Rik's Imagination
Bet you can't guess what I'm thinking ...
I have a vivid imagination. Always have! My imagination has gotten me in trouble a few times, mostly because it was running while I supposed to be doing something else. For example, I would be drawing pictures of spaceships when I was supposed to be listening to my school teachers!
My imagination has mostly been sparked by reading. Science fiction and fantasy have been my favorite genres for most of my life, but I've read a lot of mysteries and some historical fiction as well. Lately, my focus has been on the fantasy genre. Dragons! Knights in armor! Swords and sorcery! Epic battles between the forces of good and evil! Elves and dwarves and gnomes! World-spanning adventures and quests! Hidden treasures and forgotten secrets! These are truly the stuff of imagination.
Unfortunately, my upbringing stifled my imagination to a certain extent (sorry Mom!). There are certain factions of the Christian church which don't have any room for imagination. Maybe it was because of Bible verses like this: "But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward." (Jeremiah 7:24, KJV) Now, I personally don't think that this verse and others like it are condemning imagination. Rather, I think verses like this are referring to people who imagine that they know better than God.
My negative opinion of the viewpoint I was raised with is based on several things, but I can boil it down to this: nearly everything that grabbed and inspired my imagination was declared "evil". Like, say, rock & roll. There was the rock & roll that was about sex and drugs, which, contrary to what I often heard, did not inspire me to get high and fornicate. But I didn't listen to that kind of rock & roll anyway. I listened to the imaginative stuff. I listened to bands with talented songwriters who told stories with their music. And oh my goodness! Most of those bands were decried as Satan worshippers. "They're EEEEEEEEEEVIL! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!"
I heard from some sources that I shouldn't read my favorite author, Isaac Asimov, because he was a humanist, and would lead me astray. Wow. Like I'm going to form my worldview and my thoughts on salvation and eternity based on science fiction stories. Then again, maybe I'm just exceptional in that I learned early on to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. But I had to suffer from "lowest common denominator" education — having to listen to warnings that the average kid needed to hear, even if I didn't.
Some other "evil" things I heard about growing up:
Proctor & Gamble
UPC Bar Codes
Dungeons & Dragons!
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is one of those "evil" things I didn't get to investigate when I was a teenager, but that I'm playing now that I'm old enough to make up my own mind. If you're not familiar with it, D&D is a roleplaying game (RPG). An RPG is a game in which you pretend to be somebody else, and you set out as that person on an adventure. The adventure is created, organized, and run by a Game Master (GM). "Game Master" is a generic term that applies to all RPGs (there are several); in D&D the GM is called the Dungeon Master (DM).
The game is usually played in groups of four to eight players, although there is no set number required. A group consists of one Dungeon Master (DM) and several Players. The DM makes up an adventure, or uses a published adventure. He describes the setting and provides the Players with a goal. Each Player controls a character in the adventure. These characters are called Player Characters (PC). These are the main characters in the adventure, the ones who set out to reach the goal presented by the DM. The DM controls all the other characters in the game, such as the villians, innkeepers, and merchants. These characters are called Non-Player Characters (NPC).
What makes D&D different from most games is that the goal isn't to "win" the game. The goal is to stretch your imagination, and to use teamwork to solve problems. You can be any kind of character you want to be. Combat is a major component of the game; a PC may need to slay monsters or villians along the way. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to have just as much fun playing a pacifist character who harms no one.
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This page last updated May 11, 2008 ::
visitors since 1997 ::
Copyright © 1997 - 2008 Rik Osborne