Crack the ‘Magine Dragon

In the recent Globalism seminar comments, Alan Barclay talked about encountering ditto copies of Dungeons & Dragons probably bootlegged from the GenCon release in 1974.

I do recall the game just transported me — I didn’t care much about mechanics, just the experience of ineracting with the imaginary world created lagely in my own head. My first exposure was like crack and I was always trying to get back to that. Funny, that I later got so caught up in fiddling with the mechanics of C&S character creation (and later, the tinkering with Hero system powers) that had nothing to do with what really jazzed me.

That caught my attention, as it’s related to the transition from first-generation Champions to Hero System/4th edition Champions, and also strikes to the heart of a long-standing ideological battle in the hobby. Is this about untrammeled imagination or the modeling of imagined material using math?

I’ve never thought that dichotomy held water. It was expressed later as “role vs. roll,” but that’s just one corner of the larger comparison. When I first talking about playing on purpose as GNS, it was instantly what people thought I meant, and why they could not reconcile my “system does matter” claim the concept of non-modeling purpose. It’s why my regard for Champions is consistently mistaken for nostalgia.

So I responded,

It’d be greatly valuable to discuss that shift from “Crack the Imagine
Dragon” to “gee, how can I fiddle these points,” especially in the context of
SCA and then, of Champions. Send me an email via the Contact form at this
site and we’ll set it up

Enjoy the video! Comments welcome! Many thanks to Alan, whom it was a great pleasure to meet after some few (~18) years of online communication and thought.

The post title has no relation to a rock band, of which I was unaware until I ran some searches to find images.