The Art of the D10

Good crapper reading is important. One's time on the mighty porcelain throne is an opportunity to shut out the demands and frustrations of the world for a short time, a time to engage in some light pleasure reading and reflection. Some prefer magazines, others go with books that can be read in short bursts. But, while I'm dropping off the kids at the pool, there's no finer reading material than role-playing books. Sure, you laugh now, but the right gaming book is a well-written and impressively thought-out piece of literature.

Back in high school, my friends and I played a variety of tabletop role-playing games published by White-Wolf (most famous for their vampire game, which we didn't actually play). While similar, in form, to Dungeons and Dragons, I speak from experience when I say that they are quite different in practice.

I'm not speaking of White-Wolf exclusively. We also played a game called Blue Planet, a science fiction adventure set on a remote, ocean-covered planet called Poseidon (Biohazard Games). I've heard the Call of Cthulhu game is very interesting. The point is, there are others.

The difference between D&D and these other games, I think, is that they strike an excellent creative balance. The world of D&D is pretty formless. The players are provided with an endless array of tomes detailing unique character classes, monsters, and weapons. That's all well and good, since the Dungeon master is free to create a unique world, but they seem to end up even more formulaic than the more concrete worlds of the more structured games. All D&D games take place in an endless fantasy landscape dotted with towns surrounded by caves and ancient castles to explore. It's Tolkien as far as the eye can see in every direction.

White-Wolf's games take place in the World of Darkness, a world just like ours, but with their large cast of magical beings lurking in the shadows, in the forests, and manipulating world events from behind the scenes. Their most popular games, Werewolf, Vampire and Mage rely heavily on mythology and folklore from different cultures to empower the characters.

It's been years since I've played. I recently tried to get a game going among my friends in Pittsburgh. My efforts were met with either apathy or hostility. "[Crippled Vulture]," one of these prospective gamers told me, "we're too old for role-playing games." This brings me to my point.

"No, 'we' are not too old for them."

The image most folks have of the tabletop gamer is not an attractive one. Pimple-covered, thick-rimmed glasses wearing, physically and socially stunted youngsters sitting in a basement pretending to be Grog the Devastator. They cheer in triumph as Grog cleaves open the head of the Orc chieftain who, if not actually named after the captain of the football team, is at least a psychological stand-in.

It wouldn't be a stereotype if it didn't happen. To be fair, our early attempts at these games suffered from their own maturity problems as well. Fortunately, the White-Wolf games resist this sort of self-indulgent impediment to real creative entertainment. By setting up a world with just enough structure, providing the players with factions, rivalries, and overall themes which the players are encouraged to accept or discard, the games tend to stay focused enough to avoid the more childish possibilities. The "Dungeon Master" in White-Wolf games is referred to as the Storyteller. It's an important distinction. To be fair, the other group of kids in our high school who played once boasted to me that their vampires killed Martha Stewart by shoving a rocket launcher down her throat. We never played with them.

This level of attention paid to the setting is also what makes the books good reading in general. I haven't played in years, but I can still name all the werewolf tribes.

Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of D&D, has a new ad in magazines that shows a house with two or three dark rooms with players staring like zombies at computer screens, presumably playing an MMO. The living room, however, is well-lit and contains three guys laughing with tabletop RPG stuff on the table. I want to shake that marketing dude's hand.

Remove yourself from all the social stigmata associated with RPGs. How would you rather spend an evening with friends? Staring at the TV? I think not. It's a smarter, far more creative and engaging form of entertainment. Working together to tell a tale in a well- crafted fantasy world. What's so wrong with that?

Sadly, you can't force someone to play these games. A half-assed attempt is worse than abstaining entirely. I never give up hope that I'll play again. All my reading and planning on the john will pay off, because I've got hours and hours of gaming in my head and ready to go.

Until then, I wait and read and plan. And dream.

(grunt)