Geeks have come a long way since I was a child, but many adults still think a 30-something guy with a “professional” “career” should have more adult hobbies than pretending to be a wizard or an elf. Like, I don’t know, getting wasted and cheering for my local athletic millionaires, or shooting small animals with very large guns. You know, wholesome, normal hobbies!
Role playing games were my main social outlet when I was that nerdy kid being bullied. Going and playing Dungeons & Dragons with the junior high school kids was one of the few places where I could be treated as a normal person, ironically. I’m not going to draw any parallels between how, in real life, I was a scrawny weakling who was beat up a lot, but in D&D, I could play Throg, half-orc barbarian, master of all he surveyed. That really wasn’t what it was about for me. For me, it was a way of hanging out with cool, older kids who didn’t make fun of me. And it’s continued to be a great intellectual, nondrinking social activity ever since.
People tend to emphasize the R and demphasize the G in RPG when they want to make fun of it. But these days, it’s as much about moving figures around on a board and rolling dice as it is adopting a persona. I enjoy playing them more than I enjoy playing computer or video games because it involves getting together and hanging out with actual, real life people.
I don’t do a lot of heavy role playing anyway, because I have almost always played as the Game Master—that means I play as the game’s director, rather than as one of the actors. I take on the personas of bit characters and villains, but mostly I act as a referee.
As a writer, running a D&D game is a little like writing for a live studio audience. You get to shape a story with the help of some others in real time. Running and prepping games can hone your instincts for effective story technique. Also, it gives you something you rarely have at the keyboard, which is someone to observe as they interact with the story. Judging the player’s involvement and excitement can be very useful when you’re trying to craft a compelling storyline. It’s not the same thing as writing straight up fiction by any means (for one, your protagonists act with a literal mind of their own), but it stretches the brain in some useful ways.
The only reason I’ve considered giving it up, and do give it up for periods of time, is that creating the world for the players taps into the same creative energy that I use to write my fiction. And when I evaluate the use of such limited energy, sometimes I think spending it for the entertainment of just 4 people, as opposed to hundreds or thousands, seems like a bit of a waste.
But then, it’s not, because playing makes me new real friends, whose lives I learn about and inspire me with more story materials. It all feeds back eventually. More often than not, the games give back more than they take. I sometimes come home from a good session, hit the keyboard, and write, amped up by the excitement. If it did that every time, you can bet I’d never give it up.
One of the things I’m learning as I rely on my creative energy to make my living is how to go with the natural ebb and flow of that energy. Forcing it is something I really try and avoid.
How about you? Still gaming? Thinking about taking it up? Or have you given it up, and why?
Tags: D&D, gaming, role playing games, rpgs
My husband still games from time to time. He started playing in junior high also and met a great group of guys who formed a close-knit circle of protection for one another. They’re still close, and sometimes, when we’re back in KS for a visit, they’ll get a game together. Fun!
My junior high to high school gaming group included Hans Harmon, Jason Pavlicek, and Jared Stone. These are my oldest friends, and I still keep in touch with all of them (with varying degrees of success). We don’t ever get together and game though for whatever reason.
Hey, I was in there somewhere, too.
The concept that D&D is for kids started in the 80’s when TSR pushed really, really hard to make the game accessible/desirable for kids. They did manage to stigmatize the game, but they also made it much, much bigger than it was. Tabletop RPGs are far, far more popular than hobbies like historical wargaming or SCA, which was what they were lumped in with in the 70’s.
Oh absolutely, later in high school, you were. Sorry! I was just thinking of the 3 I started with in Lawrence.
Good points on the history of it.
I don’t really tabletop RPG much anymore, though that’s as much from lack of opportunity as anything else. I have played around with some of the more advanced board games (Twilight Imperium, Game of Thrones, etc) from time to time. They’re fun, albeit in a different way. I’d totally run something with ya next time we aren’t in different states.
At very least, we should get the group together for a Shadowrun session in 2050.
–The Still Unnamed Titan
Honestly? I had to give it all up when I left college because I could never find that calibre of players ever again. I had an on-again, off-again crew briefly during the Lexicon years, but no one had the time or dedication to hold together a regular game (the reality of conflicting adult schedules limited us to the occasional day-long bacchanal of “Axis & Allies” and football), and then my head was not in the right place to run one of my own. In recent history, I have no friends locally, let alone ones I’d trust the telling of a shared tale to.
Not whining about it — just a statement of fact. Solitude has limited my options, and as Germ points out — half of the reason I gamed was for the social aspects of the game. It was always about more than just telling the story on stage, or resolving a mystery or tactical problem. Just as a bunch of guys getting together to watch a sporting event at the local bar is never really just about the game on television, so were our games about the people we told the story with. Be it their obsession with certain breakfast foods, the ongoing drama of their relationships outside of our little circle, or where their head had been before they walked in our door — it was about drawing the nets of our social group tighter through shared experience.
And I miss sharing experience with people in general, and those people in particular.
I’m fortunate enough to be in a place where we actually have too many gamers. I’ve been trying to get in on game night at Zach’s since I got back to the States… :)
I tend to stick to board games, though. I’m still totally into RPGs but it’s much harder to get into when your life is crazy enough that you want to avoid making weekly commitments.