Invented in the US in 1974, the game quickly spread to university campuses around the world. A cross between war gaming, role-playing psychodramas and science fiction fantasy adventures, the game requires players - who tend to be male and computer enthusiasts — to adopt Tolkienesque characters such as warriors, magicians and monks who fight and kill each other in a campaign to win power and glory in an imaginary world. The game recently came to the attention of the Queensland Education Department when it was allegedly linked with a suicide. The headmaster of a Brisbane high school claimed it could psychologically damage young people with emotional or mental problems. Steven Mason, of the University of Sydney's Role Players and War Gamers Association, has been playing Dungeons and Dragons, and other fantasy games that were created in its wake, for eight years. As he describes them, the games can be totally engrossing, lasting years and setting up an addictive, alternative reality. "The games do provide a social life. They do involve introversion because you're not acting on a stage, you're acting before a few friends," he said.

"It's like a soap opera, because it runs on and on and it's as addictive as television, or even more so because it is a social event. "You end up feeling aggression towards the other character, but not the other players. "If you have a lot of very good players, if the game is very effective, it will create its own atmosphere. It will involve as much emotion as possible. The game takes over. You are just playing your alter ego. You use yourself as a script." While he admits the games are emotionally compelling and can become a way of life, be believes the claims of psychological damage are exaggerated. "The psychology of the person playing is what determines the way they play. The game doesn't have an effect on them. If you are in unstable person you could be influenced by television or reading, or whatever. I don't think it's any more notorious than that.

"It's a way of getting attention. It's ego gratification. The worst psychological effect in games I have experienced is depression if your character dies. If you spend a year working up a character and getting it powerful, it ran be very depressive." Steven now plays only the more sophisticated, second-generation games which he believes are creative, educational and intellectually demanding. He is involved in a game set is pre-communist Shanghai and is playing the part of a glamorous Parisian female fatale. He does have reservations about the original Dungeons and Dragons. "D&D is too commercial, its values are American, it's very competitive, very mechanical and bloodthirsty," he said. "I don't think it would have any psychological effect an people, but it's like video games, like space invaders: the emphasis is on how many things you can kill.

"I would say the younger the people are, the more problematic it might get because it could be a formative experience. It could be very dangerous." First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on August 20, 1986