"Imagi-Nations, emotion, sentiment, passions and reaity." Topic

We know that Imagi-Nations do not exist in our day to day world and are simply the creations of our own thoughts. But they are more than mere creations, they are "create-ures" that we have made and of perforce endowed with personalities with which we take an interest in and load with sentiments and value, such that the courses of their little lead lives, which we determine, become important and dear to us.

Further these emotions and sentiments we feel are as real at times, as those of real persons and things which are in our day to day world, and therefore if the intensity is equal or nearly so, can the reality be said to be equal or nearly so? I do not mean here the popular clap-trap of parallel dimensions or anything like that, but rather a "reality" conjured up by ourselves (where it is and what it is is unimportant for this discussion) which imposes on ourselves a limitation. This limitation can be engendered by our "create-ures " who though we have given them existence, may engender a real existence of their own as we carry though their personality and development , and this relationship becomes not unilateral but symbiotic. So the question then becomes if this "Imagi-Nation-Reality" we have is not more than it seems and may actually BE real in every sense, as it is REAL in some senses in our own mind.

We see parallel instances of novelists who agonize about what their "characters" will do, or who will get killed off, and who often admit that it is not they who write the story of their characters, but the character themselves. Indeed that can be said for many gamers etc., who jealously guard and manage their "little lead creatues."

It makes one wonder just what kind of God we are, and do our "create-ures" like us.

Otto

Very Heinlein-esq, Otto.

'Monsters!! Monsters from the Id!!' (If you don't get that, look it up, you're three buttons from everywhere.)

It's just escape identification. Especially after painting regiment after regiment and seeing figures in action with a compatible ruleset that fits your created world.

ImagiNations can be used as comedy, satire, to reflect absurdity you find in real life, as a basis for a roleplaying campaign.

It's not whether your creations 'like' you-it's whether the dice 'like' you.

This is the only hobby you can weave a world and rule it. The perfect escape when dealing with modern stress.

I'm with ONeill, above. What a lovely, thought-provoking original post.

Wha'?

I can see that.

Agreed Otto, agreed.

I don't normally get that carried away.

Ahhh! The creation of story, and those who tell them, bring them to life.

Dear Games Poet

Ah yes! Who can resist the "Once upon a time.."

It is the very life blood of our games, the very force that animates the dead leaves of the past.

For those of us enraptured of Imagi-Natons, especially those of us in the Napoleonic era and before, we have to Mathew Brady to bring the "bodies of the battlefield into our living rooms." We have only portraints and not photographs. Therefore for us the combats of the time will always be idealized, romanticized, appealing, and something we want to be in, not flee from. We animate them from our own souls.