Role-Playing Games (RPGs)
How I got started
If
you were a teenager in the late '70s or early '80s, particularly if you were male
and white, you knew about Dungeons & Dragons.
Chances are you probably played it, or knew people who did.
I
was one of the people who did, and this is my story.
I
was 11 or 12 when I first heard of the game. A fifth-grade friend of mine, Joe Watson,
obtained a copy of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook.
He brought it to school, and showed it to me. I had no idea what it was all about
at first, but I was entranced. If you'll let me geek out as a designer for a minute,
there was something magical about that slim hardback book. Maybe it was the smell
of the fresh printing. Maybe it was the cover, with the medieval heroes prying jewels
out of a giant stone statue in a dark underground cavern. Maybe it was the pages
of small, precise type, set carefully against many tables and charts and fantasy
illustrations. Maybe it was how Gary Gygax's writing
made playing the game so intellectual and so much fun. It was probably all these
things and more.
Not
to brag or anything, but elementary school bored me to tears. It was far too easy
for me, and I welcomed intellectual challenges of any kind. The AD&D rules, unlike
the rules to any other game I'd seen, were complex and challenging. Until that point
in my life, I'd played games like Risk, Monopoly, dominoes, cribbage; all games with
relatively simple rules sets that you could learn and master quickly. AD&D was
layer upon layer of rules, some of which you only used after playing the game for
quite a while. The challenge of learning and mastering the game really attracted
me.
So
did the fantasy element. I don't remember exactly, but it was about this time, maybe
a little earlier, that I discovered Tolkien. I'd just read The Hobbit, and
it wouldn't be long before I would tackle The Lord of the Rings for the first
time. Tolkien's tales hooked me, and hooked me bad. Just look at me--now I'm all
grown up and writing fantasy novels of my own. AD&D gave me the chance to immerse
myself in fantasy worlds of my own design.
What
I'm trying to say here is, I had absolutely no chance of resisting RPGs when I discovered
what they were.
It
was several months before I actually got to play the game. Couldn't find enough players;
didn't own a copy of the rules. In the meantime, my brother and I invented our own
simple RPGs based on the principles we remembered from the AD&D game. We drew
little dungeon maps, populated them with traps and monsters, and sent our little
characters into them to either die or thrive. Simple stuff, no storytelling to it
at all. But we were entertained as hell for hours.
Then,
in October of 1980, the San Lorenzo Public Library formed a D&D club to give
all of us new gamers a safe place to play. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but
D&D was a huge fad among people my age at that time. With it went great controversy.
I wasn't aware of that, either, until our parents talked to us before we joined the
D&D club. They were concerned that we could tell that the fantasy games were
not reality, and concerned that we would become hooked to the detriment of the rest
of our lives. Very valid concerns, but to my young mind, pointless. Of course the
games weren't reality, they were games. And I didn't think I would get hooked to
the point of losing my grip on school or anything. So I told them we'd be fine, and
they let us play.
In
that first meeting of the club, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, my life changed forever.
I played my first real D&D game, with a dozen people I'd never met before, and
it was a blast. The other players were experienced, but they let us join them, and
gave us small monsters and challenges. We had a great time rolling the odd dice and
moving the miniatures around, defeating giant rats and other hazards. And when we
were done, our characters gained treasure and skill.
I
couldn't wait for the next game!
For
the next three or four years, the Saturday afternoon D&D club was the highlight
of my week. I made many new friends, and my imagination got stretched in new ways.
As a result of the games, I was introduced to many fine authors of fantasy and science
fiction: Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, Katherine Kurtz, Harlan
Ellison, Stephen Donaldson, and many more.
From swordplay to roleplay
The
D&D phase of my role-playing lasted about three years. During that time, I exhausted
about all the variations of the "hack and slash" style of role-playing.
After that followed a long dry spell where gaming didn't excite me much. The magic
of the early days was fading. Many of the people who were there for the first days
of the club had graduated high school and moved on, but I kept showing up, even when
few others did.
Then
a new game and a new style of play were introduced to me. The game was Champions,
a superhero role-playing game. It encouraged getting into your character's personality
and motivations more than D&D did. As the library club began to adopt the game,
our playing style evolved. Our games still had a lot of combat and action, but the
characters we played started taking on new dimensions, becoming more real to us.
We started having continuing stories about the characters in the games. The characters
grew and changed in response to what happened in the games.
Before
long, we were using role-playing games to tell stories. We talked about our characters
the way we would about characters in film or fiction. We started retelling the stories
we created during the games to other people.
In
essence, we created our own personal mythologies. I will always carry with me the
legends of the characters I've created and played over the years, and that's exactly
why, nearly two decades later, I still role-play. Before I started writing books,
I had already forged, with the help of my fellow players and referees, epic tales
of tragedy and heroism. I will always remember the descent into madness of Prince
Morgan of Amber, and how he nearly destroyed the home he loved, because he couldn't
bear to see it crumble. I will always remember the battles between my superhero Blade
and the murderous villain Lightwave Raider. Then there's Jeremy
the Unlucky, who is probably my favorite character of all time.
The
games are infinite. There's no end to the number of kind of stories you can tell
in a role-playing game. That's why I'll probably play for the rest of my life. I
realized it after I'd been playing a few years; this wasn't a fad, wasn't a phase,
it was a vocation. I had the role-playing bug for life. And it was, and is, a good
thing.
Why RPGs are a good thing
Over
the years, I heard one rumor after another about how RPGs were Satanic, or demonic,
or generally bad for the soul. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Take
a look at many of the activities that our children participate in. Television is
a void. It adds nothing to your brain, and sucks your imagination dry in the bargain.
The Internet is a little better, but it's a solitary activity. I won't even get into
drugs or alcohol.
Role-playing
games are a social activity that develop the imagination. They help people see things
from other people's point of view--after all, you have to put yourself into your
character's shoes, and decide what he would do, not what you would do. It's
a form of entertainment which isn't mass-produced; each game, each story, is a unique
expression of the creativity of the players and referees. It's not demon worship.
It's
storytelling. One of the oldest art forms known to mankind. It gets kids off
the couch, away from the the TV and the computer, and gives them a way to exercise
their minds and souls, allows them to grow and learn. It will make them life-long
friends, and give them tales they can tell for the rest of their lives.
Without
RPGs, maybe I wouldn't be writing novels today. Maybe I wouldn't have the friends
I have. Maybe I'd be an accountant or something else uncreative and boring. I don't
know. More importantly...I don't want to know.
The games I play
All
right, now let's move on to the hopelessly personal and pointless list of my favorite
RPGs.
Amber
Diceless Roleplaying. Based on the works of the late Roger Zelazny, this
RPG removes almost all of the rules from role-playing, and turns it into nearly a
pure exercise in interactive storytelling. Unlike most role-playing games, it involves
no dice or cards or elements of randomness to determine the outcome of events. Rather,
the only person in the game who knows what the characters are truly capable of is
the referee. So the players have to base their decisions on what their characters
think they can do. The result is some of the deepest and richest role-playing experiences
I have ever had.
Champions. I don't
play it any more, because I got tired of all the math it takes to create characters,
but I played Champions for over ten years, so it deserves a place on this list. It
was the first game I played that allowed me to create whatever character I wanted,
instead of relying on random dice rolls. I kept playing it because of that flexibility,
as well as the memorable characters I created over the years. While Champions is
a superhero RPG, its rules have been adapted for fantasy in Fantasy Hero,
which I have also enjoyed quite a bit over the years.
Traveller. Actually,
I'm not a big fan of the rules, or the setting, or any of the things you'd expect
a gamer to like about this science-fiction RPG. The reason I've played Traveller
off and on for years is because of a particular group of people who have, over the
years, given me a lot of pleasure in the course of playing the game. Recently these
folks went through a bit of a falling-out, which is a shame.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Without which, the universe as I know it wouldn't exist. Haven't played in years
and years, but I still occasionally have the urge to play an old-fashioned dungeon
crawl.
All contents of Skaldheim (C) 1998 by Jefferson Krogh.URL: http://skaldheim.com/miscellany/gaming/index.html
Revised: February 14, 1998.