As seen on http://www.fudgefactor.org.

We Will Survive

I never thought taking over as the Managing Editor for Fudge Factor would be all play and no work. It's been a little over a month now, and I feel as though I've hit my stride. I quickly came to understand the problems they would talk about before -- on the one hand fretting while waiting for enough submissions to come in to get another issue put together, and on the other making sure that the next issue was assembled on schedule.

But I was still a little surprised when the luck started laying it on hard and heavy -- this month, no less, as over at the Factor we were putting together the issue we call Lucky Thirteen. It was little things at first. A misplaced set of keys. A half hour of web browser editing erased by a casual keystroke that exited the program.

But then Lucky Thirteen was only two weeks away and things got more interesting -- Chinese interesting. A miscommunication lead my wife and I to delay a bit longer than we should have to get several rooms in our house painted before we had a roommate come to move in. Suddenly all the free time -- as little of it as there was -- was given over to frantic paint acquisition and subsequent hours upon hours of room painting. And just recently, these last couple days, my computer faceplanted after a security update.

I'm convinced it's the job.

And even if that's so, if it's really the job, I'm still here. I'm still going to get it done. I will survive the gauntlet. Which is a lot like Fudge, and Fudge Factor.

Stick with me on this one.

Fudge is not the most popular game system out there. Nobody will really dispute that point. Some of us have even gotten that look from other gamers when we 'fess up to being fans of the system. "Isn't it more work to get a game put together?" "Those adjectives look weird, I don't see the point." "What's up with these wacko dice?"

Yet we stay with it, because we love it. We love the weird little quirks of the system, its elegance and its warts. We run games using Fudge and write articles for Fudge Factor, not because we're getting paid for it (in anything other than approval of like minded fellow Fudgers). We're running the games and writing the words because there are those sparks of passion in us coming right from that fire-lighting moment when we realized, here is a game that speaks my language.

For many of us it's been a tough passion to keep. Convincing your average player to give Fudge a whirl is not often the easiest thing. If we wax poetical about the benefits of Fudge, we're apt to encounter more than a few gamers giving us the look that Buffy enthusiasts get when they try explaining the show to someone who doesn't watch it. We're a fringe element.

It's not easy to be a Fudge fanatic. But it's worth it.

And that's why we'll survive -- through the computer crashes, difficult and reluctant players, lost files, skepticism from the non-Fudge types, all of it -- because Fudge, at its core, is founded on a spirit of contribution and community. We may be small in number, and we may well have our ten thousand different ways we think Fudge should go, but all the same we are a passionate, even cohesive, whole. I've seen it in every submission to cross my desk since I've joined the staff; I've seen it in each article in every issue.

We have survived for thirteen lucky issues despite the obstacles. And we'll survive for the next thirteen, too -- and beyond.

Rain or shine. Black cats or broken mirrors.

Bring it on.

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