The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I like to think of Imagine as D&D 1.5. If that was your scene, you'll probably enjoy it very much. For myself, I'd rather play Dragonlance 5th Age or D&D3E.

It's not that Imagine is a particularly bad game. It certainly tries very hard to take the basics of hack-and-slash gameplay to at least a few new places. As the back cover states, "12 attributes, 18 races, 26 classes, over 340 skills, more than 450 spells and invocations, over 150 different weapons and armor, more than 500 items of equipment." What's telling is both what's on this list, and what's not on it. Obviously, these items are from the Price Club approach to game design. "If D&D's basic 4 archetypical classes and their one or two offshoots each weren't enough for you, we've got plenty more where that came from." Not on the back cover, however, is any mention made of a story, of any specially interesting hooks or issues raised by the game, or of anything to differentiate this from the hordes of other dungeon-crawlers out there.

So there's no back story, no hooks, and very little different from a fan campaign for any fantasy game. What you're left with is a generic class-based system, albeit one with so many races and classes that one wonders why they didn't just base it on points a la GURPS instead. Yeah, there are the multitude of classes and not-very-original species to choose from as PCs, but when the novelty of that passes you start to realize that the rules are just a little bit quirky as well, like the odd "bullseye" system used to decide if you hit or miss aimed shots, and the uber-gamer touches of not only half-races, but also quarter-races. I can just imagine this now: a player character that's 25% centaur, 25% bird-man, 10% lizard-man, and 40% ogre, multiclassed into a shaman-bandit-duelist. Talk about your Freudian nightmares.

In summary, Imagine isn't a bad game, like Synnibar or the god-forsaken mess I'll continue to insist was the worst game of all time, Forge: Out of Chaos. On the other hand, it's just not very good either. If you're really in the mood to just go into a dungeon and whack the hell out of something with a sword, grab a copy of D&D3E for 5 bucks less somewhere, and leave this dog on the shelf.

Imagine Player's Guide
Imagine Player's Guide Capsule Review by Thomas Wilburn on 01/09/01 Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 2 (Sparse) Not a bad game. Just not very good either. Think D&D 1.5. Product: Imagine Player's Guide Author: William Michael Tenery III Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Imagine Role-Playing Line: Imagine Cost: 29.95 USD Page count: 326 Year published: 1999 ISBN: 0-9657244-0-9 SKU: Comp copy?: yes Capsule Review by Thomas Wilburn on 01/09/01 Genre tags: Fantasy	I like to think of Imagine as D&D 1.5. If that was your scene, you'll probably enjoy it very much. For myself, I'd rather play Dragonlance 5th Age or D&D3E. It's not that Imagine is a particularly bad game. It certainly tries very hard to take the basics of hack-and-slash gameplay to at least a few new places. As the back cover states, "12 attributes, 18 races, 26 classes, over 340 skills, more than 450 spells and invocations, over 150 different weapons and armor, more than 500 items of equipment." What's telling is both what's on this list, and what's not on it. Obviously, these items are from the Price Club approach to game design. "If D&D's basic 4 archetypical classes and their one or two offshoots each weren't enough for you, we've got plenty more where that came from." Not on the back cover, however, is any mention made of a story, of any specially interesting hooks or issues raised by the game, or of anything to differentiate this from the hordes of other dungeon-crawlers out there. So there's no back story, no hooks, and very little different from a fan campaign for any fantasy game. What you're left with is a generic class-based system, albeit one with so many races and classes that one wonders why they didn't just base it on points a la GURPS instead. Yeah, there are the multitude of classes and not-very-original species to choose from as PCs, but when the novelty of that passes you start to realize that the rules are just a little bit quirky as well, like the odd "bullseye" system used to decide if you hit or miss aimed shots, and the uber-gamer touches of not only half-races, but also quarter-races. I can just imagine this now: a player character that's 25% centaur, 25% bird-man, 10% lizard-man, and 40% ogre, multiclassed into a shaman-bandit-duelist. Talk about your Freudian nightmares. In summary, Imagine isn't a bad game, like Synnibar or the god-forsaken mess I'll continue to insist was the worst game of all time, Forge: Out of Chaos. On the other hand, it's just not very good either. If you're really in the mood to just go into a dungeon and whack the hell out of something with a sword, grab a copy of D&D3E for 5 bucks less somewhere, and leave this dog on the shelf.

Imagine Player's Guide