Thursday, December 28, 2006

You Gave Me Everything, And Now I'm Breaking Your Heart

Dear Iron Gauntlets:

Surely by now you've noticed that I haven't been around as much as I used to. I don't talk about you to my friends these days. I know. I feel bad about it, too.

But there's a reason for everything, and I think it's time we admitted something to ourselves:

It wasn't working out.

I know, I know -- it sure seemed that way, didn't it? All the fun, all the laughs -- the .pdfs, the glowing praise. The campaign notes. We thought we were meant for each other.

So what happened?

After that night my wife and I played you a while, I -- well, do you remember how that went? It's like I was ready to dance but I couldn't get the steps right? You and I showed up to rock the house and blow some minds, and, baby, you've got the goods. But me, I couldn't swing it.

You did me good, though. You awakened stuff in me that I didn't know I'd forgotten; you helped me re-learn a paradigm of devil-may-care, it's-all-made-up-anyway gameplay. You fired up the FRPG furnace of my soul. But, damnit, IG, I just couldn't get along with you!

Goodness knows I tried. I cooked up those alternate rules, looked up those variants, talked to your Dad...things were getting better all the time. That was the trouble, though -- they needed to get better. At my heart, I still need my rules to go in certain ways.

I'm sorry. I feel that I've failed you.

You're still on my shelf. You're good people. You have that nice binder, with those nice separator tabs. We'll still see each other, just not the way we were.

Yours,
Dr Rotwang!

P.S.: D6 says hi.