Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Happy Birthday Deeandee

As the news has made clear over the last couple of days with a series of slightly bewildered "is-that-still-around?" articles, Dungeons and Dragons turned 30 a couple of days ago. Happy birthday to it.

The assumption that roleplaying games somehow went away after a brief heyday in the early 1980s just before computer games came along is a pleasantly inaccurate one judging by the number of responses to the BBC's article covering the anniversary. I'm not sure how such an assumption arose, seeing as all through my life I've been aware of people with rulebooks and funny-shaped dice lurking in corners transporting each other to another plane of existence (hem hem). That said, I've always thought that the best thing about tabletop RPGs is the funny-shaped dice and books full of complicated tables anyway and doing any actual playing can take away from time that could be more productively spent reading rulebooks. This must be one of those geek things - interested in learning about complicated systems and figuring out how they work, but losing interest when it comes to actually using them.

And pish, tosh and fiddle-faddle to the respondents in the BBC's article who declared role-playing games to be antisocial. I'm still trying to work out how sitting around having what's basically a slightly structured conversation can be antisocial, and am coming to the conclusion that the people who make these claims are probably the sort of people who think that sitting around watching a football match on telly with their mates while drinking lager is the ultimate social activity.

Hell, for some people it leads to far too much socialising - even with the devil himself!. Of course, pish and tosh to him as well (Jack Chick, not the Devil). Any gamer reading the first frame will know that the player's being pretty presumptuous in declaring that their spell will work, which shows how much he knows. And well.. is playing D&D really training for witchcraft? I was under the impression that evil witches didn't just sit around rolling funny-shaped dice and eating pizza while arguing about the rules. Make a saving throw against cluelessness at DC20 with a -3 penalty for bad research, Jack.

Anyway. Here's to at least another 30 years of an enjoyable pastime - sitting around with a bunch of friends telling stories. A more harmless activity it's hard to imagine.

Posted by mpk at April 27, 2004 5:28 PM | TrackBack