As many role-players, I had dreamed about creating my game, any game. My first idea was about explorers and traders in the high seas. It was meant as an expansion for a little game that went belly-up before I could finish mine. Then I created an introductory game that had a nice review in Líder –the Spanish role-playing fanzine–, but back then I knew next to nothing about the Internet beyond some basic browsing and emailing.

A few years later…

I watched Children’s Underground, a long documentary about street children in Romania. It moved me enough to work as a volunteer for “in-care” children at home and abroad. And then, too, I spent a summer working in the streets of Bucharest.

Newsies & Bootblacks would not be there without that experience. A romantic, non-realistic, cheerful, “Disney”, sweetered, “strawberry-cake” version of it.

Some would say I should not be gaming about it. I say I promised myself never to forget them. And this game is just another way to do that. And, in a humble way, to share what I found in those children beyond poverty, inhalants and desperation. The resorcefulness, hope, the tiny extraordinary acts of heroism and care that I witnessed, the adventures and misadventures, that can be gamed.

Then, I transplanted the whole thing to a familiar setting: the early XX century in America. It’s unlikely that most gamers can tell Grozavesti from Bvd. Mircea Eliade or what Sector 6 means –unless they happen to be from Bucharest– but we all know Verne, the story of New York, the vibrant lifes of the immigrants of those times and, of course of the youngsters who roamed the streets crying “Extra, extra!” This could be fun, I only needed to find a way to “transport” it into a role-playing game: a setting and rules that could work with it.

And then I set up myself to work on Newsies & Bootblacks, and to donate everything I made from this game.

Tomorrow I will share a bit more. And, before the end of this week, you will have a preview of the game. An introductory version complete with a sample adventure and simplified rules.

Have fun