There is always a rising movement in tabletop.

Originally shared by Cam Banks

There is always a rising movement in tabletop.

There's always a mainstream, a place where big boxes of shiny components and deluxe cardstock boards and glossy rulebooks live, where stacks of shrinkwrapped core rulebooks move like crazy out of warehouses, where colorful booths demonstrate dazzling new product at conventions.

There's always a cadre of popular designers, a community of like-minded professionals who share panels together and talk at length about their experiences and their ideas to crowds of interested fans. There's always at least two if not more companies that hire these folks, and marketing teams, and warehouse crews, and enjoy benefit packages or at least access to a soda machine in a break room.

But there's always a rising movement, a new breed, a gathering of fresh ideas and radical thought and dangerous suggestions for how to break through the ceiling or pierce the illusion or change the hearts and minds of gamers. Sometimes there's more than one, and in the shadow of the mainstream behemoths they bicker and fight or occasionally nod respectfully at the others, as they send another new idea out into the world through a blog or a print-on-demand book or a Kickstarter.

It's unfair to tell people that there's nothing new under the sun, that their exciting new community of idea-makers and designers is just the latest in a cycle of idea-makers and designers, and that some of them will reach that height they aspire to and join the choir of mainstream voices while others burn out on a huge project they couldn't complete, and yet others never leave the movement, they're happy enough designing games and blogging and talking to each other in the scene, for as long as the scene lasts.

For today's mainstream tabletop professionals were, in many cases, in most cases, yesterday's rising movement, the struggling artists and radicals and thought-leaders of the revolution. And tomorrow, some of them might transition on to a lucrative career in video games, working horrible hours but welcoming heftier paychecks, or they might throw up their hands and say "to hell with this!" and find a different career entirely.

There is always a rising movement in tabletop. We should cheer them on, we should see what they are doing, and we should critique their games or challenge their ideas. But for as much as it's unfair to say, it is also true that those who feel strongly that there has never been a movement such as this... are walking the path of others who, like them, felt as strongly about their own.

Gods bless all of us, designers, gamers, new ideas, old guard, the cycles that go 'round and 'round. Gods bless all of us.