What does the escapist love about this medium? Honestly for myself the transition from video games to pen and paper seemed like a natural evolutionary step for me, ironically enough seeing how visual media is an evolutionary step from those sorts of games.
As a younger lad and as silly as it was, there was something mysterious and downright byzantine about our older brothers fascination with seemingly arcane texts about mystical tomes regarding a complete catalog of mathematical formulations that represented monsters and the beings that were to inhabit their shared imaginary universes. At the time our youthful minds were focused on the free form role playing we did with games like The Legend of Zelda, a Link to the past and Yoshi's Island. For countless hours our collaborative imaginations eked out an existence beyond the functionality of Nintendo's level design. Like that house that was the 3rd or 4th dungeon of the Dark World became a schoolhouse populated with our own created characters and rivals that we often dueled during the tournament. Or how that Dungeon became an ancient Monk temple that gave upon those daring enough to run its gauntlet mystical power.
In other words WE WERE COMPLETE DORKS, shunned both by other dork purists and popular kids alike. We even roleplayed with Super Metroid, which was one of our more long lasting games that brought in at least 5 different people into our game. Oddly enough it was just a collaborative effort between me and my best friend Kyle to create this world and assign meaningless corridor crawls with function and purpose for our world. Our base was the wrecked ship and we had to eke out a living on this harsh and unforgiving rock.
Which brings us to my late teen years. After awhile I grew dissatisfied with the constraints of these pre-rendered worlds and they weren't enough to contain my imagination and creative will. So we both started to loose interest. That is until another mutual friend of mine caught me playing Final fantasy 5 on my emulator and Ultima 4 and decided that I may be ready for a much more fulfilling game entirely.
It was called Shadowrun, it ran completely on D6 die and pure adrenaline. My first character was an NPC with basic stats, it seemed far too complicated for me to enjoy (which was complete BS, seeing how I managed to wrap my head around games like Axis and Allies and Masters of Orion) but I think I was scared off by all of those numbers and slashes and multipliers. My friends played a Dwarf Rigger, a British street samurai, an Elven decker and Troll mage and I was a homeless NPC that didn't do much but annoy the hell out of the rest of the team. The world itself was phenomenal, we killed a gang in an Asian supermarket, my friend used a dead body as a meat shield and we blew shit up while simultaneously high fiving one another.
So once I got over my creative reticence (I was the kid in second grade that filled 10 ledgers full of fan fiction specifically a 96 page legend of Zelda story and a WHOPPING 500 page retelling of Final Fantasy 6 and my own created stories of course) I struck out on my own and started running my own games, filled with mystery, intrigue and adventure.
Now, I will tell you all right now, Most pen and paper rpg's require a decent and moderately good Story teller/DM/GM, WHITE WOLF rpg games on the other hand require decent and moderately ST/DM/GM AND good role players as a BARE MINIMUM to run those games properly, both nWOD and oWOD (new and old World of Darkness). Not the best system for a newbie attempting to get his video gamer friends into the world of pen and paper. They were upset that they couldn't level up their characters at a whim. They were upset when they couldn't make up their own system breaking characters that would end up being god and that they preferred the Pavlovian repetition of level grinding their Dragon Quest games. So this wasn't an option for them. And my best friend Kyle, the one friend I created worlds with wasn't interested either. He just hated the dice mechanic I guess.
So I struck out on my own (Like NOMAD) and I met a few interesting people along the way. They always preferred D&D. Now I like the D20 system, I do think there is a LOT of fun to be had from it... But most people are only interested in a hack and slash style game and they are hardly interested in the ACTUAL role playing. By role playing I don't mean maximizing your characters efficiency in battle, but actually taking on the role of a created life and how that life interacts with the world, what she or he would do in a certain situation and not just as an extension of yourself but as you gradually play more your life takes on more meaning and a richness of history develops because of that.
As a younger lad and as silly as it was, there was something mysterious and downright byzantine about our older brothers fascination with seemingly arcane texts about mystical tomes regarding a complete catalog of mathematical formulations that represented monsters and the beings that were to inhabit their shared imaginary universes. At the time our youthful minds were focused on the free form role playing we did with games like The Legend of Zelda, a Link to the past and Yoshi's Island. For countless hours our collaborative imaginations eked out an existence beyond the functionality of Nintendo's level design. Like that house that was the 3rd or 4th dungeon of the Dark World became a schoolhouse populated with our own created characters and rivals that we often dueled during the tournament. Or how that Dungeon became an ancient Monk temple that gave upon those daring enough to run its gauntlet mystical power.
In other words WE WERE COMPLETE DORKS, shunned both by other dork purists and popular kids alike. We even roleplayed with Super Metroid, which was one of our more long lasting games that brought in at least 5 different people into our game. Oddly enough it was just a collaborative effort between me and my best friend Kyle to create this world and assign meaningless corridor crawls with function and purpose for our world. Our base was the wrecked ship and we had to eke out a living on this harsh and unforgiving rock.
Which brings us to my late teen years. After awhile I grew dissatisfied with the constraints of these pre-rendered worlds and they weren't enough to contain my imagination and creative will. So we both started to loose interest. That is until another mutual friend of mine caught me playing Final fantasy 5 on my emulator and Ultima 4 and decided that I may be ready for a much more fulfilling game entirely.
It was called Shadowrun, it ran completely on D6 die and pure adrenaline. My first character was an NPC with basic stats, it seemed far too complicated for me to enjoy (which was complete BS, seeing how I managed to wrap my head around games like Axis and Allies and Masters of Orion) but I think I was scared off by all of those numbers and slashes and multipliers. My friends played a Dwarf Rigger, a British street samurai, an Elven decker and Troll mage and I was a homeless NPC that didn't do much but annoy the hell out of the rest of the team. The world itself was phenomenal, we killed a gang in an Asian supermarket, my friend used a dead body as a meat shield and we blew shit up while simultaneously high fiving one another.
So once I got over my creative reticence (I was the kid in second grade that filled 10 ledgers full of fan fiction specifically a 96 page legend of Zelda story and a WHOPPING 500 page retelling of Final Fantasy 6 and my own created stories of course) I struck out on my own and started running my own games, filled with mystery, intrigue and adventure.
Now, I will tell you all right now, Most pen and paper rpg's require a decent and moderately good Story teller/DM/GM, WHITE WOLF rpg games on the other hand require decent and moderately ST/DM/GM AND good role players as a BARE MINIMUM to run those games properly, both nWOD and oWOD (new and old World of Darkness). Not the best system for a newbie attempting to get his video gamer friends into the world of pen and paper. They were upset that they couldn't level up their characters at a whim. They were upset when they couldn't make up their own system breaking characters that would end up being god and that they preferred the Pavlovian repetition of level grinding their Dragon Quest games. So this wasn't an option for them. And my best friend Kyle, the one friend I created worlds with wasn't interested either. He just hated the dice mechanic I guess.
So I struck out on my own (Like NOMAD) and I met a few interesting people along the way. They always preferred D&D. Now I like the D20 system, I do think there is a LOT of fun to be had from it... But most people are only interested in a hack and slash style game and they are hardly interested in the ACTUAL role playing. By role playing I don't mean maximizing your characters efficiency in battle, but actually taking on the role of a created life and how that life interacts with the world, what she or he would do in a certain situation and not just as an extension of yourself but as you gradually play more your life takes on more meaning and a richness of history develops because of that.
