Roleplaying Games (RPGs) are still the best form of entertainment there is. In the 1990s, after the earlier Golden Age of pen and paper (P&P)* RPGs had passed, there was much talk that video games and computers would develop into such sophisticated simulators that people would no longer be interested in imagining things, that they'd prefer the more tangible sights and sounds of video games to the endless possibilities of the imagined action. When MMORPGs appeared on the scene, it seemed liked that day had come. But now, 10 years since the explosive success of WoW, traditional P&P roleplaying games are undergoing something of a Renaissance. Why?

The answer is, in part, because traditional RPGs allow us to break free of the chains that video games and board games conditioned us to tolerate as familiar. No video game even comes close to capturing the feeling of the limitless possibilities of a game in which you can play as any type of person, perform any type of action, and visit any type of world you can imagine.

P&P RPGs bring us together. Video games, for all their flash and beauty, ultimately separate and isolate us from one another by locking us behind the veil of a pre-made reality, but P&P RPGs draw us together through verbal engagement and shared imagination. Playing P&P RPGs help build real friendships that often extend far beyond the battle mat, with tools such as language, social skills, and storytelling.

We use these tools to build real things. They are imaginary, but they are not unreal. Other forms of entertainment are fun, but they can leave us feeling empty, like we wasted the time spent consuming them. Does anyone feel like they lost the time spent roleplaying with friends? We are left with the feeling that we created, at the very least, an interesting story. And these stories can be re-shared. How many of you have embarrassed yourselves recounting tales of heroic triumph or foolish disaster to people who don't quite understand the game yet? How many of us tell these stories as if we actually performed the deeds ourselves?

We build characters that represent our dreams and curiosities, weave them into stories concocted by our friends, and set them in worlds of our own imagination. In them, we visit places that could never exist, meet people whom we love or hate as if they were real, and perform deeds that could never be performed no matter how much we train or study.

RPGs are still the best form of entertainment there is because they can be anything we want them to be. They reward us by giving back as much as, or more than, we put into them. They bring us together, and together we build real experiences dreamed by our minds and hearts.

Next time: the technologies that we once feared would bring an end to P&P RPGs, now make it possible to play more easily than ever before!

*- In this blog, I prefer the less popular “pen and paper RPG” designation to the more common “tabletop RPG” term, which has become dominant in recent years. This choice is to prevent confusion between tabletop RPGs and virtual tabletop software.

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