I've always loved to play pretend. As a kid the most entertaining thing I could do was imagine myself as someone different in a vastly different world. My parents have said that in my early years a teacher once, in reference to my independent imaginings of intrigue, said something like, "I was a little worried that Devon wasn't getting along with the other kids, but then I realized he just doesn't find playing with them that interesting." And why would I have? What possible competition could attempts to direct the motion of a ball around a field hold to the vivid flights of fancy surging through my mind?
I still like playing pretend, but with age have changed the ways I do so. There's writing, which is fun in it's creativity but requires quite a bit of commitment to craft something really satisfying. It's certainly not on par with running back and forth during recess freely directing the actions of whatever amazing character I had created. Reading is even more restrictive, and movies and television more so still. The best way I've found to recapture that adventurous imagining of childhood, and even build on it in some ways, is through tabletop role-playing games.
Tabletop RPGs aren't known for being creative and fun, except by those who've played them. Their reputation has sadly been horribly slandered almost since their inception. The most popular tabletop RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, was criticized in early years, like many works of fantasy such as the Harry Potter series, as being something which promoted satanism and witchcraft. This had the unfortunate effect of causing the game's creator, Gary Gygax, to feel he shouldn't admit to being a Christian. As he told a convention of gamers in 2007, "I was reticent to say the fact, you know, that I was a Christian, mainly because I was afraid that I would give Christianity a bad name because I did D&D. So I did, I kept my mouth shut."
The problem wasn't helped by a mother who, in my-admittedly biased by persecution and somewhat uncharitable given the involved tragedy-opinion, rather than accept the sad truths of mental illness which caused her son to commit suicide decided to crusade against Dungeons as Dragons as the evil which stole her son away from her. The result has been a society that largely feared the game (it even seemed a little creepy to me as a youngster after I got an email, probably an ad or invitation to an online game, that talked about how to hold 'death matches' and my father mentioned it sounded like "A D&D thing," which was reasonable but devoid of the now known innocuousness of pretend in those early days of both the game and the internet), and pushed only those sufficiently unbothered by the tut-tuts of society at large to be able to enjoy the game. This turned out to be the "nerds," and has left Dungeons and Dragons in particular and tabletop role playing in general with a stigma of silly foolishness engaged in only by those who never go outside or shower that has persisted to this day.
All this is a shame, really, because the games are quite fun and have a lot to offer. Tabletop RPGs provide a system for cooperative story telling. They can be similar in some ways to the games of 'pass the story' one might have played around campfires or in grade school writing classes, though a major difference is that one person takes primary control of the plot and everyone else directs the actions and dialogue of the main characters. The game rules help with this by creating a system for directing action, resolving conflicts, and defining a character's attributes. If you want to play a character that's particularly strong, but kinda dumb you can put this in his ability scores. The old playground fights, of, "I shot you." "Nuh, uh, I dodged it." are resolved with attack modifiers, armor classes, and dodge skill rolls. Players give respectful smiles and cheers to one another as they roll high numbers on dice of varied shapes, meaning that their characters have landed heavy blows on fearsome foes.
That camaraderie is another great thing about gaming. A group of friends being creative and enjoying one another's company. They pepper the story with details, often humorous as it's always fun to joke with friends. Friends come together in the game world to take on great evils and seek untold riches or amazing power, and they come together in our world to have fun and tell a good story.
I wish the hobby didn't have the baggage it does, because I think it adds a lot of value to one's life and could be used for many wonderful things, but it doesn't seem like I'll ever be able to get together that church group of gaming friends where an ecclesiastical leader guides the adventures of a group of holy warriors fighting the forces of evil and striving to live the principles of their faith, the professional group of executives playing characters who are always striving to gain treasure and power but must also protect the innocent and the weak to avoid alignment penalties, nor the student group adventuring to find the secrets of the universe. Games are a painfully under-utilized tool to motivate companionship, self-improvement, and promoting good causes. Tabletop RPGs are another unfortunate example of this. I'll still have fun playing though, whenever I can find a few friends that also enjoy playing games and being creative together.
