Why on Earth is Kesteva the subject of a role-playing game?
Some time ago, an anonymous former newspaper Editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town pulled a trove of historical documents through a multidimensional door. The documents concerned the ancient kingdom of Kesteva. And now they’re translated, formatted, and in front of you.
What?
Even before I became Publisher of Royal Road West I took on some unusual projects. Once I went undercover on the Internet as a troll to experience the culture and learn the profession’s secrets. Another time, back when I was editing my own small-town newspaper, I arranged for a time traveler headed into the future to send weekly postcards to my readers.
They were to be printed on Page 3 as Dispatches From the Future, but once the time traveler left I never heard from him again.
Publishing Kesteva as a role-playing game is another matter. First, it wasn’t my idea at all. Credit goes to the Editor, the same one from the fog-shrouded Midwestern town who recovered our source material for all of these gaming aids and literature.
In his correspondence with me, the Editor says that once he went through the multidimensional door and wound up in an ancient Kestevan library, he knew he had to bring this wealth of knowledge to the world. He tried and tried to get universities’ ancient studies programs to examine the papers. He even tried getting serious academic journals to publish his own research as that of an independent scholar, but the Editor’s only credentials were a lapsed membership in the Society of Professional Journalists and a membership with a local club he will not specify.
Distraught and desperate, he turned to Royal Road West. “You are my last hope,” he wrote to me. “None of the serious journals and scholars will take me seriously. But you will take anyone, won’t you? Oh, god, oh, god, if Royal Road West of all places will not publish my work I will be at rock bottom, in the depths of the ocean, the oil stain on the bottom of a barrel …”
We chose to take his words as a compliment.
The Editor proposed that Royal Road West not simply publish translations of the historical records but that we instead turn the material into a role-playing game of some sort. In fact, he insisted on the Dungeon World system, which is all about drawing maps and leaving blanks. The Editor told me that he had recovered only a tiny fraction of the material he saw inside that ancient library, so he thought there were many blanks to be filled.
In a postscript, he said he also liked dragons, that Kesteva had dragons, and Dungeon World also had dragons.
I sent a positive letter in response, and shipments began arriving the next week.
To this day, I have never met the Editor, or the Translator. I suppose that casts some risk of inaccuracy on the Editor’s great project, but I think when you throw a multidimensional door into the equation, all bets are off.
What do you think?
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