I originally got into Magic as a Dungeons and Dragons
alternative, but I’ve actually found it to be a nice mirror for self-reflection due to its
competitive nature. D&D is a collaborative
story telling game, and while there are plenty of munchkins who treat it as a
win-lose game, at the end of the day, it’s a group of people who’ve gotten
together to tell and interesting story.
As an aside, single player video games are puzzles, because they are
designed to be solved eventually.
Magic, on the other hand, is competitive at its core; the
rule system doesn’t let everyone win as they do in D&D and as someone who
shied away from sports and the competitive games for most of my life – the world
of competition was foreign to me. For
me, as I delved into the hobby in my early thirties, I came to realize that the
notable Magic personalities on the Pro Tour circuit at the time, in addition to
likely being geniuses in their own right, treated Magic like an additional
part-time job. It really drove home,
unfortunately a bit later in life than I would have liked, that excellence,
vice mere proficiency, requires effort.
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