I've been making an effort to read some modern genre fantasy, and one of the ones I picked up was Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame, which I originally read when it was published in '83 as The Sleeping Dragon. I dug it when I was younger because it's a classic RPG wish-fulfillment fantasy: college students playing a RPG are magically transported into the world of the game.

What struck me on re-reading it is how dysfunctional the gaming group is. It's run by an autocratic professor-GM who won't let players into the game if they're a minute late and terminates campaigns without warning, and there's intense social/romantic rivalry and dominance behavior between players. Rosenberg writes that the group has "All the dynamics of a kindergarden", and presents & analyzes them pretty unflinchingly.

Now, this provides dramatic steam for the novel, but I have to think it also reflected the author's own experience of roleplaying, and that he expected it'd resonate with the audience for the book. Certainly, it didn't stick out in my mind when I was 13 the way it does now.

The other example of roleplaying in fiction that I can think of is Poul Andersen's novella "The Saturn Game". The group here is quite well-adjusted as I recall; the idea is that roleplaying helps astronauts pass the time & escape the confines of their ship during a multi-year trip to Jupiter. Andersen wrote this at around the same time (early '80s), but it seems likely to me that his experiences were more based on the SCA than tabletop play, which may have been a more healthy social milieu.

In his novella it's the activity of roleplaying itself that's dysfunctional - inspired by correspondences between the Saturnian moons and the world of their fantasy, some of the astronauts drift into diceless play over their suit radios on a mission, causing an accident. It's hardly a blanket inditement of roleplaying, though, more a wistful meditation on how fantasy & lyric creativity can be incompatible with the adventures of real life.

Anyone else know of examples of roleplaying in fiction that might provide insights into how it used to be done/portrayed?

Andre Norton, Quag Keep. I don't remember much about it, except that the transported players only half-remember that they were ever anything but the fantasy characters. Oh, and they have these little unremovable bracelets that have polyhedral dice that spin sometimes....

Melissa Scott, Burning Bright. A far future RPG played in VR under the auspices of a RPGA like organization comes into conflict with real intrigue outside the game.

Niven and Barnes: Dreampark (and it's sucessors).

I would say there isn't disfunction per se (certainly not in a GNS-sense of the word), but more that there is the full range of character archtypes that one could/would expect from a mystery novel set in an RPG/sci fi setting. It's certainly a wealth of information about how gamers are often perceived, or were in the late 80's/early 90's.

thanks,

James

I haven't read that Melissa Scott; will have to check it out. How closely do you think it's modeled on real-life roleplaying experience and culture?

Dream Park is definitely an important example and shows some clear grounding in gaming convention culture. It's also a good early statement of a super-common trope in fiction about VR -- "it started as a game, but now people are really getting killed for (one more-or-less plausible reason or another).

It might be interesting to think about why this trope is necessary: why does fiction about gaming so often draw its electric charge by shorting out the gap between the player- and character-levels of the narrative -- by making the fantasy the characters are acting out become real via magic, murder, etc? Even "The Saturn Game" does this in an oblique, sophisticated (and somehow thus not as vicscerally satisfying) way.

Tav_Behemoth wrote: It might be interesting to think about why this trope is necessary: why does fiction about gaming so often draw its electric charge by shorting out the gap between the player- and character-levels of the narrative -- by making the fantasy the characters are acting out become real via magic, murder, etc? Even "The Saturn Game" does this in an oblique, sophisticated (and somehow thus not as vicscerally satisfying) way.

Tav_Behemoth wrote: I haven't read that Melissa Scott; will have to check it out. How closely do you think it's modeled on real-life roleplaying experience and culture?

Where did this one come from? Well, for once not from books I was reading, but from my long-standing love of role-playing games, coupled with a visit to the Iowa Playwrights Festival where my partner was one of the critic/responders. Listening to playwrights, actors, and directors talk about the collaboration that goes into making a play sounded like some of the same things that go into making a role-playing session work, and brought me back to RPGs. So I read a lot of them (didn't get to play many, alas): GURPS and its supplements, Cyberspace, Pendragon, Shadowrun, AD&D, Space 1899, Vampire, etc.

Oops. Guys, we forgot Rona Jaffee, Mazes and Monsters, which turned into a TV movie with (I think) Tom Cruise (a very young Tom Cruise). It sucks, but it does fit the category.

Interestingly, it does also bring up a couple of classic dysfunctional tropes. From this discussion (and others), I see two big ones, which aren't always quite the same thing but often come as a pair; I also see a couple of smaller ones:

1. The GM is a domineering, arrogant, and in some sense charismatic individual. Almost invariably male. Has some sort of power and authority over the players that goes farther than just running the game. Very often significantly older than the players.

2. The line between "fantasy" and "reality" blurs or disappears. This is a constricting cycle: far from liberating the players to their desirable fantasy world, the projection traps them into a world of cycling violence and horror. Actual people get killed or badly hurt, not just characters.

And...

3. Sexual tensions among players manifest clearly in play.

4. Players' personal difficulties and problems become character drives (I recall the dwarf berserker in Rosenberg's thing whose player is in a wheelchair; he digs down into his personal rage and frustration at his trapped state in order to produce the berserker fury).

I think clearly 3 & 4 are variants of 2.

Note that I've never heard of Melissa Scott, much less read her.

Certainly this is all in some sense dysfunctional, but I don't know that it's necessarily inaccurate either. I have seen 1, 3, and 4 in actual play, albeit not 1 to such an extreme as in Rosenberg. I know lots of players who genuinely get tetchy when 2 raises its head; I myself find LARP stuff totally unattractive partly for that reason.

#1: The Cult of the GM
#3: The GM's Girlfriend; also, the Couple Who Play Their Spats
#4: (I forget, is this a Drama Queen?)

Surely this issue has been discussed on other threads to some degree; anyone have good search-fu?

Hey Tav,

Another one is Hobgoblin, by John Coyne.

Paul

clehrich wrote: Oops. Guys, we forgot Rona Jaffee, Mazes and Monsters, which turned into a TV movie with (I think) Tom Cruise (a very young Tom Cruise).

For film, there is also Cloak & Dagger ( http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0087065/ ). More minorly, role-playing appears in E.T. ( http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/ ) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 ( http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/ ).

On the one hand, I think that most fictional views of subcultures are going to highlight the dysfunctional aspects -- like, say, regional theater in Waiting for Guffman or folk music in A Mighty Wind. On the other hand, it seems like the views of role-playing are more mean-spirited than these -- lacking a positive side. Role-playing is seen as a retreat, a poor substitute for real life. To my mind, sexual tension and bringing in personal issues are sources for positive aspects of role-playing, not dysfunction. If one were to make a positive movie about role-players, it would have to show positive affects on real life -- i.e. finding love, working out personal issues, etc.

It's really rare for a subculture to be portrayed positively in an element of mainstream culture.

Oh, that reminds me of a related movie, Gotcha! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089222/)

Basically a movie about a game of "Killer!" that becomes something more. Anthony Edwards and Linda Fiorentino as college students.

And, yep, the gamer is a virgin. Classic.

Mike

Tav_Behemoth wrote: It might be interesting to think about why this trope is necessary: why does fiction about gaming so often draw its electric charge by shorting out the gap between the player- and character-levels of the narrative -- by making the fantasy the characters are acting out become real via magic, murder, etc? Even "The Saturn Game" does this in an oblique, sophisticated (and somehow thus not as vicscerally satisfying) way.

LOL at "Hobgoblin"...a classic "geek revenge" story line.

I seem to remember that the main character / GM in Hobgoblin would cheat in any way needed to keep the girl in the book interested in gaming with him. The girl was portrayed as not being able to understand the rules, but was a clever player who would think outside the box.

As far as other D+D inspired works? If we have "Mazes & Monsters" on the list, then I have to submit the classic "Dark Dungeons" pamphlet by Jack Chik http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

Best,

Pete

If you want RPGs in film (more specifically D&D) I don't think you can do better than this one here:

El Corazón del Guerrero
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205843/

It's a serious (well... not much, okay) Spanish movie with a serious budget with a very serious script and serious actors; and deals with RPGs all the way.

It starts with a terrific and totally cliche (even down to the Conan references - Crom, Ishtar, etc.) dungeon crawl by a group of adventurers... and then you realize it's 200% cliche simply because this is the product of the imagination of a group of friends that are playing D&D (they actually mention D&D in the movie) on the rooftop of a building. That night one of the gamers starts to hallucinate things and having visions about the adventures of his character. These visions start to intrude upon his daily life, and he slowly becomes convinced these RPG characters really live in another dimension and that he's been cursed and that the guild of evil wizards are also active in this world and trying to take over. He's the only one who believes in it, and he's the only one who may be able to stop them.

Is it all real or just his imagination? Well, I won't spoil it for you... The result is a sad yet uplifting, a comic yet tragic, a funny yet gritty, movie. It's really impressive. An authentic tour de force by a young Spanish director. You have scenes filmed around the game table (the DM is quite a character!), you have scenes filmed around the character's adventures, and you have the tragic hapennings in the hero's daily real(?) life. All with great FXs, all wrapped into an intelligent and original plot. This film simply could not have been created in the USA. You have a teenager in deep love with a prostitute he thinks is his girlfriend in the RPG, you have the same teenager running from the law trying to murder a presidential candidate because he's suposed to be an evil wizard from another dimension and you have a great crazy ending that is way, way far from happy. Disney would be shocked...

This is not the movie that will put parents fears about their son's roleplaying sessions at ease... but it's a great movie (even though the gaming scenes were over-simplified for the benefit of the general audience). I can not recommend it enough. It's one of my favorite films ever. Don't sleep until you find this one true gem. The Spanish DVD has English subtitles, so no excuses!

The One Game

A Uk TV series from 1988 in which the young, rich owner of a leading games company finds himself trapped in a 'reality game' masterminded by the creative genius Magnus who helped him found the company years before. Almost anyone he meets can turn out to be an agent of Magnus playing a part in the game. There's also a great 'jousing on motorbikes' scene. It's very remeniscent of some episodes of 'The Prisoner', with some Arthurian mythological themes.


Simon Hibbs

Wow, those both sound cool! Thank heavens for IMDB, and for jousting on mototbikes...

The concepts seem to be getting a bit further afield; I think we're far enough out that The Game with Michael Douglas probably fits the bill.

The starting point is that the wealthy and successful but driven and lonely businessman Douglas is approaching his birthday--the one at which his father committed suicide, and that bothers him. His younger brother says that he's got a present for him, but he needs to go see some people at this company to take a quick quiz so they can customize it for him. The quick quiz takes all day, with psych profiles and a physical workup, and then he's told he won't be right for this.

Then strange things start happening; someone is playing psyche games with him. They get more and more intense, people get shot, and they drive him pretty much to the edge.

Probably you've seen it; it's worth a look if not.

--M. J. Young

Existenz. I've only seen this one on TV and I missed the opening credits, so I can't attribute properly. Basic story: company has produced a VR game, competition wants it, sabotage of VR equipement occurs, the woman who designed the game and the man who's helping her escape get trapped inside the game, which at this point is running on a VR deck that's dying.

And then there turns out to be another layer behind that. And another.

If you know whether the end is in reality or in some level of game, you weren't paying attention. The people in the movie are in the same position, and they all commited murder at various points, some or all of which, they come to realize, may have been real.

Favorite quote:
"Existenz is suspended!"
(followed by the speaker falling face down in his soup.)

It's not the world's greatest movie, but it is one of those very rare occasions where filmed science fiction approaches a concept with something resembling the level of sophistication that fans of written sf find normal.

You might, BTW, also look at some of Sheri Tepper's early work. I don't have the titles handy, but it's a trilogy with each title a chess piece followed by a number ("King's Pawn 4" is the first part if memory serves). You start reading, come to the conclusion that this is transparently a game recast as a story...and then that turns out not to be the case.
SR
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