Playing a Role

Given that my last two posts on gaming rapidly spiralled out of my control and became rather compendulous in length, I was planning on resolving to keep this one shorter. Then I remembered I was going to be writing about roleplaying games (or RPGs), and realised that on this, of all topics, I am quite likely to have a lot to say. As I start to write this, I'll try and keep it to a sensible length (not least so there's a chance that someone might actually read it!), and failing that, may split it across one or more posts.

For those who might not know what an roleplaying game is - in a broad and generic sense - it's quite self-explanatory. It's a game in which you are somehow projecting yourself into a different role. While that can actually end up applying to a lot of different games that aren't truly RPGs (such as some of the 'big box' tabletop games I mentioned last time), specifically, an RPG is a game where you play a character and describe their actions. 

Generally, though not always, there is a rules element to the game, with varying degrees of complexity, which are used to resolve actions. If my character is trying to break down a door, for example, I could roll a number of dice, factoring in the strength of my character and what the door is made of, to see whether or not they succeed. 

These games usually feature one person acting as a game master (GM) to describe the world and facilitate the players' interaction with it. As a player takes on the role of one character, the GM takes on the role of EVERY non-player character in the world. 

The first roleplaying game - the absolute classic, which most people will think of when you mention RPGs - is, of course, Dungeons & Dragons. Created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in the 1970s, D&D introduced a whole new form of gaming to the world, which has grown and grown ever since. D&D is an epic fantasy world, complete with monsters, magic, heroes and villains. The GM is referred to as the 'Dungeon Master'. There is a heavy emphasis on combat and exploration, but this really depends on the group - it would be easy to run a politicking, balance-of-power campaign, Game of Thrones style. 

If this book could talk...it would probably say 'I can't get rid of these NERDS.'

D&D is by no means the only system available, though - far from it. For any style and setting you can think of, there will be either a fully-fledged game, or a system which would lend itself to it. Horror, science fiction, fantasy, comedy, superheroes - you name it. All it takes is a group, a GM and the imagination to get started. 

One of my personal favourites is the 'World of Darkness' setting by White Wolf. It's actually an old system which was updated in 2004. It represents a gothic horror setting in the modern world, with various rulesets for different aspects of the supernatural - vampires, werewolves, mages, and stranger things - each of which lends itself to exploring a different broad theme. 

The settings are masterful and give you scope for all sorts of different game styles, from mortals against the odds and unknown horrors, to vampires vying for political control of a city. One of the things I love about it is that the rule system is simple, effective and satisfying, letting you tailor it more towards a cinematic style of play or a more gritty realism. It's easy for new players to pick up, and the fact that it is anchored in the modern world makes the setting very accessible too. Sidenote: my favorite side-series in this setting (which I've never had the chance to play/run) is 'Requiem for Rome'. VAMPIRES IN ANCIENT ROME.

You also end up with lots of gorgeous books.

RPGs are perhaps the strongest examples of something I referred to in my first post - escapism. You are trying to put yourself in the place of a character different from you, with the agency to act and explore a whole different world. This can be anchored with pictures, maps, even props, or a simple grid representing the game world, but it is firmly routed in imagination and descriptive communication. The job of the Game Master is to set the stage, your job is to act on it. The show Community actually does a very good (though sideways and humorous) job of capturing the essence of this, in the episode Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (yes, that one). This is enhanced by the fact that, the majority of the time, you create your own character, defining their background, personality and nature, and bringing them to life within the game system. 

Since first being introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by a friend's dad when I was about 11, I've become pretty firmly ensconced in a GM role. Throughout my my teens, I was DM for various D&D campaigns (and sundry other games) with a group of friends, spanning a series of epic adventures over the years. 

Also in my teens, I ended up running a couple of play-by-forum (World of Darkness) games with other interested people from around the world. I did this for about three years. Playing this sort of thing by forum is actually pretty impractical - it lets you take a lot of time to work on descriptive writing, but it means that any sort of gameplay progresses glacially slowly. Now I'm running another online game (D&D, via Google Hangouts and the excellent Roll20 virtual game board tool) with a group of friends. 

As I mentioned in my first post, it's easy to write off gaming activities as pointless. There is certainly a culturally ingrained reaction when people hear Dungeons and Dragons mentioned - that's it's the purview of extreme geeks, something fundamentally sad that's perhaps even worthy of scorn. It's a byword for sad geekery. 

Seriously, what's geeky about this? These are literal bargain-bin adventurers.

This almost invariably, as with so many things, seems to come from a lack of understanding or familiarity, but that's usually hard to convey to people in brief. The time I've put into GMing over the years has taught me a whole lot, such as thinking on my feet (you really need this…), various writing skills, world- and setting-building, and, in a weird way, presentation skills (I have a natural aversion to putting myself on the spot in front of people, but that's precisely what GMing requires). 

I'm sure I could go on with this topic, but I'll cut myself off there, in the interests of brevity (though the number of paragraphs tell a different story). My parting thought is that I view RPGs as one of the most under-appreciated, yet accessible, forms of gaming. If you have a GM who knows the score, it is possible to play (enjoyably and completely) with practically no knowledge of the system at hand. At its purest, you describe your actions, and the GM helps you resolve these within the framework of the game. This also makes it one of the most liberating forms of gaming. Even sandbox-style, open-world video games are naturally restricted by their nature. Boardgames impose rules restrictions for simplicity or style, but in roleplaying games, the only limitations are those imposed by your character or the setting. 

Back again next Monday for some thoughts on the major blockbusters of the gaming world - the video games. 

It's the forehead of MYSTERY!

The Game-ut of Gaming

It's been a relief to find that, lack of blog updates aside, I'm really not as far behind on GRaBaW as I had thought I was. By the time I get to posting this, there's a good chance I may actually have caught up [edit - I'm not, quite] - I yet again refer you to the beauty of a long-haul flight for actually getting things done. I certainly don't get to fly any distance very often, but I increasingly regard is as a magnificently distraction-free block of time in which to get things done. Or perhaps it's more a sign that I'm too easily distracted when the internet is available. 

I actually want to talk now about something other than books and reading, something which I've talked about on the blog before in some measure. It's one topic that gets me excited in a way that most others just don't, often to an obsessive degree, and while many don't share my fanatic love for it, I  sincerely believe it to be a fundamental aspect of human nature. If you hadn't guessed already, I'm taking about gaming.

I'm not limiting this to video games, though for many, these are synonymous with the term 'gaming'. I'm talking about games of nearly every form - card games, dice games, tabletop games, role-playing games, yes - video games, social games; games of skill, games of chance, games of skill with added variance. 

The tools of the trade

I'm actually stopping short of including sports because I really feel that they fall beyond my remit. It's not that I think they 'don't count' in some sort of definition-snobbery. You could easily argue for each of 'games' or 'sports' to be a subset of the other, and there would be those in both camps who would disagree with such vehemency that you'd quickly find running to be neither a game nor particularly sporting at that moment.

I mentioned above that I consider games to be a fundamental human activity - something that we're  wired to do. I'll talk about why I think that is in a minute (though I'm sure there are many more learned and scientific discourses on the topic). I have on my shelf a copy of 'The Royal Game of Ur', an ancient Sumerian board game. 

Ancient treasures - The Royal Game of UR (British Museum)

First, since I know that the majority of people do not share my overwhelming passion for games, at least consciously, I want to try and back up this contention. Gaming is an ancient pastime that does not appear to have been confined to any particular social class. Plenty of dice have been unearthed which date back to before recorded history. We have literally been playing games for longer than we have been writing. This may be why so many of us today fail to achieve our dreams of authorial fame as we spend some much time playing on the Playstation. Or something. 

The ancient Greeks and Romans had a healthy penchant for games, and many ancient games are still being played today. Surviving examples from China alone include Mah Jong, I-Ching, Chess, Cluedo (okay, perhaps not that last one). If you want to get a sense of the history of social games, check out this  infographic from Jon Radoff (his blog link appears to be dead, so I can't link to the true original source).

A further consideration which occurred to me today - have you ever encountered anyone who truly, completely doesn't like games, in any form? Okay, so this is entirely anecdotal, but I cannot think of anyone. Not everyone is as much of a gibbering fanatic as me (and, thankfully, some of my friends!). Some people don't enjoy playing epic big-box tabletop games which take 5 hours to finish, some people don't see the point in a simple game that comes down entirely to the chance roll of a dice (personally I'm not such a fan of up-chance gambling for this reason); some people love playing casual games on their phone, but wouldn't never dream of picking a fully-fledged console controller. But everyone has some sort of game that they enjoy. 

There are few things I this world that I enjoy as much as sitting down to play a game - but why exactly is that? Why do people take part in these activities which are essentially sideshows from the real world, and, arguably, have no point in and of themselves? I've heard many people disparage gaming in some form or other as a waste of time, one in which they don't understand why people would invest themselves. On one level, I find this a pretty fatuous argument, because you could apply the same thing to quite a significant portion of modern culture (why watch a movie, or read a book? At least part of it comes in deriving enjoyment from media for its own sake), but I do understand where this comes from. There is a difference between spending two hours watching a film and pouring hundreds of hours into living in a massive online world (but one which remains, conspicuously, not the real one), or the aforementioned five hour epic session round a gaming table. 

Generally speaking, I can see a few more obvious reasons that people enjoy gaming. The first is classic escapism - many games involve taking part in an activity which represents something of the real world while being largely divorced from it. This applies notably to video games, roleplaying games and many tabletop games. They can represent entire different worlds, the chance to play at being different people in a different situation which can be a million miles away from our own experiences or comfort zones. This can be so LIBERATING. It can be such a thrilling experience to step outside of your own life for a while. 

This doesn't mean that we're all so sick of their own lives that we're desperately searching for the chance to break free from them - I think instead that this is an impulse which comes from the same place as our love of stories and narratives - the same feeling you go through when you get so lost in a great book or film that it dominates your entire world for a short time. 

Games provide a way for us to make sense of things, and can act as social facilitators, giving people a guaranteed point of shared ground or a framework for an interaction. There are plenty of arguments to be made against this, and again, it's not to say that games should be a go-to substitute for genuine human interaction, but they give us a chance to explore social situations and learn things about each other that we wouldn't necessarily find otherwise. 

This also gives us the chance to act out different social roles. Those that have played group games with me will probably know that my behaviour can be very different depending on what we're playing (for better or worse…). I can be that sneaky, double-crossing, untrustworthy so-and-so if the situation calls for it, which (I hope!) is a long way from my everyday personality. 

On this last point, I'm touching on something that I want to cover in more depth in a future post. Simply put: games teach us things. About each other, as I've alluded to above, but you also just pick things up, as you would from fiction - facts and pieces of information, but also analogous experiences and ways of thinking that can surprisingly often be applied to everyday life.

Big boxes, small sneak preview

So there you have it, a wild flurry of my thoughts around gaming, and why I think it's such a big deal. I want to do a couple more, hopefully shorter, posts, where I can get into some specifics, and pick out some of the things I love about different types and styles of games, as well as some of the games I love and why. Hopefully some of my crazy passion for this has come across, and revealed something about myself.

If you've got your own counterpoints on games, happen to know someone who hates gaming in all forms, or just want to share your favourite games or gaming stories, post in the comments below.