Today was July the Fourth, during which we celebrate flipping the political birdie to King George by setting fire to packs of colored gunpowder. All in all, a truly fantastic holiday.
It struck me this morning (by which I mean 2 p.m.) that if we could appeal to the same sense of quasi-spiritual nationalism that imperialists did with Manifest Destiny, America could really become a real force of good in the world. The Great Society and other projects of the 20th Century were a step in the right direction, but naturally it's harder to get people enthusiastic about being altruistic than it is to convince them that taking a lot of land by force is a good idea.
Now that it's summer and I have huge amounts of time, I've decided that I shall sometime make a 24-Hour RPG. I know you're not supposed to brainstorm ahead of time, but it's nigh-impossible not to occasionally kick around an idea or two.
Initially, I thought I'd do something silly with an alliterative title, like Vikings and Vampires. Then, I had the idea of doing (what would likely not end up being a 24-Hour RPG, since I'd want to refine it down) a NationStates: the RPG type game. Quite a challenge, naturally, but with great potential. You could either do it in a PvP form (in which case it'd be like highly detailed Risk), or in traditional Players-and-a-GM form (the 'party' being an alliance like NATO or the Allies, and the GM's 'NPCs' being a BBEG like the Axis and various rogue states).
The main obstacle to me doing any sort of RPG-making would be mathematical incompetence (I'm baffled at how people start from scratch and make a balanced game), and possibly a fundamental unwillingness to think in high-falutin' Forge-like terms. I think for now I'll just stick to the NS site and hopefully some Striker in the future.
And thus ends the first segment of my unintentionally steam-of-conciousness bombasticity.