[TSOY 2nd] Name of the game?
Eero Tuovinen:
Well well, it seems that I'm going to start the actual writing of the TSoY book tonight. A question that's been plaguing me, perhaps somebody has insight for me:
Should the name of this book be The Shadow of Yesterday? At first I thought not, then for a long while I thought yes, and now I'm back leaning towards no. The competing name would be something like "Guidebook to Near" or some such. Factors:
I'd like for the game to sell pretty well. "Sell" in both the sense of making some profits (enough to get me to Gencon if they'll have it in 2009, to be specific) and in the sense of reaching the potentially interested audience. The old name is well established and has a good reputation among its target audience (of which I am one). Also, the fact of the matter is that this book is most easily understood in a nutshell by calling it the "new edition of TSOY", so not naming it that might be confusing.
On the other hand, there's the issue that fundamentally this is not a second edition. TSoY is a game with an integrated rules set and backstory and a limited scope. This new book will have a wider scope, it'll be more of a gazetteer or dictionary of Near than a game by itself. It'll be my answer to the question of how an intricate fantasy setting can be fruitfully used at the game table. This is a radically different goal, and calling the book "The Shadow of Yesterday" would be somewhat misleading - "The Shadow of Yesterday" is one of the campaigns that can be played by combining Solar System and this new Near Gazetteer (that's an old school name for it), but it's not the sole focus. Taking the name feels like it sells short the original book, which is quite feasible as a roleplaying game setting and product on its own. It seems like I'm being pushed towards adopting the name just for brand recognition and to cater to how roleplayers are used to interpreting products. Outside roleplaying it'd be obvious that I'd use some other name, but if I let go of "TSOY" as a name here, then roleplayers will get confused: the name of the game is still sort of TSOY, but there isn't a book out there with that name, just a rule book with a different name and a setting book with yet another name. It's like they published a new edition of the Dragonlance campaign setting and called it "Tales of Ansalon".
The cornerstone of this question is, what is that shadow of yesterday, exactly? It seems pretty obvious to me that the name refers to how the past haunts the future and strives to imprison and oppress it in Near. The player characters are by they nature a force for change and for a new beginning in this context. More concretely, the shadow that yesterday casts shows up prominently in Maldor, where the people are unable to let go of the imperial past. This'll show up in my book as the campaign framework called "The Shadow of Yesterday", where I explain how to play a Maldorian game, but I don't know if the same phrase should be the name of the book itself. Is this the basic nature of Near-based gaming?
This isn't a big issue by any means as of yet, as the book's not even finished, but perhaps an amusing one to speculate about. Fresh viewpoints are welcome.
dindenver:
Eero,
I think you should call it Shadow of Yesterday.
The primary reason is this:
People still recommend playing TSOY, when that happens, people should be able to find it.
rafial:
I think you are overthinking this :)
Of course it should be called The Shadow of Yesterday.
And you are right, it is not the second edition.
It is the third ;)
Eero Tuovinen:
Ah, yes, I got tripped up by language - in Finnish "second" and "other" are the same word, so I sometimes mix them up in English as well.
oliof:
The Shadow of Yesterday – Expanded Edition?
Since you plan to add a lot of stuff…
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page