Goozin'

File under: A bit of a ramble, isn't it?

Now and then I dust off GOZR and get fired up about it. I love the gooz! I adore them. I love this game. It's a game I created with as few constraints and expectations as possible. It was a liberating experience, and a ton of work.

I saw the ugly bastards in my mind, inspired by so many things I've seen over the years, and they took my hand in their calloused, bumpy hands and lead me into their world of simultaneous ugliness and exquisite beauty.

I wish I could maintain this level of enthusiasm for one thing all the time. I'd have already created a follow up tome and some adventures, at the least. And a comic. But that isn't how my brain works. I do what I can, when I can. I try to strike while the iron is hot. Often I fail.

But I didn't fail with GOZR. I made a good thing and put it into the world.

GOOZ ARE THE OTHER GUYS

Gooz are scum, riff-raff, sub-optimal. According to the lore they inherited, gooz were created by the Pretty Ones to serve them. But the Pretties are all dead (right?). Now gooz are on their own. They are the lowly ones, the ones that didn't have anything.

This is not the same kind of framing as a game about playing hired henchmen or torchbearers. Gooz would be in that category, but the heroes those folks aid are no longer around. This is a game of "what if the main characters all died?".

The gooz become the main characters. What does that even mean? I guess it's up to you.

GOOZ ARE UGLY

Hey, that's a nasty word, isn't it? Yeah, kinda is. But that's how the gooz were seen and that's the idea they inherited. Is it true? Are they really ugly? What does "ugly" even mean?

THE WORLD BELONGS TO THEM

For better or worse, these dinky degenerates run the show. What will they make of their world now? They're not perfect. They're degenerate, right? They have greed, violence, and pettiness just like anyone else. And they were thrust out on their own in a ruined world, quite suddenly it seems. This is a rough period for gooz. A transition. A bumpy ride. Where is it going? That is also up to you, the gamer who chooses to step into their world.

I am not sure what lies ahead for GOZR, for me. I have ideas. I have some new pages for the follow up book, tentatively titled GOZR RISING. Some of those pages have been sitting idle, finished for a couple of years. I'm slow, I tell you.

At this moment in time I am seriously thinking about a GOZR comic book... an obvious direction, and one that I had in mind all along. Hell, the game book itself is in comic book format (American comic book size). A GOZR comic book is not only obvious, it is perhaps inevitable. Unless I die before doing it.