RPGs: Child’s Play We Writers Still Play
By Steven Arellano Rose, Jr.
Many of us speculative fiction
writers have been playing RPGs (role
playing games) since as far back as kindergarten. However, the
RPGs we played at that early age weren’t necessarily card, board or
video games. Many of them were live action RPGs (also known as
LARPs). Like other RPGs, LARPs involve players assuming the roles of
a game’s characters. Unlike other RPGs, they involve the players
physically acting out the characters and their situations.
Many gaming groups go to parks
and act out their favorite fantasy, sci fi or even horror characters
(zombies have become popular for this type of gaming). This form of
activity, LARP, contains structured plots and rules where players are
rewarded points when meeting certain challenges. But, because these
are role playing games, the plots are often not fixed but are
continuously developing by the players and their characters’
actions and decisions. Well, perhaps minus the game point system,
many of us have been playing RPGs of this sort since as early as age
five.
Before we reached teenage-hood
when we would get more freedoms, our world was that of books, TV,
movies and video games. And so we mimicked the characters of those
medias. It wasn’t enough to simply watch them on screen or even
maneuver them on it by way of a gamepad. We wanted to participate in
the adventures of our favorite characters of science fiction and
fantasy because we got tired of the everyday world of school and home
controlled by adults. So we played LARPs. This was common with all us
kids. The only difference between
us writers of speculative fiction and other grownups today is that we
never stopped playing out these childhood fantasies. We never stopped
playing RPGs.
All that said, my first
experience with LARPs that I can remember was when I was around five
or six back in the ‘70s. I, my brother and friends would engage in
our active fantasies of super hero adventures, especially Batman
which was one of our favorites. We did similar with Star Trek’s
characters. Then when the first Star Wars movie came
out we played our favorite characters from that, acting out our own
stories and adventures. That was the great thing: unlike the comic
books, TV shows and movies these characters came from, we didn’t
have to stick to the storyline of a single episode or movie; we could
develop our own stories, creating our own adventures and journeys
into our imaginations.
As an adult, I play RPGs in the
form of board, card, and video games. I don’t get as much time as I
would like to play them and much less time for LARPs. Whenever I get
a weekend void of any events or am just plain board with everyday
routine, I’ll play electronic RPGs such as Facebook’s Vampire
Wars, Spore, or Beast Quest, or deck-based ones such as Arkham
Horror. Some people can never stop playing their childhood fantasies
and so are die-hard players of these and live action games. But don’t
get me wrong, I’m proudly far from immune from this Peter Pan
syndrome of a type. That’s why I write science fiction and horror.
Fiction is, in many ways, RPG in
writing. When I write science fiction or horror, I have to take up the
role and so the mentality of not only my protagonists but also my
antagonists and secondary or minor characters. In order to advance
the story I need to know what my characters would do in given
situations and when I make one character handle a situation
differently than another would, doing so takes the story in a
direction different than the one it started in.
So I’m a writer of fantastic
fiction because I am one of those people who can’t stop playing
RPGs of a sort. We writers and artists of speculative fiction are
Lost Boys and Girls; we refuse to grow up.
Author Bio
Steven Arellano Rose Jr. is a
freelance writer and artist. He published his first short fiction
collection, The Fool’s Illusion, in 2013 and recently came
out with a horror short story, “Circa Sixty Years Dead”, on
Kindle. Besides horror and dark fantasy, Steven writes science
fiction, movie reviews and computer technology articles.
The following are Steven’s many
other interests: treasure hunting for ‘60s and ‘70s pop cultural
artifacts; jazz, rock and disco; video games; diet colas; history;
mythology; Eastern meditation. You can catch him at his blog
www.FarOutFantastic.blogspot.com
or tweet him at @Starosep2.
Links To Books
The
Fool’s Illusion: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F785ZJQ
“Circa
Sixty Years Dead”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LHCFW5M
