| In Praise of Gaming, Part the First |
[12 Jan 2010|02:59pm] |
Due to the surprisingly positive response to my most recent post, I thought I'd put in another good word for the hobby of tabletop gaming. It's an underrated pastime that receives a lot of bad press, but so does anime and manga, and so did video games back in the day, so I suspect my words will fall on sympathetic ears.
But the accusation that tabletop RPGs are the nerdiest of the nerdy is demonstrably false: it is a hobby that requires you to have friends. Not a "friend", friends. These games are played in a group, and unlike, say, surfing, you cannot do it by yourself. Nor does Blizzard have an online word set up for you to go and play with people who aren't your friends. You have to know these people in the flesh, meet up at someone's house, and socialize.
Nerds have friends. This is something that the gaming industry just now seems to realize, despite the fact that 4-player games like Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Goldeneye, etc., were always hugely popular. (Part of this is the difference between nerd socialization in the East versus the West, but that is a digression I'll undertake some other time. Assume that when I say "nerds" I mean the North American variety, not the Japanese.) It seemingly took Halo to get game designers to realize that people would like to play with their friends, yes even co-operatively, and that these friends might be in their living room as opposed to screen names on the internet that scream homophobic profanities through XBox Live.
As a result we have Gears of War, RE5, Army of Two, Left 4 Dead, and even co-op missions in Modern Warfare 2. In fact, one of my friends returned Left 4 Dead because he had been misled by the title into thinking it was a 4-player game, and a 2-player game meant that some of his friends would always be sitting around waiting for something to do. Gamers have friends, or at the very least a sibling, who would like to play too.
(Sure, some people like to watch. I don't, really, but I used to watch my older brother play when I was a tot and enjoyed it a great deal. My younger brother watched my entire playthrough of Persona 4 - which greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the experience, particularly when he began to vocally slash MC/Yosuke - but in an RPG all decisions are strategic, and can be made together. In an FPS a split-second hesitation could kill you. But do you know what would have improved the experience? If he could pick up a second controller and take over some of the characters. A two-player RPG would groundbreaking and innovative, and I think a two player co-op RTS would be incredible... but this is another digression.)
Ahem. As I was saying, nerds have friends. Friends like to play together. Tabletop RPGs let you do just that, and you can have as many players as you want (though for a roleplaying-intensive game I wouldn't recommend more than 5, but others would disagree). Throughout junior high and high school I socialized in groups that were larger and more active than those of my "cool" peers. The only difference was that we got together to drink and to play Dungeons & Dragons, Cyberpunk, and Warhammer, and marathon anime; whereas they got together to... do whatever it is the cool kids did in high school. Play basketball and get laid, I suppose. Frankly, we had more fun.
So if this sound like you - a nerd with friends - you may wish to consider tabletop RPGs. The smallest number you need is two - a Game Master and a player - but I would suggest at least three. It's a great excuse to hang out, and unlike poker or video games, it won't cost you a thing.
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