Renaming HiBRiD: Rationale and Resultant

I never really set out to design a roleplaying engine.

Originally, I just wanted some thing that worked. I kept looking at and playing other games here and there, seeing what was slick, what worked, and what didn't.

In the end, once I decided to abandon all other systems and just hack all of my notes together, I referred to HiBRiD as "a hybridized homebrew system" when describng it to others because I wanted to get across the point that it was an amalgam, or hybridization, of all of the systems I had tried, each of which seemed to do one or two things right but also seemed to bog down play in some other way that went against what I was trying to achieve.

When I came up with the concept of Ite', I inadvertently unified the patchwork of rules and I realized it wasn't really a hybridized amalgam any more so much as a unified system that was highly modifiable and patchable depending on how much detail each gaming group wished to infuse into the game. I knew anyone using it could use it either "as is" or bolt it on to any other system they were using. I also knew it would be a long time until I finished what I had started and continued to see in my mind's eye. Finally, I realized it needed a working title until I completed it.

So with these ideas in my mind, I settled on the name of HiBRiD, developed from the acronym of highly bastardized rpg in development, as a temporary name to  to reflect theses various facts.

That was in 1992. Since then, much has changed in my life as well as in the gaming industry in general. Paper systems have become less prevalent. A written, word-salad-diatribe called "Hybrid" was vomited out by some lame French asshole who called it an RPG, and in the process made it annoyingly difficult to use the name in any sort of commercial venture. But most importantly, I realized that the Ite' mechanic has evolved to really become the standard driving force behind the engine itself. What started off as a simple luck point system has flowered into a methodology for determining the level of heroism in a game. What once was used to protect players from intra-party conflict has evolved into a system for co-operative play.

Which leads me to the point of this post. Ite' is the real driving mechanic of the engine, the real crux of the system. It has ceased to become a "gimmick" and become the defacto standard mechanism for anyone attempting to play any role playing game with the style I imagined. It has become the hook for which players introduced to the game seem to remember the game.

So with this rationale in mind, I have decided to rename the HiBRiD gaming engine to reflect these developments.The new name for the engine will be called: 

The Ite' Gaming Engine.