<\/td><\/tr><\/table>I don’t usually go to the geek store (New Dimension Comics, Clearview Mall in Butler) on Saturdays, so I saw a different crowd from what I was used to. The upstairs area (where the gaming tables are) was filled with these sorts of players. I thought I must be Dorothy, because I’d just landed in Munchkinland for real<\/i>. <\/p>\nIt was disturbingly fascinating. I pretended to browse the comic books while they chattered and I got a look at the “other” side of tabletop RPGs.<\/p>\n
They were all in their late teens \/ early twenties. They were sitting around the table, waiting for the rest of the group to show up so they could start. A couple of them were casually discussing their plans to murder another one of the PC’s in the game next time they played, more or less because they didn’t like the player himself. Another kid was describing all the humorous ways in which he’d managed to thwart or subvert the DM’s attempts at building a story. He said this with pride. To him, this was the heart of the game: To keep the DM from building a story. He seemed to derive great pleasure from this, the same way a cruel child might enjoy toppling the blocks stacked up by a smarter and more creative kid. Their campaign was thus a formless string of pointless encounters and plotless conflict. The large group of players had scattered within the gameworld, leaving the DM to play with with one or two of them at a time while the rest sat around bored, and amused themselves by planning their own acts of narrative sabotage for when their turn came around again.<\/p>\n
I could pretty much extrapolate the rest from the little I’d heard. These petty acts of harm done to one another are most likely a constant source of hurt feelings, frustration, and of course endless teenage drama. I could see their game was polluted with all of the things geeks normally play RPGs to escape: Pecking order, bullying, teasing, and a thousand petty injustices visited on them by thoughtless peers. It was like High School without the education. <\/p>\n
I remember during the interview I said that “There is no wrong way to play this game.” I’ve said this many times in the past. The hosts were quick to assure me that there was, and so I was amazed that less than a week later I got to see exactly what they were talking about. If those kids in 9th grade had acted like these childish punks, I never would have been interested in the game. <\/p>\n
Part of me burned inside when I saw this scene. A couple of the kids were quiet. They were probably the punching bags of the group, the butt of all the jokes. I wanted to rally these kids around me, “It’s not supposed to be this way! You’re heroes inside! Follow me, and I’ll lead you through a story of legend! Live or die, you will do deeds worthy of remembrance! Villains shall flee at your wrath, evil shall be struck down, and your deeds will set the world aright. You know, instead of cultivating teenage angst.” <\/p>\n
Poor kids. I hope they stick with the game long enough to find some human beings to play with.<\/p>\n
LATER: I guess I should make it clear: When I say they are playing “wrong”, I don’t mean plotless games are wrong, or that hack-n-slash is wrong, I mean having fun at the expense of others (and the DM putting up with it) is the wrong way to play the game. If a player is sabotaging a story everyone else wants to play, or murdering characters because of stuff external to the game, then that player should go. The DM has enough to worry about without needing to babysit someone else’s defective kid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During my Fear the Boot interview last week I mentioned that my experiences with D&D were pretty smooth and low-key. In 9th grade, I watched a game every morning in the school library. Even though I didn’t join in, I developed a fascination for the game while watching those guys play. There was a certain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}