Game On!
I have recently gotten back into playing role-playing games. For those of you not versed in geek culture, these are not bedroom shenanigans, but rather, games in which you, the player, play the role of a character undergoing an adventure.
I'm not talking about computer games, here, people. Nor am I talking about running around with swords like McLovin' in Role Models. Rather, I'm talking about games that are largely played in your imagination, with the aid of dice. And not just 6-sided dice. I'm talkin' 8-sided dice. 12-sided dice. And the most common, the 20-sided die. Or, as those of us who do this call it, a d20.
I'm not going to write some thing trying to convince you that this is not as dorky an activity as you think. Because one of the best things about reaching your 40's is that your "give a shit what anybody thinks" reflex is so badly worn as to be practically nonexistent.
But I do want to say this: these games are really really fun. They're social and creative. On those occasions when I've spent hours playing video games, I've felt this terrible emptiness at the end of it. Last night I spent 3 1/2 hours playing Dungeons & Dragons, and I felt great afterwards. Not just enterained, but creatively energized by spending an evening doing something imaginative.
I may have missed out on decades worth of fun by unfairly associating D&D and games of its ilk with the times when I played it in middle school and high school. Yes, it's true that we may have had somewhat pathetic visions of chainmail bikini-clad elfin maidens when we played in those days, and yes, I played at times when I was not very socially adept with the fairer sex, but correlation does not imply causation. The knock on these games is that it's something to do when you can't get a date that then prevents you from getting a date. (If you're male. One of the many cool changes that have happened in the last 30 years is that women play these games too now.)
But the bottom line is that people love to play games. Some people get together to play poker. Many people I work with play fantasy football. (I thought about composing a post comparing D&D to Fantasy football, but I didn't get any further than this: One involves un-athletic people obsessing over the feats of cartoonish superhumans. And the other is Dungeons & Dragons.) And, of course, millions of people play video games, making them the highest-grossing form of entertainment in the US.
And I, as it turns out, enjoy playing RPGs. I'm actually working on a novel that came out of a burst of creative energy that came out of my return to RPGs. (It's a monthly Golden-Age Mutants & Masterminds game. Thanks, Kevin!) I don't much care about whether you think that makes me a loser, but I do encourage those of you who enjoyed this hobby in your young, dateless days and gave it up as I did to avoid my mistake and go roll some dice.
Those of you who know what I'm talking about will dig this video:
