Games, Grinches, and Good Ideas...

As we enter the holiday season, yours truly can't help but remember what was doubtless the most important (and consequential) Christmas gift to ever grace the bottom of a tree. This wondrous delivery was Holmes Basic with Keep on the Borderlands. Toys break or get lost in the dustbin of our collective childhoods, along with everything else we wrongly believe we possess. But Homes was basically an idea. And ideas are powerful things in the right hands, and quite possibly the only lasting things our hands have made... 

Case in point: having read the rulebook and enclosed module, the whole thing could go up in a house fire and we'd probably still have enough to reconstruct a playable fascimile from scratch. A homebrew creation all the funner for the sense of ownership. Of course, that never happened, and I went from Holmes to AD&D thereafter; still, it underscores how exposure alone arms a creative person. Simply understanding the division of labor between the players and referee is 90% of what happens, setting Holmes above that year's gifts.

Now I've talked about this before, making it the equivalent of holiday leftovers. But it bears repeating, especially given the commercialization of the hobby. At best, we publishers offer convenience and the chance to explore another's vision. It's an optional service no one really needs, which counsels humility and appreciation. But every referee keeps a game designer somewhere inside of them, making WotC's overreach ultimately futile. It's the idea behind our hobby that truly matters, a thing more precious than any rulebook...

I know; there's content. Monsters, spells, the works. But knowledge of the division of labor, something akin to hit points, and the need to roll for actions is probably enough to get started with a men vs. monsters type affair, with everything else developing during preparation and gameplay (arguably, where it belongs). This is what I got for Christmas, 1980, and it gave me a lifelong pursuit. People are more important than anything, and ideas more important than mere things, so here's wishing everyone a season full of everything that matters.