I’ve been thinking about how things change, how things can be changed by a shift in perspective or by a little bit of experience. I’m quite a bit older than Kaly, so my life experiences are very different from hers, not better or worse necessarily, but different. It’s important to understand that bit right from the start. I’m going to try to put together some of these thoughts that have been floating around in my head over the past few days and weeks, because I’ve come to understand a few things and it might make sense to a few others out there too.
Background
Although I’d not been involved in Roleplaying, I had always been interested in playing roles in theatrical situations, and there’s not alot of difference except for the settings one can do so in. To my own mothers’ despair and shame, I’d been in every dramatical play the school I attended put on. Although she disapproved, if the school said it was okay, then she had to suck it up and let me do it or she’d appear unacceptable in their eyes. So while I’d been able to express my creative self a few times a year, I’d had my own creativity severely quashed from a very young age and had no intention of doing the same to my own children. By the time Kaly came along, mothers’ attention was not as focused on her children as it had been when I was a child. And besides, even when she did get into trouble, Kaly could sell coals to the devil and make him think he’d bought something unique!
Role Playing
I was not introduced to Roleplaying until I was well into adulthood. It was my oldest child who at around age thirteen became involved in roleplaying with another young lad of the same age. The two boys had gone to different schools, only meeting after they both had to attend the same high school in the area. We lived in a middle sized isolated town, middle sized because even back then the town boasted a McDonalds! My Alex talked of other-wordly creatures and how he and Colin battled against them using dice and rule books. His face always lit up with joy and excitement, I could see he felt useful and alive as he retold some of the choice bits of the game they had played that day. They didn’t play every day, but I didn’t know why until quite a bit later. For a time, he was much happier than he’d been for months and when I looked into the concept of roleplaying, as a responsible parent, I had no problem with it. We’d had a few significant upheavals in our lives around that time and I was pleased he had something to ignite some passion and creativity. The name, Dungeons and Dragons, conjured up travel into dark, unknown places, treacherous alliances, and adventures with great beasts and heroes saving the day for young and old, rich and poor alike. I was almost jealous.
Time went by and Alex and Colin met at each other’s houses and played their games, sometimes playing computer games and sometimes playing Dungeons and Dragons. I supported their interests. Although it was Colin who owned the books, Alex showed them to me one day and I found them intriguing, capturing my imagination so that I encouraged the boys to spend time together so they could play out their games. When Colin visited with us, he had the habit of quickly grabbing and hiding the books away when I walked by. I started to notice surreptitious behaviour from both of these previously open and honest boys.
Something had changed and after a chat with Alex, I learned how the school had outlawed them from playing their game on the grounds months previously. And now, Colins’ mother was threatening to burn the books after already having severely disciplined Colin both physically and by grounding him. Me being me, I started regularly visiting Colins’ mother, with Alex in tow, so the boys could spend some time together. Eventually, Colin disclosed to me what was going on. His parents had been christian missionaries in another country and when his mother discovered the rule books, she sought help from her ministry. The informed among us now know how religion suppresses imagination and creativity, other than the creation of more babies, and those poor kids had been the victims of that ignorance. Caught in a power struggle between adults and belief, Colin was threatening suicide.
My Alex showed me the comics they had been given. The seemingly innocuous comics, like the talks they had both been subjected to, laid claim to a supposedly slippery road they were on with the Dungeons and Dragons game. I was gobsmacked, words still fail me, and even more so since seeing the movie, Dark Dungeons [Dark Dungeons article] Kaly recently wrote about. I had no idea it was so far reaching, I had thought it was confined to a pocket of small minded, overly protective, unimaginative people in the town we lived in. Even the Police were involved when books were burned and Colin was deprived of his liberty by his own parents. It was a trying time and my first introduction to the adversity roleplayers experience.
The next year I and the kids moved from the outback to a city where greater changes came upon us, Colin kept in touch by mail and I heard from both his mother and Alex that things were not going well for him. A flurry of mail from Colin came to our house, the envelopes covered in words of threat, doom and outright nastiness; although they were addressed to Alex I opened them as was my duty of care for my then child. Inside I found a series of small comic type booklets with images of daemonic creatures threatening life, limb and soul. There was no information as to where they had come from, the booklets themselves were untraceable. I was horrified and thought that Colin had indeed been cavorting with demons and devils as his mother had told me. I gave some of the letters to Alex but I withheld the worst of them, unable to come to terms with the depth of depravity of what Colin wanted Alex to get involved in. Many years later, during a discussion of those times, I gave Alex that comic. He recalled the terror that had been instilled in Colin by his parents for his own soul and for Alexs’. He explained how Colin had fought to get Alex away from the influence of D&D, feeling responsible for him because he’d been the one to introduce him to the game. We had a quiet moment remembering the effects of fundamental religious bigotry and how it affected so many people; in this case driving the kids to lie and hide an amazingly creative pursuit: the exact opposite of what the dogma was trying to do. You know, at no stage was the title of the D&D books or the game ever clearly referred to, so I never made the connection until watching the movie, because as a parent, I never saw D&D as a threat.
Years later, after Kaly and I began house sharing, I saw more roleplaying and even joined in for a few sessions at varying times. Before I joined in, Kaly had GM’d a number of sessions with me so I would have a working knowledge of dice rolls and rules, so I wasn’t going in blind. I loved the idea of story telling in a finite situation, joining with fellow travelers and sharing adventures in an imaginary world that we could continuously evolve, as our skills allowed. I joined her groups for a few sessions over the years, and although I enjoyed the game concepts, more often than not, some of the other players seemed inattentive, easily distracted and unwilling to cooperate with each other, making the outcomes lesser than they might otherwise have been. My latest inclusion in a table top game session was only a few years ago, and again, I was organised, excited about my character and ready to join with the others and play. Once again, I did not find the level of satisfaction I’d hoped for and expected. There was no sense of belonging and I continued to feel somewhat ‘under the microscope’, so to speak.
Let us move forward to more recent times, last week to be more precise. Kaly acquired a few board games recently, not the Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly type with which I am most familiar, but adventure board games. I’m quite unfamiliar with this territory, so was mildly interested rather than rabidly waiting at the door for the postie every morning they way Kaly has been. There’s a nice pattern of coffee cup rings on the floor where she sat waiting. They’re still there because I haven’t mopped for a week, there’s games to play don’t you know, more important things to do now!
I can now say that I have truly been turned! I have been turned to the Dark Side by a board game! Not just any board game, for I had board games as a child. One xmas I received a boxed Compendium of Games (circa 1966 or so) that I cherished and kept in pristine condition until it was opened and played with by some other children who did not have the respect for my possessions that I had. Once a corner of a box is split, all integrity is lost and total destruction is not far away. The sadness of that first mark, that first tear, entered my heart as if it was a physical blow and for the longest time I did not again indulge in games of this kind. Of course the sticky tape was brought out and stuck willy nilly across the bright colours of the box corner, and just to reinforce it for next time, the ugly tape was also stuck across the other three corners too. My pretty box was no more. Later that year, the tape began to peel, taking the top layer of pretty paper with it, one of the step siblings needed a die to replace the one he’d lost, so there went mine, never to return to my game box. All these memories and more impacted on me as I’d go through the lists of games Kaly would inflict on me and I’d be unable to decide on what might interest me. In the end, she decided, and waited at the door with coffee cup and indescribable patience. Her mind is never still, she concocts stories about everything. No really, about everything … and everyone. She makes me laugh about things that I often find too serious. Life experiences will make one think like that at times.
But back to this thing that’s happened to me. The postie delivered a package to our door, Kaly was there to snatch it from his hands as politely as she could without slavering all over him like a rabid animal (not that we have rabies in Australia, but you get the idea). On her return to the living room, her wild eyes and shaking hands told me it was time for a nice, calming cup of tea for both of us. Tea in front of us, I sat with her as requested while she carefully opened the box. You’d think with a reaction like she was having that she would have ripped into it as she walked down the hallway, but no, she reverently placed it on the floor and carefully and attentively opened it with her scalpel. It was a pretty big box. Out came each item, lovingly gazed upon by Kaly and then handed to me to admire and comment on. Most of the items I’d seen her form into bits of artwork for her table top terrain, so I knew what they would end up being and could comment appropriately. Then she came to the boxed games. I knew nothing of these things and she waxed lyrical in her descriptions and explanations. She piqued my interest and I started imagining what it might be like to explore being the mind behind a practitioner of magical arts in Mage Wars. I too lovingly caressed the boxes, such a tactile experience it is, one can’t help but continue to lightly run fingers over the case. The artwork of the carefully opened Eldritch Horror game board captivated my interest and I picked up the Rule Book. I later realised that was the beginning …