ROLE-PLAYERS - MUSINGS OF A TWELVE-YEAR PLAYER

By Jonathan Hicks

There are many reasons why people want to play a role-playing game. Why do you play yours?

It’s peculiar, but I’ve never sat back and tried to figure out exactly why I decided to take up role-playing as one of my hobbies. After all, there are plenty of other things out there to do, so why did I decide to do something that is not exactly what most people would regard as a ‘normal’ pastime?

I suppose the main reason most people like to game is because they are enjoying the chance to tell a spontaneous story that entertains all involved. It would be easy enough to sit and watch a film or read a book and get caught up in the story as it flows along, but do you ever get that feeling, when the movies over or the last page has been read, that you may have done things differently? Or do you put yourself in the same situation as the main protagonist in the story and try to imagine yourself doing the things they did?

When I have reached to the end of someone else’s story, I usually think about the setting that has been presented to me and wonder how I can extend or extrapolate on what I have experienced. If you take the setting of the Starship Troopers film, for example, you could quite easily create a gaming campaign regarding the other battles that took place elsewhere, or even continue the story where the other one left off with different characters. That is what is so good about role-playing, you can pretty much emulate what you have experienced and draw from it for source material or an actual setting.

A lot of this dates back to when we were children, when we used to copy our childhood heroes, pretending to be Superman and saving the playground, or imagining the alley behind the bike sheds was the Death Star trench and zooming down there like Luke Skywalker. The enjoyment gathered by these games does not necessarily have to be forgotten when we enter adulthood, and therefore we have actors in movies and plays who still tread the realms of make-believe, and other people who still enjoy the sense of unreality when performing in their particular genre. Role-players get the best of most worlds; they are acting a role, telling a story, and partaking in a game we fondly remember playing when we were children. The only difference with the game is that there is a set of rules to make it fair. In many ways, a lot of us don’t need the rules, but I guess it makes the whole concept seem a lot less childish.

It is a shame to think that the new generation may not be interested in role-playing - after all, they now have all their dreams and imagination supplied for them, in the form of computer games, high-energy movies and a continuous stream of marketed concepts which die out after a while and are taken over by the next fad. Role-playing is constructive and entertaining, and I would much rather do my own creating rather than have someone behind a marketing desk do it for me.

The game is also incredibly sociable. The idea of creating a reality with friends who share the same ideas and thought processes as yourself is exciting.

One thing role-playing taught me is how to interact socially. By communicating through a character I began to communicate a lot easier normally. You see, I was a bit quiet and withdrawn when I was a child, I was the one sat at the back of the classroom doing his work whilst everyone else threw paper aeroplanes or answered every question the teacher asked. Role-playing taught me to be a lot less of an introvert. Now you can hardly shut me up, I’m always down the pub with friends and my job brings me into contact with thousands of people whom I can talk to quite easily. So role-playing is helpful in many ways, it teaches communication and expression and is very informative.

It also taught me creativity, one of the reasons why I write so much. I understand the basics of character interaction, which I extrapolate as the I write the stories and I know the need for realistic dialogue that flows in hand with action.

There is a bit of a downside, though. There are those who are so absorbed by role-playing they will do nothing else and spend most of their free time writing or playing the games. This cannot be healthy. There is a real world out there which must be faced, and there’s no way those polyhedral dice are going to help you through life.

There are also the religious and anti-role-playing factions who are convinced that these forms of pastime are bad for your health and mental stability. These are just pressure groups who do not understand the game and need a target to rally others to their cause. Let’s face it, they accuse role-players of being a peculiar minority, or even some form of cult. If that’s the case, that puts us on the same level as themselves.

I’ve never let other’s views on role-playing bother me. In fact, I have never really had any problems. I don’t play much these days now that responsibilities of life and age have overshadowed it somewhat. If someone wonders what the games are about I just give them a brief summary as best I can (I think we all agree that role-playing is difficult to explain!) and act as if it’s an everyday pastime.

Which, of course, it is.

Jonathan Hicks – June 2000