Throughout my childhood I was
exposed to role playing games. Whether they were based on the
role of a dice, “Dungeons and Dragons” or through
random chance in a videogame like “Final Fantasy”
role playing games were a nerd’s fashionable sport. It seemed
only those who played were highly intelligent and passionate about
the logistics of the game. There were a ton of different possibilities
playing with your friends in a group of six and now thanks to
the internet there are literally millions of adventures to go
on with people from around the world.
The two online sites examined this factor in great detail. According
to Jerry Stratton on http://www.hoboes.com/pub/Role-Playing/RPG.html
“You create one of the main characters, and you create a
story around your character. The rest of the players also create
stories around their characters. And there’s an editor who
brings those stories together.” It is the “Editor”
or “Dungeon Master” that keeps track of everyone’s
progress in the game. He/she would have to develop the options
based on the number in the dice and that usually worked more or
less in your favor.
I was accused of not taking the game seriously enough when many
times during play I would laugh at the logistics of basing my
actions on probability. The possibility to become a character
in a story is very appealing but most of the time the stories
would be centered on medieval, fantasy, sci-fi stories. Although
there are games that focus on comic books or modern adventures
most of them are not popular. In my life I’ve only met role
playing people interested in the medieval, fantasy elements.
I would agree to the rules if the editor would follow more along
the lines of the Uncle Figgy site at http://www.dragondogpress.com/unclefiggy/guides.htm.
According to the website the main rule should be, “These
rules are only guidelines.” If that were true it would make
playing these games ten times more fun. There have been many times
where a player would fail at a game simply because he didn’t
say a certain oath or pick up a certain item. The ridiculousness
of it was that the games became less fun to use your imagination
when the list of rules gave you little to imagine.
I appreciated Uncle Figgy’s analysis of the players involved
with role playing. I can say from firsthand experience he is dead-on
with the “Power-gamer.” He describes him as, “genuinely
likes role-playing, but locked into the concept of "beating
the game." He goes on to describe, “If one class of
character seems stronger than any others, he will almost always
go for that class. In games where point values are used to design
characters, he will constantly redesign her characters for maximum
cost-effectiveness and point-breaks.” It happens a lot in
groups of highly intelligent nerds. I feel I am more toward the
“Average Joe” but a little more advanced.
At the current time in my life I am more focused on school and
graduating than games. However, every once in awhile I think back
on the time when a playground could be transformed into an elf
kingdom. Or better yet when the dice favored my decisions and
I was able to continue the adventure nearly completely in my mind.
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