Last night I watched a documentary called Dungeon Masters made back in 2008, chronicled a few months in the life of a handful on serious pen and paper role players. It was in short terrible. Like many of these documentaries it made the mistake of making these people appear to be deeply unhappy and obsessed with escapism. There was a documentary about WoW players a few years ago that did the same thing. Strangely the only people who would be interested in this type of film are the exact same types of people that it disparaged.
A long time ago I was a pretty serious pen and paper role player myself (White Wolf World of Darkness games such as Vampire the Masquerade, Mage the Ascension and others) the inability to find a regular group was the thing that killed my love of the games in the end (still have all the books, they are awesome). As I became more of an MMO gamer I took some of these skills with me.
Just last night I was taking on the role of ‘Gabrielleah’ Guarding of Bree while playing LotRO, I play on a Role-play server and some times like to stay in character while playing in the world. In real life I am married, I have a beautiful daughter, a Job, friends (well one or two anyway) and am generally happy in life, so are many of the more serious role players I know. So why do these films make us all out to be crazy?
Even some of the hard core character obsessed players I know are happy people who know the difference between reality and fiction. Role playing is a chance to exorcise your imaginative muscle, it is a creative act no different to writers crafting stories or actors practicing emotion.
How many of us know deeply troubled and unhappy people who use role play in games as escapism? Not very many I bet, I personally know more people with drink problems that are much more destructive than role players getting a little serious.
All these years after the popularisation of role pay from Dungeons & Dragons and the social phenomenon that World of Warcraft role playing is still considered a hard-core geek pass time for the particularly strange and socially inept.
I even created a short You-tube video a while back to see if I could get some feedback on public opinion.
People at work think its strange that I write about video games and record podcasts without getting paid, I tell them its an experience that I find rewarding, would they think I was insane if I told them I like to get inside my character mind while I run around in high fantasy worlds? Yeah, Probably. Are they right in their opinion? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s better than any other interest or vice I could have.
So what if people think it’s strange that I know what THAC0 means and own a bag of dice. I don’t drink and have strong morale fortitude and a love for life, does that matter?
I do however think that the morons who create these documentaries and new articles work against us by melding public opinion in a negative way. Why is there never a good looking well rounded person who also role plays on these films? – Because people love a stereo type.
Am I the only one who thinks its about time things changed?
