had responded by proudly announcing the fact.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26862462
I have had this before and I find it amusing that it is considered as strange or even childish in some circles.
Role playing is used in teaching many social subjects without being thought of as childish.
We live in an era when discrimination is rightly considered unacceptable. Ethnicity, culture, religion, gender
or sexual orientation, all of these and more subjects that should not be used against a person, so why are
hobbies still fair game?
Role players are generally at or above the average Intelligence, they are above and often well above the
average in terms of Imagination. Most Role players are also Nerds or Geeks, Most Nerds and Geeks are
role players.
We, erm, they, are often fanatical about understanding matters of science fiction and the favourite series
or movies. Nerds will delve into the science behind the fiction to a degree that most people simply will not
understand, us Nerds are smart.
Geeks will have memorised trivia that will leave a football fan quoting game results looking like a dribbling
idiot. Not that I am admitting to being the sort of Geek that can tell you how much starting gold a First
Edition Fighter had, but it was 5D4 x 10 GP in case anyone is interested.
I look at it this way. Within the live role playing environment we do all of the following:
Diversity and acceptance of ethnic and cultural groups:
Our games cover every possible range of races, cultures and religions. We spend our weekends role playing
with every type of being imaginable, we cooperate with and work alongside every possible race and culture.
I find that role players and live role players are far less likely to be bothered by differences. A gamer is a gamer.
What is skin colour when you are playing green skinned Orcs, what is height when you are playing dwarves
and half giants. What is gender when you can play male, female or a robot or golem that is neither. When the
rugby player at the table is playing a weakling Mage and the girl in the wheelchair is playing the strongest
member of the group and the Mage's protector and brother.
Role playing and live role-playing encourages diversity and acceptance to a degree that no “one day a year
awareness course” can achieve.
This is extremely useful in many business environments.
Team work, group cooperation and dynamics, problem solving:
Companies send teams off on a few days of such training once a year or so. Live role-players spend
entire weekends working as teams to overcome both physical and mental challenges many times a
year. Live role players often find themselves in groups that they did not organise or with people they
have never met before. To survive within the game they must learn to work together quickly, they
must learn to combine differing skills, abilities and experiences on the go in order to meet a series of
challenges.
To a Live Role Player death of a character is a much stronger motivator than you find in the annual
team building trip. In LRP it is work together or die, failure has very real consequences and as such
Live Role Playing groups must become teams very quickly.
This is extremely useful in many business environments.
Intellectual challenges, tactics and strategy, planning.
Role playing and live role playing are all about overcoming challenges, solving problems, gathering
data and then analysing that data. Developing tactical and strategic thinking to maximise team
effectiveness in a specific situation.
Within live role playing I have taken part in planning sessions for yearlong campaigns, storming
castles, small scale tactics, identifying solutions to problems and enemy weak points then finding
ways to exploit same and much much more.
For fun I crack moderate encryption codes or translate scrolls in created languages and I am not
alone in doing this. Many a weekend I have sat with a few others going through some scroll to
break down the basic language structure, identify the letters and then translate that scroll so we
can use the information contained on it. I have never come across a team building course that
covers problem solving in any way that is even close to this.
This is extremely useful in many business environments.
Interpersonal relations, communication, leadership.
Role playing and live role playing is a social activity, it is all about communication. While many may
start off shy and retiring there are few who remain that way for long.
Role players constantly imagine themselves dealing with a wide variety of people from your local
merchant or guard captain to an Orc chief or Lord of all he surveys. For fun we learn the ways to deal
with every level of the societies that our games are set within.
From the workers to the managers to the members of the board we learn how to talk to them every
weekend for fun, we can communicate at many levels and are used to learning the protocols of differing
cultures.
Our groups become teams because people within those teams rise to leadership. We learn to lead
under many and varied situations, we learn to bring together ad hoc groups with mixed skills and
experiences, we learn to create management structures, to delegate and departmentalise.
We learn to lead in situations where we are often under stress, gaining experience along the way.
Once you have learned to organise and lead a team, either as leader of the fighting line, coordinator
of healing, main diplomat or any other role then going into the workplace and organising or managing
is not that different.
This is extremely useful in many business environments.
If people in business are asking me to justify why I role play the question I often ask is why they do not,
given the significant benefits it brings to any business environment.
Consider another scenario that may or may not have happened and be happening once a year in a city
near you, or somewhere to the south and east for the majority of the population that do not live near
the city that constitutes the fifth country of the United Kingdom.
Police, civil servants, council planners, emergency response experts and the emergency services, a
casualty coordinator, military representatives and the odd government type are attending a day
long emergency response planning and training session. This involves “Role Playing” emergency
scenarios which they respond to, these are controlled by a small team of people who keep things
running and present events as they happen over the day, this team also inform the participants of
what happens in response to their orders.
Half the day is civil disorder. Riots in the streets. Gangs roaming and randomly attacking passersby
or other gangs, people barricading themselves into buildings. Looting and general chaos. The attendees
must allocate resources and people, give orders, deploy the police and other services in order to gain
control, deal with the rioters and the aftermath, stop looting and handle large numbers of casualties.
After a buffet lunch the afternoon scenario is response to an outbreak of a highly contagious and highly
fatal disease in the metropolitan area. Case zero having flown in and collapsed in the city after having
infected several other people. So containment, setting up a quarantine area, identifying the infected,
preventing a mass exodus of panicking civilians from the quarantine area that would allow infected
individuals to also escape, setting up and supporting areas within the quarantine area that are disease
free and keeping them that way.
Serious, high level planning, several million pounds, held yearly and considered very necessary.
Not at all childish.
A weekend event, dozens of attendees who are role playing the part of police, civil servants, council
planners, emergency response experts and the emergency services, a casualty coordinator, military
representatives and the odd government type. The scenario, a zombie outbreak in the city, run and
controlled by a small team of people who keep things running and present events as they happen
over the day, this team also inform the participants of what happens in response to their orders.
Gangs of zombies roaming and randomly attacking passersby. Containment and setting up a quarantine
area. Identifying the infected, preventing a mass exodus of panicking civilians from the quarantine area
that would allow infected individuals to also escape. People barricading themselves into buildings which
are safe areas within the quarantine area that then need supporting to keep them disease free.
The attendees must allocate resources and people, give orders, deploy the police and other services in
order to gain control, deal with the zombies and the aftermath, stop looting and handle large numbers
of casualties.
Serious, carefully planned, attended by people from across the UK and even from Europe.
Somehow this is childish?
Calling Role players, Geeks or Nerds childish makes about as much sense as saying that a group of Star
Trek fans who are arguing about the relationship between Einsteinian field equations and the Alcubierre
metric with regard to using a Lorentzian manifold to manipulate space time and create the star ship
Enterprise Warp Drive are silly because Star Trek is a TV series.
Of course I could be a little bit biased here.
G
NERD
GAMER
K