By way of introduction, my name is Mike. I like my showers cool, my tea hot, and my RPGs around a table. I've always been that way. But as far as gaming is concerned, I got lost for a while.

Gaming Today

The way most people game today has changed quite a bit from when I was a kid. Like so many other things, a large part of gaming has moved away from the books and dice I have always enjoyed, and evolved within an electronic medium, hand in hand with the technology that has proliferated in the rest of our lives. I have been as susceptible to the effects of this evolution as anyone. In addition to no longer being able to write legibly by hand after decades of typing, I have also spent uncounted dollars acquiring and subscribing to multiple single- and multiplayer online computer games. MMORPGs in particular seemed an ideal venue for me, a grown-up gamer who no longer has any regular gaming friends, to socialize and game with other people, and get my fantasy fix.

However, after having worked with computers for a number of years, I found my stamina lacking for the grind inherent in most MMOs, and the absence of interacting with actual, physical people and making real-life friends somewhat pathetic and wearing. As a result, I always ended up canceling my accounts when I began to feel too isolated, or when the game I was playing for recreation started to feel too much like work.

Birds of a Feather?

In order to avoid abandoning my only current outlet for social gaming, I finally decided that what I needed to do to make the MMO experience more gratifying and enjoyable, was to try and hook up with a guild of like-minded others. My litmus test, as it were, for qualifying the right group would be to find a guild whose members also happened to be fans of the traditional, pencil-and-paper role-playing games I grew up with, and have held as my greatest, most persistent creative interest.

I figured it would be a relatively simple task. The proliferation of today's computerized RPGs - the supposed evolution of the hobby I have always loved - had to be the logical destination for misplaced gamers like myself to go to seek out their own kind and find a new home. But several months, numerous trial guild memberships, and multiple servers later, I remained an unqualified failure at finding the right group. If my crowd was indeed out there, I sure couldn't find them.

Most of the players I solicited in my quest for that one "magical" guild had no idea what pencil-and-paper RPGs were, or that the game they were currently playing was actually based on them. Those players I did meet who had any knowledge or interest in traditional RPGs were few and far between, and those who I befriended invariably turned out to have a mixed bag of qualities that I either found bizarre, undesirable, or inappropriate - to a degree that I would not have invited them to my home had I been hosting an in-person game session.

Take, for example, my time in what I learned was a transgender guild, comprised of extremely nice people, mind you, but with whom I turned out to lack the requisite identity issues; the loyal shaman who joined the guild I myself started in a desperate attempt to attract other "old school" gamers, who followed me to the very edges of the game world, but would only communicate in unintelligible snippets; the pair of gnomes who invited me to a group and then kept asking if I wanted to duck behind a tree and "party"; or the generous elf who, after bestowing a gift of gold upon me, eventually revealed that she was, in fact, a 12-year old girl.

Dejected, I eventually gave up, and canceled my last active game account. But although my MMO days had come to an end, I came out of the experience with an insight.

A Whole New World

According to my lengthy, unintentional research, it became clear to me that there is an entirely new generation of gamers out there who are drawn to the fundamental aspects of role-playing in the form of online games, but have little or no exposure to traditional RPGs.

At first, this realization made me angry. The video game industry certainly did not create RPGs, yet it is raking in billions of dollars selling software and charging users by the month to play its electronic role-playing games, while most of the player base doesn't even know what a "real" RPG is! I found it offensive that the great innovators of traditional RPGs (my heroes, really) end up fading into obscurity, while big business picks up their original ideas and makes a fortune.

I wanted to rail against the video game industry, seeing how much time and money I'd sunk into games that I was led to believe were the natural evolution of the hobby I loved, but actually omit several key ingredients that I think make live, in-person RPGs so intriguing. Now, it's not my intention to try and invalidate online RPGs or knock anyone else's hobby - we're all gamers - so I will save my discussion about why I prefer traditional RPGs to computerized ones for another column.

What I will say, is that the video game industry's efforts to translate traditional RPGs (by which I mean lifting ideas and terminology dating back to the earliest written version of D&D) into an electronic medium, has resulted in an entirely new, and separate, genre of video games.

A New Audience for Traditional RPGs

Unarguably popular and staggeringly profitable, the proliferation of MMOs would seem to do little to ensure the future viability of traditional RPGs. However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to stand to reason that there could be other role-players among the vast MMO player base who might be very interested in what traditional RPGs have to offer, but just haven't experienced them yet!

Think about it. Thanks to their computerized counterparts, millions of video gamers have now been introduced to and enjoy a wide range of concepts derived from traditional RPGs. As traditional role-players, I think we have a responsibility to help bolster the art form that is among our favorite activities, and make an effort to reach out to our online brethren to draw them into the fold.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, so instead of rhetoric, consider this a call to action.

Spread the Joy!

Nearly everybody these days knows someone who is an avid video gamer. Why not do them a favor, and find an occasion to buy them a copy of your favorite pencil-and-paper RPG? I'm talking about one of the classics, or one of today's legitimate tabletop RPGs - not a traditional-"style" RPG based on MMO conventions or an existing intellectual property (which video gamers are likely to find about as alluring as a video game, minus the video!)

Better yet, invite a video gamer to participate in your traditional RPG group. Don't belong to one? Get some players together, and start one! You might even be lucky enough to find them online.

If each of us made an effort to do this, traditional RPG'ers would have more people to game with, interest in traditional RPGs would grow, and sales of traditional RPGs would benefit. Who knows? Some of the new recruits might even find their calling and go on to write the next great RPGs of tomorrow.

One day, instead of every handful of households harboring a lone video gamer glued to a monitor, each neighborhood in your town might boast its own tabletop RPG club. I wouldn't just call that striking a blow for traditional gaming - I'd call it "paradise."

Pie in the sky, you say? Maybe. All I know is that I'm not interested in having my imagination become a casualty to technology, like my penmanship. I don't belong playing RPGs on the computer anymore. I should be playing them in person.

Till next time, have fun, and thanks for reading!