Final Bits of Push Text (3 of 4)

Planning Volume 2

Next time, Gadget. Next time.

This is an invitation. God willing, the next issue of Push will be two or three times thicker than this one. And that requires the help of people like you, people who care about what roleplaying might be becoming.

Push is primarily looking for the following:

1) articles describing newly emerging or less well known varieties of play and design (which also includes, at least for the time being, just about any variety of roleplaying disconnected from traditional or indie Anglo-American tabletop roleplaying),

2) articles describing new opportunities for play and design within existing roleplaying traditions (since there are always opportunities to do what we already do differently),

3) complete and playable short-form games that demonstrate new play possibilities (especially those written as if roleplaying evolved from something other than historical and fantasy miniatures wargaming),

4) something else that pushes the boundaries of roleplaying while remaining fun, informative, and not overly academic,

5) you. We want you. Enlighten us; surprise us; delight us. Tell us something we don’t know. Make us want to play right now. We are your peers and your audience. We are hungry. Feed us.

Push is not an academic journal, though we have a fair number of graduate students and PhD candidates among our contributors and commentators. If you want to write a paper about Foucault and roleplaying, I definitely want to read it, but unless you can make it accessible and exciting to people who are more interested in fun stories than discourse analysis, it belongs in a publication other than Push. We have a different mission and a different intended audience.

Likewise, Push is specifically intended to be a progressive publication, interested in pushing boundaries and speculating about the future of roleplaying. We are appreciative of the roleplaying’s heritage, but this journal is about looking forward and the content reflects that. Draft your proposals accordingly.

That said, write about what excites you. What are you most looking forward to? What can you see hints of in the play experiences you’ve had recently? What is roleplaying in the process of becoming? There is no correct answer to any of these questions. There is no single answer either. Roleplaying is blossoming in many different directions at once and in the process of becoming things we can’t even currently imagine.

How awesome is that?