And here we are on Day 9 of the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge. Today we are talking on the prompt ‘Inspire’. What inspires you not only with roleplaying games but in general? Well for me I find that quotes are inspiring. You may have seen all the Star Trek quotes that I post every Monday. Most of these are inspiring or entertaining and I share them daily on two social media websites (Star Trek Quotes on Mastodon and Star Trek Quotes on BlueSky). A short phrase that may mean something to different people at different times.
But there is one quote that I wanted to use to inspire my fellow geeks. It’s primarily about science fiction, but it could easily be associated with gaming. It is as follows…
“Science fiction is the fiction of ideas. Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves. Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.”
This was spoken by the famous sci-fi author Ray Bradbury. When I read this, it struck a chord with me. I talked about Exploring different roleplaying games in yesterday’s challenge post. A different system is a new idea, a different way to cook up the meal, a different way to do something. Perhaps the game itself is not so great, but the system sparks an idea. I’ve had a few of these hit me while I was using the system in the Character Creation Challenge. I’ve wondered if I could take the inspiration from these ideas and turn them into an RPG system? At a minimum, get it to the beta phase where I try it with a few other players.
I just need to get off of my duff and do it.
What has inspired you? Is there a quote that has spoken to you when you read it? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.