What COTG isn't and what it is.

[Mark 138]

I never cease to be amazed at people who spend a few minutes learning the basic rules of the Champions of the Galaxy game system and deem it a "dice rolling exercise" or "beer and pretzels game" or any other such dismissive nonsense. Champions of the Galaxy cannot be compared, compartmentalized, or categorized. It isn't a role-playing game. It isn't a game where you create your character, map your strategy, and spend endless hours with skill checks and feat rolls in an effort to prove your gaming superiority over your buddies. It isn't a fast-twitch beat-em up that relies on hand-eye coordination to "lay the Smackdown" on your computer opponent. What the casual observer fails to grasp is that the brilliance of the game lies in the complexity of it's simplicity. That doesn't make sense to you? Then clearly you're not a COTG player.

COTG is far more than a pair of dice, some charts, and a set of character cards. It is a fully realized universe that is as complex or as simple as your mind allows. It is an exercise all right. But not an "exercise in dice rolling", it is an exercise in complete creative freedom spurred on by the the implements in front of you. Tom Filsinger created Thantos and Star Warrior, but what they do comes from you. The characters and situations take on a life of their own that come from your own head and imagination.

On that level it is far more satisfying than mashing buttons for hours on end to take Batista to the WWe title on a pre-determined path to watch an ending sequence programmed a year ago for you to look at and go "ooh" and "ah". I suppose the complete freedom to create within the confines of a simple game system is too confusing or complicated for those who are used to being spoon-fed by other games or confined by rules, rolls, and complex supposedly "superior" games that fill their heads so full of things to remember that they forget to be creative and have fun. It creates a place where saying "I imagined it" doesn't carry a negative meaning that keeps people from using said imagination.

I could go on for another page and a half, but I think that pretty much conveys the basics on my feelings of what Champions Of the Galaxy is and why it's kept so many of us coming back for more year after year and, in many cases, decade after decade now.

[gwffantrav]

I think you summed it up in there Mark. Great job

[godzillajoe2k4]

The dice and charts mainly serve to drive the storylines forward. It's how you get to the matches and what you do with the outcomes that's the best part of the game

[Tom]

I like it Mark. Well said.

[gamemaster]

I think you got a tear out of me man. Mark I say you give us that other page and a half.

[swarm]

The thing I have always loved about this game is that the action doesn't stop when I put away the cards, the dice, and the charts...

I am always imagining what the wrestlers are saying in thier interviews before the next big card...

what the media is buzzing about concerning the next big supercard, and how the out-comes of the latest shows are influencing the efforts and frustrations of the teams and wrestlers in my fed.

I actually fire myself up so much sometimes I literally am counting down the hours until I can bust the game out again and play my next fight card...

I think I stimulate my mind as if i were a fan in the audience watching the GWF un-fold.

[Tom]

As a matter of fact, Swarm, I've been doing that all day today, especially when I'm driving by myself.

[hawk]

In alot of ways, COTG is the only thing that keeps me remotely interested in wrestling anymore, admist the continual stupidity of Pro-Wrestling the world over. In days past, I could look forward to Puroresu to erase the WWE or TNA's latest mind-blowingly stupid move...but in the last year, things have gotten very, very bad in Japan aswell. One only has to look at New Japan and think "..WTF are they doing?"

If it wasn't for COTG, I'd have probably quit watching long ago, and moved strictly to MMA due to my disgust with current wrestling..Iin COTG, I have the freedom to promote anything I want. If I wanna split my fed into two? I can. If I wanna push someone? I can. Theres no limitations beyond what the dice can give me. If only I had a printer, I'd have a thriving Bootleg fed going aswell.

The limitations of the system are truely the creative aspects of the player. Some have the ability to run with something, and I'm blessed with the ability to recount all my major angles, champions, and such without even having put them on paper. Some can't do that...but thats what makes COTG so great, you don't need to be able to do all that.

I've been in wrestling simulators since 1997. I helped create many of them through beta testing and pitching ideas...but even through the TEW, EWR's, TNM7's, COTG is the only one that I'm still using, for going on five years straight now.

[Stu Lowry]

Swarm:

I do the exact same thing.

And...I love every single minute of it.

-Stu

[godzillajoe2k4]

I stayed in tonight, ran a legends card, had a title change and am DYING to run my next set of TV tapings or house show to keep things going.

This game is like crack, I constantly need a fix!

[Darth Turkish]

As a big comic book fan growing up, I always wished I could "play" with them, putting them throughthe adventures I wanted to see, fighting whom I wanted them to fight.
Not through the use of action figures; This is somehow limiting. The mental image is already developed, as was the sculpt of the figure limiting.

CotG allowed me to hae that freedom. Full control of a group of fighters is awesome. Developing friednships and feuds. Eliminating characters, creting icons.

Itt is truly one of the most freeing leisure activites I have ever done.

[Scott Fire]

Wow, Mark that was brilliant. Kudos.

[Matt]

The "dice rolling" is just so secondary to the entire scope of the game. It's how it immerses itself in my head. Even during my down times when I didn't play, I'd go through COTG scenarios in my mind. Many nights I fall asleep while thinking of the happenings in the GWF. The actual playing of the game is sometimes anti-climactic compared to the entire intellecutal universe it creates.

[Big Bri]

Yes, I am a crackhead as well. However, Mark, it seems to me that the majority of COTG players tend to bash wrestling video games. I for one enjoy them. I actually created the entire EC roster on the "Smackdown VS. Raw" game for the PS2. I created the characters how I saw them (colorized) in my mind, and matched their move sets, gave them entrances, theme music, the works. I actually play the COTG guys more than the WWE guys, although it's fun to mix them up sometimes (like Screw vs. Undertaker or Torin Caelum vs. Kurt Angle). Plus, it's always cool to have my big PPV of the year while using the WrestleMania arena. It makes it that much more special. Overall, I think combining COTG with a video game has allowed me to enjoy COTG even more! Nemecys, RingsYde, would you like to comment on this?

[Tongsoon of Cygnus]

Big props to you Mark. I couldn't agree with you more!

Swarm, it's sometimes creepy how we all do that exact same thing that you mentioned. Usually, when I got a "theme" song picked for my PPV, and then I hear it on the radio, I begin doing a promo in my head for the PPV.

Not everyone's going to "get" COTG or LOW. It basically boils down to an old-school sim game, and it's the simplicity of the game itself (IMO) that keeps us coming back to it night after night. As promoters, we have a wealth of characters at our fingertips, either from Tom, Mark, or hundreds of promoters with bootleg wrestlers. The Filsinger Games community has somewhat grown into its own micro-cosmic collective. We play, we share, we bicker, yet in the end, we all communicate. I don't know where I'm really going with this, I want to drive home the fact that we're all not isolated players who like the same game. We're all in the GWF Matrix now, and I for one have no plans on un-plugging soon.

It's ok if you don't get COTG or LOW, not everyone will. I've had more than one friend refuse to play the game, simply because it required "too much brain power". And, the fact that it doesn't hook up to the TV completely baffles some. But, that's ok. If you don't get it, that's fine. I myself have to at least thank you for giving it a shot and trying it (kind of like that weird green food grandma makes for you, the kind of food that won't stop jittering). As for me, I'll be just fine with promos and intros and feud square-offs running through my head 24/7.

[Adam Smasher]

Well said Mark. Couldn't have said it better myself.

So Swarm, we do have something in comon.
I can't think of a game more fun than this one. I enjoy wrestling video games, but not as much as CotG. I love true role-playing games (damn the d20 system to hell! Except for Know Your Role, that's cool), but there si something about the GWF, CPC and aCe that gets my mind going more than RPGs do. I to do not put the game down when I'm done rolling a card. I write my interveiws down so I can look them over later. I still have the first one I ever wrote, it was Johnny Rocket interveiwing DragonMaster. I'm even thinking of buring a few CDs with the theme music I use for the wrestlers so I can listen to it in the car. And to top it all off, name another game where the fans are this close to each oher and the owner/creator of the game? Not one I can think of. The GWF Comunity is exactly that, a comunity. Sure we have our difrences (Swarm, I'm looking at you ), but in the end it is the love of the game that brings us back here to discus the latest happeings in the fed in our head with others of a like mind. And that is another of this game's many strong points.

[ringsyde]

The only other hobby I've invested as much time, effort, money creativity and imagination into is my comic collection. Frankly, I can't see myself getting tired of this game. Everytime I think I've done it all, my imagination roams and the dice get hot again.

[owney69]

I have been playing since 1986. I'd be willing to bet I'm the oldest guy playing this game. I haven't followed Toms storyline since the second invasion, but make my own. Thats what great about this game. I'm 48 yrs. old, I've been through two wives and my kids are grown with kids of their own and the one constant in my life has been Champions / Galaxy. It gets in your blood!!

[cakejedi]

Champions of the Galaxy carries very personal importance to me. It has allowed me to express my creativity in a way that I never imagined. This game has started a lifelong interest in writing for me. I had never even tried creative writing before. The only writing I had ever done was term papers in high school and college. But one day, while playing the game, I decided to write out one of the wrestler's interviews. That simple little interview was so much fun that I started writing out all of my wrestlers promos and interviews. Now, I have a great love a writing. I am about to start a new career, and whatever I do will involve writing. Writing has become a passion of mine, and it all came from playing this game and the creativity that it inspires.

[Tongsoon of Cygnus]

amen.