A poor man's video game

I remember looking at a friend's copy of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebook when I was too young to really "get" it.

Thumbing through the pages, I was stricken by the illustrations and the blurbs of text describing each monster, item, or spell. There were also stats and equations along with each one. I must have been visibly scratching my head because something prompted my friend to explain it to me.

"This number is the damage. This is the strength requirement . . ." and so on.

I imagined a role playing video game in my mind. I'd only seen a few up to that point, so the game in my mind's eye was probably Shining Force or Earthbound. As he explained how the dungeon master and the players would incorporate each stat into the game, the picture in my head grew clearer.

"Oh! So this is like a poor man's video game!" and my friend reluctantly agreed.

I didn't mean to tear down pen and paper RPGs with that comment; that's just the way I pictured it in my head. I wouldn't actually play in a campaign or own any D&D books until a couple of years after that, but this notion of "video games you play in your mind" stuck with me.

It's funny. There's no thought given to using one's imagination. We do it all the time. Given the framework of a game, with hard rules and statistics dictating things, "playing pretend" suddenly takes on this whole other context. Heck, there was even a certain amount of fear-mongering from concerned Christian parents about the psychological effects of playing these games and the demonic themes expressed by some of the monsters and in-game deities.

Anyone up for Mazes & Monsters?

It isn't hard to imagine young me circling back around to D&D later on in my adolescence. Magic: The Gathering was already slowly consuming my life, and it contained the same sword and sorcery elements that my young mind seemed to gravitate to. I guess my appreciation for D&D (and other tabletop games in general) came from an increased attention span and the patience one finds while being tormented regularly in junior high school.

D&D wasn't just a poor man's video game. It was escape fiction that put the player in the driver's seat. Unlike the empowerment I'd found from constructing a really good Magic deck, D&D would allow me to become someone or something else entirely. And when I eventually stepped into the role of dungeon master for our little troupe, I could become a god!

I'm sure it was no small coincidence that I got into D&D just as it was being scooped up by Wizards of the Coast, makers of Magic: The Gathering. Like Disney buying Marvel Comics over a decade later, these giant corporations were absorbing all of my passions and force feeding them to me ad nauseam.

I've recently uncovered my old 3.0 books and I think they warrant some further exploration as I travel back in time and revisit my gaming roots, but for now all I'll say is thanks for reading and keep playing those poor man's video games.

Follow me on Twitter (@ChrisBComics) for more random encounters.