to make a profession out of it, so I can quit my day job and make games all day. It isn't easy, but I love it.

Then, I created this blog to air out various ideas that I don't yet have a grander system to work them into. These aren't so much fully realized design documents so much as passing figments that I feel deserve to be preserved for later use. I've filled dozens of notebooks with these over the years, but I recently decided to share these rough concepts with the world. If I live to be a hundred, I won't be able to build an entire game around every concept that ever pops into my head, and it's a shame to waste an idea that might complete the puzzle for someone else's system.

As an added bonus, this will give me something I can point to when I claim that I had an idea years before it became the dominant feature in it's genre, and I just didn't have the funding to make it real.

Anyway, some of these ideas will clearly grow out of projects I'm working on, while others will be one-offs. Obviously, it would be desperately wicked to swipe a full game design, but if I can provide the inspiration to get you past a major hurtle in your project, I'm glad to help. --just mention me next time someone you know is looking for creative people. ;P