Fingers on the Firmament is a role-playing game design project by Jonathan Walton and Justin D. Jacobson, distinguished by its unique origins.
Shortly after Gen Con in 2007, Gareth Michael-Skarka posted a thread on Story-Games entitled “We Don’t Want Yer Kind ‘Round Here.” GMS bemoaned the perceived schism between, in his words, the “Corporate Whores” and the Punk Kids.” One hundred and fifty-five posts into that thread, James Hargrove issued the clarion call:
I whispered to somebody that what I’d really like to see is people working together to get things done. Not necessarily in terms of demeanor, but in terms of creating things…
Here’s another Thing We Can Do: create a game together. And, yes, I mean in the “Super Friends” sense. For example: Judd doing layout, Keith doing interior art, Paul doing a hand-painted cover, Gareth and Justin doing d20-ish rules, etc. Somebody will inevitibly argue that “Too many chefs in the kitchen spoils the soup” which may be true. That said, I’d like to point out that “too many chefs” are also responsible for things like Velvet Revolver, Black Sabbath, and The European Renaissance. When you have a bunch of great chefs in one kitchen, sometimes, the soup just KICKS ASS. And, of course, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We may just end up making some funky soup. We may make the Soup of Ages. But we’ll never know which we’re capable of unless we get give it a try.
But James didn’t leave things there. He started a new thread, aptly entitled Soup of Ages (Square One), in which he outlined a 9-point plan for people to actually do this thing. Jonathan and Justin threw their hats into the ring and officially “teamed up” in short order.
But what to work on?
Jonathan mentioned a raw idea he’d had rattling around in his head for several years. He even had a name: Fingers on the Firmament. When Jonathan pitched the idea to Justin, the latter’s response was one of fear–but that good kind of fear like right before you turn your skis downhill. What followed was a volley of e-mails (available as the initial posts in this blog). In these first few missives, you can already see the synergy at work: Jonathan getting all wired over mutating d20; Justin chipping the hard shell off his inner hippie. It seemed like a perfect project for this type of endeavor: An out-there core conceit susceptible to the orderly mechanical nature of d20.
Obviously here, at the outset, we don’t know what the final product will look like. However, it is also apparent that the process itself has already demonstrated itself to be a valuable one. In keeping with the spirit of James’s initial call, our design goals are:
- Broaden our respective design horizons: Jonathan will wallow in the d20 mud; Justin will let his freak flag fly.
- Enlist additional freelancers for art, layout, and editing from broad pools, i.e., “Corporate Whores” and “Punk Kids.”
- Publish a role-playing game product that is a complete, usable, and enjoyable game.
- Release the final product for sale under the Blue Devil Games imprint through existing commercial channels.
- Share our experiences with the community at large throughout the process.
