| ...with
our head in the clouds since 1994 |
A Brief History
Long about 7 years ago, there was a group of
friends and gamers. They, like many a group of
gamers before them, thought it would be cool to
start their own game company. They figured they
had some original ideas, and might be able to
make a little money sharing them. So, they went
through all the rigamarole of setting up an S-Corp,
and figuring out a business structure, and so
on. Well, it turns out that this group really
didn't make a good business. At the time, all
the realized ideas came from one individual, which
doesn't work too well when everybody wants to
be there for the creative end of things. That,
and 10 leaders and an anti-leader, with no followers,
is not the best composition for a business. Finally,
it became apparent that while the group had thought
that they all shared the same vision, there were
actually two competing visions.
So we went our separate ways. Those who believed
in a business model, and cared if they actually
made some money someday became Sancho Games --
the realists of the bunch. They have since produced
Let's Kill, a wildly successful card game of happy
homicide; Live Role-Playing Chess; and several
other small projects, and have more on the way.
Which just leaves us. With the split, we retained
ownership of the original name, The Impossible
Dream (well, technically, Jill Krynicki did, but
ownership in this case is only a matter of honor,
since there are no trademarks involved, and a
simple name, especially one with a public-domain
source, certainly falls outside the realm of IP
law -- and, in any case, we use it now with her
blessing). The name took about 4 years off, while
we did our own thing, then we resurrected it when
we realized we had a need for it. Akira! and Nat
(as well as Jill) were in the original Impossible
Dream, before the split, while others weren't.
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Our Goals
Sancho is the one who tries to reconcile Don
Quixote's beautiful vision with reality, trying
to come up with a way to mesh dreams and real
life. It is a difficult task, to bring the dream
to fruition within the constraints of the material
world, and not destroy the dream. We're not interested
in trying.
The name, "The Impossible Dream", means several
things to us. First and foremost, it reflects
our intent to do the impossible, with no regard
for practicalities. More than likely, we will
fail, but better that than compromise. So our
primary "impossible dream" is to make a little
money, when we're not letting money guide our
decisions. That is, while any sensible company
will balance, say, expense and artistic integrity
against projected sales, we just look at the artistic
vision, figure out a way to afford the expense,
and sales (or their lack) be damned. Similarly,
we're trying to support the fledgling open game
movement by releasing some of our games under
various open game licenses. In essense, we're
trying to make money on something that anybody
can have for free.
Finally, one of the main reasons for re-starting
this fledgling un-company, was in our philosophy
of roleplaying games. We have looked around, and
are disappointed in the relative lack of diversity
in published RPGs. There is so much more that
could be done with the medium, but very few stray
far at all from the establishment. So we want
to push the envelope; explore what can be. Of
course, this means that many of our products have
an inherently limited (or even non-existent) appeal
-- that's the cost. But it is our belief that
the reason almost all RPGs look basically the
same under the chrome is not that the public isn't
interested in anything else, but that they haven't
been offered anything else. Probably, like in
so many things, what we come up with will be too
radical to have any appeal: little more than well-realized
thought experiments, in the end. But, if we are
right, they may change, in little ways, the next
generation of RPG.
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