In Search of Adventure : Players of Live-Action Fantasy Games Pretend They’re Someone They Could Never Be in the Mundane Real World

It is the wee hours of a Sunday morning, and most of the city is safely tucked in bed. But for a small band of heroes, a ghoulish adventure is unfolding.

Crawling on their bellies, they inch down a dank earthen tunnel. Spiders descend upon them, entangling their hair; the very ground cracks open, threatening to engulf them.

Suddenly, the tunnel walls cave in behind them, cutting off any hope of escape, while before them lies a perilous pit. The ruins of ancient pillars provide the only steppingstones to the other side--and these are guarded by an evil spirit.

Overwhelmed by fright, the group trembles and wails. Then, raising her sword in supplication, one member, a cleric, asks for a spell to protect her friends, calling on the all-powerful Lord of Guinea.

Her deity is so named, she explains in a mischievous aside, “because we’re all guinea pigs.”

The magical cleric, Robyn Denega, is a 17-year-old Burbank High School student and, like her fellow heroes--in costume and carrying rubber weapons--she is being introduced to what is known in the vernacular of gamers as live-action role-playing.

First imagined in the futuristic 1981 novel “Dream Park” by Los Angeles writers Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, live role-playing typically draws in science-fiction and fantasy buffs--the sort who can recite the encounters in “The Lord of the Rings” and will line up in the rain to see “Terminator 2” for a second time. It is the fastest-growing permutation of Dungeons & Dragons, which launched role-playing--where participants assume the identities of fantasy characters--as a gaming phenomenon in 1974.

This night, the adventurers are novices attending a games convention at a local hotel. Guided by members of the International Fantasy Gaming Society, with a Southern California membership of about 140, the neophytes are actually wending their way through a series of poolside rooms.

The rooms, murkily lit and draped in tarpaulins, are disguised to evoke the lost chambers of the Tomb of Ankara, where the hardy group is on its way to rescue the imprisoned king. And lest they notice the patio chairs stacked under a counter, for example, the game master, who directs the scenario, fuels their imaginations by conjuring up visions of acid splattering around them and menacing creatures lurking in the dark.

Eerie, pulsing music fills the air, and brigands and goblins, acted by gaming society members following a written script, attempt to thwart the group’s mission.

If it all resembles old-fashioned childhood fun--playing haunted house and scaring each other--living out fantastic tales with a group of friends has become a budding branch of adult role-playing games.

“People want to get off the couch,” declares gaming entrepreneur Mark Matthews-Simmons, 37, a co-founder of the International Fantasy Gaming Society. “They’ve been passive for too long.”

Begun nine years ago by fencing buddies in Boulder, Colo., the society charges $20 in dues annually, plus $20 per game, and has about 500 members nationwide. The two Southern California chapters, founded two years ago, represent a large contingent. An estimated 5,000 American aficionados belong to other gaming groups.

At the recent games convention, run by the Torrance-based firm Strategicon, the local players energetically recruited members. At midnight, about 25 society members turn out to initiate those who have come to learn live-action role-playing.

Unlike other branches of role-playing games, where high-tech themes prevail, live-action stories tend more toward medieval plots, such as rescuing princesses and discovering treasures. About one-third of the players are women--there are relatively few women in the largely combat-intensive tabletop games--and the games usually take place outdoors in national parks.

It’s a home-grown affair, much like grass-roots improvisational theater: Players make the props--a tarpaulin over aluminum poles serves nicely as a castle, for instance--write their scripts and create their characters. A good yarn can go on all day, but this evening’s mini-script will last little more than an hour, with various groups of initiates running through the story until breakfast time. (Each group consists of a knight, a scout, a monk and a cleric, all granted warrior or spell-casting skills.)

The real fun, players agree, lies in such things as camaraderie, blowing off steam and getting to be somebody they could never be in the world of mundane reality.

For instance, Robert Hanna, president of the Los Angeles chapter, introduces his personage as Sir Karok Stormfist, knight of the Obsidian Castle from the Kingdom of Uthar.

“I’m nobility, and I like to let people know it,” he adds with appropriate haughtiness.

In real life, Hanna, 27, is a photocopier technician from Rancho Cucamonga beset by customers complaining that their machines don’t work.

“I have to absorb it all,” he laments. But in the games he is transformed: “You become the hero you’ve always wanted to be.”

Also, says national gaming society president Paul Hayes, a 32-year-old computer programmer from Boulder, “you can explore parts of your personality you’re not able to express in your daily life”--becoming dangerously tough or shamefully gullible.

For scientists, aspiring writers and actors and office workers alike, the appeal is often irresistible.

John Brady, 24, a physicist from San Diego, and his wife, Elize, a molecular biologist, have left their analytical pursuits to play the evening’s “lich”--game talk for the evil spirit--and the imprisoned king’s grieving daughter, respectively.

It’s a “wild, off-the-wall” opportunity “to let it all hang out,” Brady enthuses.

Similarly, Denega hopes the game will exercise her imagination.

“There’s not a lot out there where you can put yourself in other people’s shoes,” she says, adding that most of her high school chums would rather be sitting in front of a TV.

After a few words on sword-wielding techniques and other protocol, the game master, Michael Geifman, a 27-year-old marketing executive from Fountain Valley, coaches the first group of adventurers on the slim story line:

“You’re a band of acquaintances, journeying together. You have heard about the ruins (of Ankara) and decide to investigate. You’re all poor, and you’re walking through a forest. It’s a slightly drizzly night.”

Just as they round the swimming pool, the adventurers encounter the first personage, the king’s weeping daughter. No sooner have they agreed to help her find her father than Dakar, an ambitious rival, appears, defying them to enter the tomb.

“I have spent years and years perfecting death to an art form,” she hisses.

Shaken but not deterred, they drop to their knees, entering the tunnel to the tomb. “You see a long shaft of dirt. You can smell it: mold, bugs and dirt,” Geifman whispers as they approach the first hotel room.

Against all odds, they slither under poisonous vines (strips of cloth strung on twine), crossing a perilously narrow bridge (a wood plank laid across the room); they duel a troika of “undead” (game parlance for the irredeemably bad who refuse to die) and finally face the gaping chasm.

Here, Brady swoops in--all 6 feet, 7 inches clad in black robes, maniacally cackling in his role as lich-spirit.

At long last, the adventurers reach the sacred crypt, slaying more villains and freeing the hapless king. Their prize is a magic egg that will show them the way to eternal life.

But, says Geifman, “that’s another sequel. No one’s written it yet.”