Long, long ago, when I was a penniless teenager striving to learn some English in England, I spot an ad on a wargaming magazine about something called Forgotten Futures. Apparently, it was a role-playing game sold on diskettes that you could read on your computer or print. I was intrigued but never went ahead to buy it. Hey, back then, I’ve never heard of what was an ebook.
I was still in the possession of the magazine when I first had access to the Internet at home, and I wanted to see if Forgotten Futures was still around. I found it, downloaded the whole thing — the Internet had made the diskettes obsolete — and Boy did I love it: complete, flexible, fast and sensible rules combined with a plethora of well developed, rich settings. That’s how games should be. That’s how I’d love my games to be.
Marcus L Rowland did a magnificent job. Newsies & Bootblacks and all my games will alway be indebted to his work.
Perhaps somebody could challenge that FF is a minimalist game at all; judging by the size of the material available. Let me answer that minimalism is about getting the essentials: not as little as possible, but just as much as you need. FF rules are short and get the job done; it’s the many settings that beef up the word count — but for good reason.
Minimalism is not about rules light nor setting light; it’s about being sensible.