Sunday, June 05, 2005

It's All Fun and Games, Until...

This news item out of Brazil struck home. It came out shortly after I encouraged all of you to indulge in your geeky fantasy life. Let it serve you as a reminder not to take things too seriously. Let's all remember the difference between fantasy and reality.

Although the article rightly mentions that role playing games generally do not have "winners" and "losers," most games do involve violent imagery ("Bob, I'm going to smite the dragon with my mighty Sword of Dragon-Smiting, with its +6 advantage and my strength of 50 -- and given that the dragon is sleeping and will put up no resistance -- I only need to role a two or better on this 20-sided dice...") to reach their resolutions. Also, several games go beyond sitting around your mom's basement card table, and require you to dress-up funny and act-out your character's actions. This is called Live Action Role Play (LARP). One of the most popular of these is White Wolf publishing's Vampire game series, which came as both traditional roleplay and LARP. Some of the LARP books are not so much rulebooks as they are props to be used in the game. As such, the line between game and "real life" can be very blurry if you don't know what you've got in your hand.

This kind of game has popped up in police blotters before, and it will again. Which goes to prove, parents need to monitor their children -- especially the mentally deranged kids.

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