The awesome human being in question being Levi Kornelsen, who single-handedly and sorta-understatedly begun a feat worthy of a hero of the ages to come, deserving a huge badge of awesomeness.
Levi is developing a fantasy role-playing game, Awen, built on the bones of his long-time-in-development project "The Exchange", plus a set of new ideas he more recently came up with about "world creation" being a consequence of character creation, etc. Something like the latter is found in Apocalypse World, sure, but way less formalized, and Levi may well be the first after Vincent Baker to implement new tools toward that end, in a time when everybody seems content with making Apocalypse World hacks. But this is only half the story…
Like so many of us these days, Levi is running a crowd-funding campaign to fund the development of the game (in other words, to at least partially re-pay himself and/or any helpers of the hours spent working on the project). The big deal is: Awen will be released into the Public Domain as soon as it's completed. Thus, by pitching in your five or ten dollars you're not "buying a game", you're helping make a game for everyone in the world who may want to play it. And you're making a gift today to all of the friends you will ever want to play the game with, or pitch the game to — including those friends you haven't yet met.
Way to make Levi climb to the top of my personal chart of awesomeness.
Please, join in. Everybody who's reading this, please chip in the five bucks if you have those, but especially, please, tell all of your friends, and tell them to tell their friends — you know how that works.
My expectations regarding the game as a game are high enough, really, but even if they weren't I'd still be urging all of you to help Levi out. Because we're living on the edge of something huge. As small as it may look now, Levi is (marching in the front line and taking the risks) trying out a new model for artistic work: one more sustainable, more civilized than the rotting and rotten one we have today. I really think supporting Awen means to support change for the best, if just in this small, small world of ours which is role-playing games.
Thank you.
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