Social Gaming

     People sometimes call me a nerd.  By the time you finish reading this post, you yourself will probably identify me as a nerd.  I don't mind that; in fact, it's a title that I carry with pride.

     I was once involved in a conversation with a number of people of various ages, in which I said something brazenly intellectual.  As everyone smirked at me, I smiled and said, as I have on many occasions: "I'm a nerd."  Then a young girl said to me, apparently trying to be reassuring, "No, you're not a nerd."  A bit startled - nobody had ever told me that - I said, "Yes, I am."  Then she insisted, "No, you're not a nerd.  You don't tuck your shirt in."

     So I explained that it didn't matter whether I tucked my shirt in or not, that my appearance was irrelevant, that all of that stuff is nothing but a stereotype.  Your stereotypical nerd wears thick glasses and alternates between a plaid sweater vest and a white button-up shirt with a pocket protector.  Your stereotypical nerd has no idea how to color-coordinate, and doesn't really care about fashion anyway, let alone hygiene, because your stereotypical nerd cares only about math, science, and computers.  Most importantly, your stereotypical nerd has no romantic prospects, and not even any friends other than fellow members of the science club or, for older nerds, coworkers at the computer company.

     Because of this stereotype, people associate intelligence with being anti-social, and the nerds who take pride in their intellectual achievements become the nerds who are outsiders in school and will remain single for life.

     I call myself a nerd; I do all kinds of traditionally 'nerdy' things; but this stereotype has nothing to do with me.

     One of the 'nerdy' things I do is that I play tabletop roleplaying games.  If you're not familiar with roleplaying games, I can give an example you've probably heard of: Dungeons & Dragons.  D&D has become part of the above 'nerd' stereotype: gathering in someone's basement to roll custom polyhedral dice.  Most people never give roleplaying games a second thought, because they are 'only played by complete nerds,' and therefore are games for the anti-social.

     Yet, somehow, another name given by roleplayers to their hobby is 'social gaming.'  No, really.  In fact, the name 'social gaming' gives a much better idea of what is really at the heart of tabletop roleplaying games.

     I should explain what I'm talking about, for those of you who don't know.  First of all, I don't mean computer RPGs, such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Final Fantasy, which have become socially acceptable for non-nerds to play.  Those games involve teaming up with computer programs to fight computer programs inside of a computer program.  Your allies, your enemies, and the entire world in which the game takes place are all generated by the computer.  Everything you do must be one of the commands that can be given to the computer, and what will happen in response is determined by the nerds working for the corporation that programmed the game.
     Now imagine that, instead of working with pre-programmed pixels on a screen, you could team up with some of your friends to overcome the opposition presented by the game.  I don't mean multiplayer video games, where their programs appear on the same screen as your program.  I mean sitting down with your friends and figuring out how to get through a challenge together.
     Your opponents don't have to be pre-programmed, either.  If you had another friend who could decide what the non-player characters do, the game would be more dynamic and flexible.  In fact, why not go one step farther: remove the computer entirely and have a friend control the entire game world!  Now you're not limited to the specific maneuvers and results programmed into the computer - you can do whatever you want, go wherever you want, be whoever you want to be!

     That is a roleplaying game.  You and your friends each create a character all their own, and can now live out the lives of those characters within the game.  One player is usually designated as the Gamemaster, who creates from their own imagination a world in which the player characters can live and move about freely.  The Gamemaster provides the framework of a story, but the players always can - and often do - diverge from the original ideas of the Gamemaster, and create their own story.  Unlike a computer game, the story is fluid.  There is no predetermined outcome or set of outcomes; the players and Gamemaster work together to create a story from their imaginations.
     Furthermore, because every part in the game has been given to a real person, not a computer program, you have an experience that no other kind of game can match - a group of people sitting around a table, talking, laughing, eating sugary snacks, and just generally having fun, while at the same time inventing a story that has never been told before and could never have been heard at all if even one member of the group were missing.

     Doesn't sound so nerdy now, does it?  Now you understand why people call it 'social gaming.'  If you've never given pen-and-paper roleplaying games a second thought because you've always heard they were 'just for nerds,' I hope you see now that there's a lot more to it than the stereotypes of Dungeons & Dragons.
     D&D is a game of rolling dice and killing monsters.  Occasionally there might be some actual roleplaying, but some D&D groups just leave that out entirely.  Of course, they're missing the point, but hey, whatever works.  For those who care more about the stuff I'm talking about - the collective creativity - you might prefer GURPS, the Generic Universal RolePlaying System.  While D&D is designed for fantasy games and monster-killing, GURPS, as its name implies, is designed to leave the players and Gamemaster complete freedom over the genre, when and where the story takes place, and what characters can be involved.  In GURPS you can be a swordsman from the Dark Ages, or a trader from a high-tech civilization in the year 3000, or anything in-between.
     GURPS Lite is a condensed version of GURPS with only the most straightforward rules, but just as much flexibility.  It has only a few dozen pages, rather than the hundreds of pages in the GURPS Basic Set, making GURPS Lite relatively easy to understand and therefore well suited to beginners.  While many roleplaying rulebooks can be quite expensive, GURPS Lite is free - click here to download a PDF of the Third Edition.

     Once you understand how roleplaying games work, you might want to try FUDGE, which offers a complete, unabridged set of rules for free.  FUDGE takes GURPS' ideal of flexibility to the extreme, enabling Gamemasters and players unprecedented freedom in creating their game world and their characters.  You can read the 1995 edition of FUDGE here.
     If you like to laugh and have the money to spend, you might like Paranoia, a comedy roleplaying rules system with its own built-in world.  It allows less creativity than either GURPS or FUDGE, but it can be a refreshing change from more serious roleplaying.  Paranoia is a lighthearted parody of science fiction / dystopian future stories such as 1984, Brave New World, THX 1138, and many others.  Fast-paced slapstick designed to be the opposite of every other roleplaying game…I wouldn't recommend it as your only system, but it makes an excellent interlude between your more creative adventures.
     Of course, if you want to slay monsters and loot their treasure, you can always go back to the classic: Dungeons & Dragons.  There is a free version of D&D on the Internet if you want to try it, although that page's format makes it a bit difficult to work with.

     Whether you want to be a player or a Gamemaster, you will need several people to join your group.  I recommend keeping the number of people, including Gamemaster, to about 4-7.  It's best if you can get some friends to join you; if they're too nerd-phobic to give it a try, look up the location of your nearest gaming store and pay them a visit.  Many gaming stores hold roleplaying campaigns inside the store; if not, they probably know about other groups you can join.  Again, social gaming is best with your friends; who knows, maybe if you send them this article they might reconsider.

     Well, I'll stop here before I get any more delusions of grandeur.  In conclusion: Roleplaying is cool.  Try it.