Role-Playing Games On a Roll : Never Too Early to Put Kids on Path to Fitness : Fun and Games on a Roll

Some of the fighters were badly wounded; one was at peril of death. The rest drew together to alter the plan of attack.

Scene on a battlefield? Nope, a North County living room. A game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Part of the multimillion-dollar business of role-playing games for adults.

Play has always been important to children. But these days, it seems to be just as important for grown-ups.

“Some people escape by watching TV, some by writing,” said 33 year-old Jim Keais, an electromechanical technician at San Diego State University. “We escape through role play.” Keais is in the midst of an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adventure; he’s playing a cowardly fighter. Keais took on that persona as a reaction to the character played by Jim Ruehlin, 32, a programmer analyst at NCR. Ruehlin’s fighter was macho and aggressive. “You have to balance it out for the group,” said Keais, regaining his game role and bowing out of another fantasy battle in Ruehlin’s Rancho Bernardo living room.

Both men are long-term gamers, participating in role-playing games, especially Dungeons and Dragons, since about 1980. The game was developed in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson of Lake Geneva, Wis. It was beloved of the college set in the early days, but now there are large numbers of devoted, even obsessive, adult players. Some years back, Dungeons and Dragons was steeped in controversy; suicides were blamed on obsessions with the game, and it was damned as heretical and satanic.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons assuaged many religious and parental fears by toning down the demonic nature of the characters. The tacit acceptance spawned lots of other role-playing, or RP, games.

Other types of games--Monopoly, Scrabble, cards--are still popular, but when adults walk into a game store today, they are much less likely to pick up Parcheesi than they are a role-playing game.

Some RP games focus on the past, some on the future. Some are more fanciful and some are fairly realistic. Almost all have an underlying theme of doing battle. Often, the game is merely a book (usually costing about $20) that outlines the rules of play. No play money and little plastic houses and hotels here--although you may encounter some elaborate dice, even 100-sided ones.

The basic idea of the games is to play out mentally a scenario based on the abilities and traits of various characters. All the games require a group--sometimes as small as five or six, sometimes as large as 40--a leader and some imagination.

The games have captured the attention of far more men than women, but the number of women players is increasing. Male or female, most who play do so with intense commitment. Groups of friends tend to play together, and game stores help put players in touch with each other by hosting role-playing games on site.

And, although role playing is by and large a sitting-room diversion, some players have taken it out of the mental and into the physical realm. Groups such as the Society for Creative Anachronism and players of Paintball wear special gear and regularly go outdoors to physically take action.

These simulations are all about escape, said Victoria Danzig, a La Jolla psychotherapist.

“Movies and TV are escape, too, but these games are much more participatory,” Danzig said. “This is not being a recipient of what’s in front of you; it’s being a participant in what’s before you. It’s a wonderful combination of the adult and the child within us all. It taps into the imagination and characterization skills of the child while employing the thinking and problem-solving abilities of the adult.”

Although there are other role-playing games to choose from, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular.

To begin a game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, you need only paper, pencil, dice and reference books. There is a dungeon master who lays out the scenario and devises the quest, goal, campaign or adventure that may take hours, days, weeks or even months for the players to complete. Five polyhedron dice--4-, 6-, 8-, 12- and 20-sided--make up the primary playing pieces.

By rolling the dice, players determine their characters’ traits, such as degree of strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. The specific type of character--warrior, wizard, priest, thief, bard, etc.--is usually selected by players themselves, who invent wild names for their characters.

Sometimes players talk as their character; sometimes they talk about the character in the third person (“My character will attack Ork No. 2 next to the dungeon trapdoor”). Dice are rolled to ascertain who won each skirmish, and how much damage was inflicted. The books are consulted regularly on matters of procedure, or to calculate the extent of magic or power particular characters possess.

“We become our character,” said Jacqui Weathersby, 49, an Escondido homemaker participating in the RP game in Rancho Bernardo. “We don’t become neurotic and strange. We always know who we really are. But the joy is to be someone or something else.” Weathersby’s husband, Guy, 41, a systems analyst, said “the characters I come up with are never like me.”

What kind of people get involved in this activity on a serious and regular basis? “Nerds,” Ruehlin said. “Techies,” Keais said. “People with a good sense of humor,” said Jacqui Weathersby. “Peculiarly bizarre people,” adds Guy Weathersby. “And those with imagination, more than anything else.”

At the House of Armand Bookstore in Oceanside, at least half the stock and sales are RP games. Chris Morris, the store’s RP specialist, estimated that customers range in age from 13 to 40 (though many say players’ ages extend to the 80s).

At 25, Morris has been playing RP games for 10 years--he played every day in high school. He said comic book collectors are usually also interested in RP games and that the two types of products are often sold side by side.

At The Gamekeeper in Escondido, RP games make up 30% to 40% of monthly sales, and restocking is necessary every week. Assistant manager and RP specialist Dave Kinder said Advanced Dungeons and Dragons has been the best seller for 12 years. But he said that the latest, hottest RP game on the market is Palladium’s The Rifts.

He describes it as a mix of almost every RP game; there’s some fantasy, science fiction, robots, space ships and alternate dimensions.

Sometimes, RP games can be facilitated by miniatures, small pewter or lead figures that help the game master track where all the characters are in relation to the “enemy.”

But miniatures is a whole business in itself, particularly geared for war games. These are strategy games that attempt to re-create past battles and wars, from ancient conflicts to Desert Storm, and everything in-between. Kinder said the strategy games are played mostly by men, especially businessmen and military personnel.

The games last a long time, but the preparation takes even longer. Most strategy players hand-paint their own miniatures in exquisite detail.

At Game Towne in Old Town, the Napoleonic Wars are being waged in miniature. At the Carlsbad store, there are monthly strategy and role-play games and tournaments. Game Towne-Carlsbad salesman Russ Tarvin, 19, is an avid gamer. He now favors BattleTech, a high-tech, futuristic cross between a role-play and a strategy game, based on the cartoon series RoboTech.

Overall, he said, “people who game are weird, including myself. But most people lead a dreary life . . . anything to make their lives more enjoyable. It’s a way to meet new people, learn problem-solving and communication skills and have fun.”

Tarvin gets a kick out of the humorous RP games--like Paranoia. He calls those the beer-and-pretzels games. He also sells party games, such as How to Host a Murder.

Tarvin said some of the role-play games could use a change in design to reflect the end of the Cold War. “There’s no big red bear in the woods anymore,” he said. “The designers may be going back to historical games. That’s safe.”

The Gamekeeper’s Dave Kinder sees a different trend coming in the game world. He expects that the 1990s will see the merging of book and game, such as a novel with an accessory game or module that lets you re-create the story.

Meanwhile, there are inveterate gamers such as Scott Castillo, 45, a Vista real estate developer and film distributor.

He has been a gamer for as long as he can remember. He started out with board games as a kid, then graduated to “paper games” such as Dungeons and Dragons.

He has since moved on to live-action games, where he stages a murder mystery or an adventure. “It’s like improvisational theater,” he said. “You get a character but no script. No one knows how it’s going to come out.”

Castillo said the paper games are more structured and require more imagination. “You have to sit at a table and roll dice and imagine the dragon, or the dark and stormy night. I would rather take the people there, put them in a movie situation as a character and build that 15-foot dragon.”

Castillo held his first murder-mystery weekend for friends in 1980. He rented a 1903 two-story house and a bunch of 1920s’ period costumes. The weekend was such a hit that he now stages these events for his friends every few months, with all kinds of scenarios: outer space, dream travel and murder mysteries.

One live-action game in 1985 proved to be fortuitous for Castillo; that’s where he met his wife, Pam. As a duo, they have by no means decreased their interest in games. One room of their house is devoted to gaming, with a poker table, shelves of board and paper games and closets full of props for live action. Castillo said he owns about 100 RP dice and 1,000 miniatures. His motto is: “Play till you drop.”

To spread the word, Castillo organizes a game convention in Mission Valley twice a year; the next one will likely be in November. His displays and demonstrations range from bridge and Monopoly to RP games and miniatures.

Even Castillo, a Vietnam veteran, concedes that some games can be too much at times. Paintball, for example, was “a little too rough for my taste, and a little too close to real combat.”

Paintball, developed about 10 years ago in New Hampshire, is a live-action war game conducted on a playing field.

It is primarily a team sport, where one team (ranging in numberfrom 5 to 500) tries to capture the flag of the other team and eliminate opposing players by shooting, or tagging, them with a paintball expelled from a special air-powered paint gun.

The paintball itself is a round, thin-skinned gelatin capsule filled with colored liquid (something like a large bath oil bead). The paint inside--available in different colors--is water soluble and nontoxic. When a paintball tags a player, the thin gelatin skin splits open and the liquid leaves a bright mark about the size of a 50-cent piece. A player who is marked is eliminated from the game.

Some consider it to be a dangerous sport, although there are safety precautions taken, such as mandatory goggles. And the staff at the playing fields (there’s one in Temecula, and one in South Bay) are versed in first aid.

“There’s no real danger,” said Bill Kuhn, who is a 28 year-old “airsmith” for The Paintball Connection on Miramar Road. (Like a gunsmith, Kuhn repairs and makes paintball guns). “I’ve been playing for three years, and I’ve never seen a bad injury.”

According to the International Paintball Players Assn., headquartered in Los Angeles, the sport is as safe as golf, jogging, tennis, swimming and many other activities. Nonetheless, all players must sign a waiver that acknowledges that they could conceivably die playing this sport. “But basically,” Kuhn said, “it’s just a cross between tag and hide ‘n’ seek.” Then he concedes, “There is the war part of it.”

Paintball participants, said Kuhn, are “a different group from gaming people.”

The age range of participants is from 12 to 65, but most are 18 to 30. Men outnumber women 10 to 1, and a lot of them are military or former military members. “There’s a real adrenaline rush,” Kuhn said, “and a lot of camaraderie. The game is a great leveler. Who you are doesn’t matter out there. We have McDonald’s workers side by side with surgeons. There’s instantaneous friendship on the field, and a lot of team work.”

Another live-action pursuit, but one with an emphasis on history, is the Society for Creative Anachronism. The society was created about 20 years ago in the back yard of a Berkeley student. A bunch of history buffs set out to re-create the Renaissance period (roughly spanning the years 1066-1600). Over time, the society became international, and geopolitical regions were split into kingdoms, baronies and households.

San Diego County, for example, is the Barony of Calafia, and it is made up of various cantons. North County is the Canton of Summergate, and it is headed by Mistress Fia Naheed (Francena Sherburne).

The Camp Pendleton-Oceanside branch is called Stronghold the Dunnamaramianna, headed by Tadhg O’Murchadha the Wanderer (Ted Simmons).

On becoming a member of the society, one takes on a fictitious name and character and studies how someone in that time and place would have acted, dressed, and amused himself or herself.

The person determines the traits and attributes of his character (similar to Dungeons and Dragons, but without the dice) and assumes the persona of that character, pursuing his interests, and constructing appropriate costumes to clothe the character.

Participants aren’t permitted to use actual characters, real or fictitious. They cannot, for instance, take on the persona of King Arthur or William Shakespeare.

Sherburne is a 41 year-old Escondido accountant during the week. But on weekends, she’s a young, fancily dressed 12th-Century Welsh woman who spins, sews and weaves.

People who become Viking warriors, or knights errant, must do battle. There are jousts, tournaments and fights in full, authentic armor (which may cost up to $3,000 to make or buy).

The society has been criticized because of the potential for injury during battle, although safety precautions are taken. Fighters, who pad themselves and their weighty weapons, must abide by specific rules of safe combat. Marshals preside at tournaments, and nurses are always on duty.

On a less threatening note, society members join guilds to learn wine making or beer making, or to immerse themselves in medieval dance, costuming, metalwork, heraldic research, music, calligraphy-illumination or art.

The Escondido canton has been in existence for 10 years, and has about 25 members. They are anxious to attract new comrades in arms. “It’s really not a fantasy group,” explains Sherburne. “It’s a historical re-creation of society. When we have our events, we consider we’re at a court in Western Europe.”

Elena Carter, a 44-year-old social worker who first joined the Society for Creative Anachronism 20 years ago in Berkeley, said the popularity of today’s games was forecast by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book “Future Shock.”

“Toffler predicted that, given their stressful, tedious everyday work life, people would need to step out of the mundane and get lost in a fantasy world for a weekend or evening,” Carter said.

Toffler saw people flocking to “simulated environments that offer . . . a taste of adventure, danger, sexual titillation or other pleasure without risk to real life or reputation. . . . Customers entering these pleasure domes,” Toffler said, would “leave their everyday clothes (and cares) behind, don costumes, and run through a planned sequence of activities intended to provide them with a first-hand taste of what the original--i.e., unsimulated--reality must have felt like.”

The desire to be temporarily someone else without risking who you really are appears to underlie the new generation of adult games--whether played out physically or mentally.

“What these games really provide is a very safe structure to work in,” said Danzig, the La Jolla psychotherapist.

“Characters have certain roles, certain powers and limitations and within these, they have to triumph. It’s kind of a metaphor for life, maybe life in simpler times, when communities and roles were more clearly defined,” Danzig said.

“It’s more mental than emotional; no real feelings are involved. These games don’t tap into any of the complexities or vulnerabilities or painful family histories of real, complex personal relationships. There’s no threat of the real social world, where you may not know what to say or do. It’s absolute, total and pure escape, all-encompassing, involving a commitment that’s intellectual, physical and imaginative.”

Or, in the words of Castillo, the dedicated gamer from Vista who’s a fan of board games as well as live-action games: “It’s all great fun.”

“Most people like games, and they like adventure, and they like to dress up in costumes,” Castillo said. “They also love the thrill of an adrenaline rush. Basically, adults are just big kids.”