WHAT BROUGHT ME TO THIS STATE OF BURNOUT
My life, by and large, is better than I deserve. But, my day job, the same one I’ve toiled at since Bill Clinton was a topic of discussion, has been difficult these last six months. To put it in simple terms: It’s been a game show of “Will I Be Laid Off This Season” amid an executive level project that was timed to conclude during said layoffs. Emotionally and hourly, it has been so all-consuming that it’s robbed me of the time and spark that roleplaying requires.
Let me qualify “spark that roleplaying requires.” I still want to roleplay. Hanging out and slinging dice is the height of good times. It’s social, humorous, and a great opportunity to catch up with friends as you tell stories together. For me, it’s more than just a good time, I enjoy it so much that my secondary job is freelance RPG journalism.
But the main job has leveled up and maxed out its Time Sink attribute as well as its Emotional Drain stat. Daily, it beats me down. Then came a plot twist as shocking to me as that time your buddy sent you a drunk IM feeling you about going halvers on a bitcoin; you didn’t expect it, but now it’s a story to tell.
Over the past month, I’ve talked about regaining my gaming spark and how cyberpunk played a role in that (here and here). What follows is another part of the convoluted narrative of how I reclaimed my spark and found my way back to the gaming table.
HELL’S ANGELS
The first ember ignited during an interview I did with Gavriel Quiroga about the Kickstarter for his Hell Night RPG. He describes the project as:
“It’s the roaring 80s, and Hell just broke loose. Literally. HELL NIGHT. A doom biker RPG rule-artbook inspired by badass metal covers and the spirit of a strange decade. Ride beyond and behold!”
During the interview I asked about what inspired the doom bikers. He shared:
“It all came together after reading Hell’s Angels from Hunter S. Thompson, that gave me the ideological support so to speak.”
I’d never heard of that book, but when it was on sale via Audible, I bought Hunter S Thompson’s Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs from Random House. Now, I’m not going to recommend the book, it’s from a different sort of person than I am and treats crimes, unrepentant racism, and individuals that are accused of the R-word as subjects fit for crafted entertainment journalism. The book is in your face and celebrates the disregard of human decency. Published in 1967, 55 years later, it has to be viewed from a different reference point. I don’t want to delve too deep into that, because the focus here is more simplistic: The core of the book is the story of when outlaw bikers went mainstream. Despite my lack of knowledge, the book planted a seed with the phrase “outlaw bikers.”
But more on that in the next installment.
BILL WILLINGHAM’S ELEMENTALS
Before I start on the next leg of my journey, let me wander off on a tangent. I used to love comics. I have tens of thousands of them littered across the house. At one point, I was an avid collector. Then I stopped for reasons too boring to get into. Now I’m a one-off collector of comics by friends like Steven Cummings, Wilfredo Torres, Edgar Salazar, and the occasional graphic novel. I haven’t really collected comics in years.
Jump to a Facebook scrawl in which the geek topic of the day is Bill Willingham’s Elementals, a 1980s and ‘90s superhero comic book series from Comico: The Comic Company. Specifically, the newsfeed touts the Youtube interview with Bill Willingham which purports that his creation, the Elementals, are in the public domain. It’s more complex than that and I do not have the bandwidth to dissect the implications here, but the concept interested me enough to explore it.
The implications of this semi-known property falling into the public domain intrigued me. Here’s the math: If the Elementals are public domain, then the concepts and printed work exists in a state where you might take those characters and images and convert them from comics into an RPG without having to license the property. Again, what Willingham offered was more complex than that, but it could open a door which was interesting to ponder.
But, to ponder it, I’d need to read some Elementals comics. I don’t own many issues of the Elementals. Yep, all of these thoughts and I don’t own more than one or two random issues. Running from 1983 to 1996, those books started coming out just before I got into comics in the ‘80s. When I joined the hobby, they did not grab me. Until 2022, when they were 30 to 40 years in the rearview, they rotted in some back issue dollar bins at my neighborhood comic book store, Kapow! Comics and Games (not to be confused with Ka-Blam Printers). An exhaustive search of their bins netted one issue, Elementals #4 from 1985. It was a cool find, but a single dollar comic didn’t feel like it was worth the gas or the time.
NEXT TIME
Enter Shatter: “The First Computerized Comic!” In the next installment, I’ll circle this random 1980s comic series back to my love of tabletop, cyberpunk RPGs, and how I regained my spark.
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, and Amazon.
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