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Home Page for Donald J. Bingle's Website I originally wrote this essay back in 1994 and had it posted for awhile on the website for BenCon, the all-charity convention run by the Rocky Mountain Benefit Gamers Association, Inc. I am re-publishing it here on my website in connection with the Speak Out With Your Geek Out blogs being gathered in September 2011. I've re-typed it here as written (including the author description). I think it has held up pretty well for being old enough to drive a car. Read it and pass it on to all of those people you know who don't understand why you play "that game" or just send it on to the people who used to bug you about the evils of gaming back when you were a kid and couldn't or wouldn't talk back. I'm happy to say that I'm still proud to be a role-playing gamer.
Proud to be a Role-Playing Gamer by Donald J. Bingle This year marks the
twentieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons® and, with it, the advent of role-playing
games (RPGs). While RPGs have had a tremendous
impact on gaming, publishing, movies, and other entertainment media, they are widely
misunderstood and sometimes falsely criticized. To
know why this is so, one must first understand what RPGs are all about and how they work
as games. In an RPG, each player
(i.e., the real person playing the game) controls the actions of a character (i.e., an
imaginary person who is defined by certain
statistics, skills, and abilities, as well as by a description of background and
personality traits). The player play-acts the
character (much like in television, film, or improvisational theatre) as his character
joins up with other characters to solve a mystery or perform a quest, except that the
play-acting involves no set, costumes, or props. Instead
the players sit at a table with paper, rulebooks, and a variety of dice (4, 6, 8, 10, 12,
and 20-sided), interacting with one another in character (in first person, with accents,
etc. as appropriate) and telling the person designated to run the game (known as the
gamemaster (GM) or dungeonmaster (DM)) what physical actions his character is taking
(e.g., running, fighting, searching, etc.). The GMs job is to
receive all of the information concerning what the characters are doing, consult the
rulebooks and the information contained in the adventure scenario which is being played,
determine the results of actions governed by roll of the dice, and report back to the
players what their characters see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. The GM also play-acts any non-player characters
that the characters may encounter in their wanderingsthe local storekeeper, a
passing traveler, the Captain of the Guard, etc. The
GM adapts the adventure to whatever actions the characters may attempt, providing an
ad-libbing flexibility to the game that cannot be matched by computer games. Originally concocted as a
way to spice up a military strategy game by having the ersatz soldiers encounter creatures
akin to those appearing fantasy novels by Tolkien and others, RPGs have multiplied in
complexity and genre. While Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons®, 2nd Ed., a much more detailed and complicated version of the
original Dungeons & Dragons®, dominates the heroic fantasy arena, there are RPGs
involving secret agents, comic book superheroes, gothic horror, the Old West, the Roaring
Twenties, time-travel, science fiction, and various futuristic settings, ranging from
worlds run by a Computer Big Brother to bleak, post-nuclear worlds inhabited by mutant
creatures. Whatever the setting, all
of these games rely heavily on the imagination and creativity of the playerselements
sadly lacking in many games and sports. In all
Role-Playing Game Association sanctioned games and in the overwhelming majority of
available gaming material, the players portray characters who are good or neutral, not
evil. The characters are the heroes of the
story, out to thwart the bad guys. Success is
achieved by the group working as a team, so there are no winners and losers. (Even in tournament play, the players and the GM
select the winnerthe person who played his character bestby vote.) Though sometimes criticized
for their emphasis on magic, even fantasy RPG settings contain nothing different from the
tamer elements of popular film. Whether
its Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerers Apprentice, Tinkerbell as a magical fairy,
or Indiana Jones in the The same goes for the
concept of religion in RPG games. I suspect
that there are a lot more people who really believe in The Force from Star
Wars than subscribe to any of the ancient or fictional religions that are referenced
in role-playing games. What the RPGs do teach
about religion, aside from a few details about ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Norse
mythology, is tolerance for the beliefs of othersa lesson many of us should learn. Other lessons of RPGs
include an emphasis on reading (both the gaming materials themselves and the novels upon
which many are based), math skills (not just calculating odds, but a constant use in the
game mechanics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as an
occasional calculation of the spherical area of effect of a Fireball spell), and
perspective. By portraying a variety of
different characters, gamers learn about the inaccuracy of confining stereotypes, the
unfairness of intolerance and prejudice, and the value of diverse skills and abilities. There is a myth, never
statistically demonstrated, that RPGs are somehow dangerous.
Fueled by anti-intellectual bias and ignorance, as well as by confusion
between what characters say and do and what players say and do, this myth is largely based on
anecdotal cases involving drugs or other elements far more sinister than gaming. Certainly, concerned parents of school-aged gamers
should make sure that gaming of any kind does not eat up time that should be devoted to
studies and does not involve individuals or themes that are inappropriate. Unlike other forms of gaming and entertainment,
however, in RPGs parents have the advantage of being able to participate as players or as
the GM to better monitor and control the gaming experience if they choose. On the whole, however,
gathering at a table to play-act and roll dice with friends while exercising minds and
wits in a cooperative adventure seems to me a lot more benign than being sent out onto the
football field to attempt to maim other children under the direction of a win-at-all-costs
coach. RPG gaming is a sport without need for
booster clubs, cross-checking, steroids, playing in pain, frenzied pep rallies, ambulances
on scene, and failed-to-make-the-team suicides. While players do learn that
actions have consequencesin RPGs characters
die, become injured, or get arrested for doing something wrongthe players are not affected. The only danger is that RPGs provide less physical
exercise than even bowling. Gamers are not psychotic
loners seeking to escape reality. They are
intellectual, creative people who enjoy exercising their imagination with their friends as
an entertaining supplement to reality. I have
played hundreds of different characters and adventures spanning dozens of game systems and
world settings. Those characters have ranged
from cub reporters to skilled spies and from heroic knights to arrogant sorceresses. Some have done wondrous and heroic things and some
have been inept or unlucky. But never, in more
than a decade of gaming, have I seen anything inherent in RPG gaming to make me ashamed of
being a role-playing gamer. Donald J. Bingle, an
attorney, is the top-ranked tournament role-playing gamer and a free-lance gaming writer.
Donald J. Bingle, Writer on Demand TM
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