Not going to explain, what RPG is – well maybe a little bit from my point of view and from my experience, but not a definition, that you could find everywhere. Instead I share with you my history with RPGs and what it means to me. Lots of people associate roleplaying games only in terms of “oh, that is this Dungeons & Dragons stuff, right?” and although it is not wrong, it is like saying “Cars? Oh, you mean the Model T? Sure, I heard of it. There are other cars? Oh, stop it.” RPGs are so much more, than just the first successful gaming world to come into being commercially.
A long, long time ago… don’t worry, not going to bore you with every detail and a long history, but a fitting beginning for the topic. I also started playing with D&D, actually “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” to be precice and I kept a memento from those times to this day. My first character was a Kender with the name of “Whazbumm“. My very first email adress was Whazbumm@someoldschoolprovider, my current main email adress is whazbumm@otherprovider and my nick in most games is either Whazbumm or Wazubu (a shorter japanese style version, or わずぶ sometimes). What it means… since it is not essential I try this for those that are interested to learn the story.
The story of “Whazbumm”
Back then I was really bad at finding names for things. For example my cat was “Cat”. When I needed to find a name for my first character I turned to what I knew and used names and terms from books and comics. The whole name of the character is very crinch-worthy, so .. I will not explain or even mention the other parts of the name. I read one Garfield comic that had a term used that was memorable to me, and I like the story, but in that moment I still remembered wrong and so the unique term “WhazBumm” emerged. In the comic Garfield holds something in hand, and when Jon inquires what that is, Garfield states, this is his sand-filled ZackBumm. Why is it called that, Jon asks. To which Garfield swings the sand-filled bag, smashes Jon on the head, and the sound onomatopoeia reads “Zack” while swinging and “Bumm” when Jons head hits the table. (very violent back then, even the harmless fun comics. Very happy nobody wanted to ban comics like they regularly demand from computer games or even RPGs). And so the name WhazBumm was born. Boring? Sorry, you clicked on the arrow not me, I warned you.
We played AD&D for some time, while exploring other roleplaying games. Star Wars (D6), Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia were my first ones. Then I was invited by my Gamemaster from AD&D to the gaming table, a self-invented fantasy RPG of one of his friends. We played “Jeopardy of Perils” for a very long time, while also discovering a few new and other gaming worlds, like Vampire, Tri, 7th Sea and Legend of the five Rings.
The time came, when the players of our long time gaming table dispersed slowly away – one player went to the US of A with his new wife and baby, another delved deeper into his studies and exams, another had a new found relationship and soone a baby too, and me I went to university away from home and only visited from time to time at the beginning and played as guest star (kinda) – now that I recall, actually with a character that was very similar to Whazbumm, but more mature now. But the very long years, that were grandiose, epic and very fun left a mark on me. I was very saturated with “pure high fantasy” rpgs, because we already did everything – we killed other characters, we got wipe-killed by the ghost of that character, we killed gods, we toppled kingdoms… so I never really played “pure high fantasy” rpgs again (or I tried to… but more on that later).
What is “high fantasy”?
Again, a lot of definitions are out there, but here my short explanation. Fantasy worlds with classic races like elves, dwarfs, halflings and humans, trolls, orcs, goblins and such. Worlds of Swords and Sorcery. Worlds in the state of roughly medieval or pre-medieval times. “Lord of the Rings” is high fantasy, if not the ancestor of all high-fantasy worlds that exist now (in books, movies, comics or RPGs).
New town, new university life, looking for new friends and a new roleplaying group. I found a club, the Celtic Circle e.V, we soon founded our own club, the Troll e.V., we went to RPG-conventions and held our own, our clubs joined a collaboration, where we manned a booth at the states gaming fair to foster and advertise our hobby. And I am still member and treasurer at the Celtic Circle, and we still go to the gaming fair. And of course, I explored and encountered or rediscoverd a lot of more gaming worlds, like Fireborn, Hexxen 1733, Fragged Empire, Star Trek Adventures, Star Wars, Legend of the five Rings … and so many more, more than I can list here, maybe I make another post with all my experienced systems sometime.
During this time I also discovered the role of the gamemaster for myself, and learned new skills with that. I learned to invent stories, to create characters and non-player-characters, whole worlds. I even translated some RPG-Books and earned some money with that. I learned to lead people, to moderate beetween people, to explain situations, so all at the table understand a situation. And of course we also learned our restrictions and boundaries. We all grew as players, gamemasters and humans. We learned to experience different perspectives through our characters and other players. It saved me through hard times in my life, not as escapism, but as an escape, sure, but mostly also as an anchor, to be able to play with my friends. A big part for me is to sit at the same table, to socialize with each other in contrast to a computer game, which I rarely play, maybe because of that. Of all my current friends, the biggest chunk comes from the roleplaying circle, and even whom I consider family besides my blood family, are mostly from those circles – I went to weddings and baptisms, I became godfather of two roleplayers children, I watched children grow up to become players themselves.
Roleplaying games are not only games. They can teach you about others, and about yourself.
In the beginning I mostly played shallow replications of characters I knew, or wished to be. During this long experience I learned through that, what I wished for and learned to read it – to extract wisdom from that about myself, to see myself from an outside perspective, and to grow. Even today I reflect about my latest characters I create and what this says about me.