I have gotten a lot of good feed back about my post on Roleplaying and have even gotten a few emails asking for more on the subject. So you ask and I deliver, however some comments or more specific emails would help me know the direction to take the next few posts.

Roleplaying is defined as

1. A therapeutic technique, designed to reduce conflict in social situations, in which participants act out particular behavioral roles in order to expand their awareness of differing points of view.
2. An instance or situation in which one deliberately acts out or assumes a particular character or role.

Now even though the first definition is for clinical phycology, lay on the couch and tell me your feelings, kind of stuff, I find the definition interesting. I find it interesting because in a way that is why I role-play. Role-playing to me is both therapeutic, relaxing, and mind opening. In other words I really enjoy the whole aspect of it. One of the emails I got and a question I get a lot is why do you enjoy it. That is a VERY long answer to that question. So what I thought I would do is over the next few posts run you through my journey with role-playing. From start to present, I say present because I really don’t see an end to my enjoyment of all things Role Playing Game (for future reference role playing game will be referred to as RPG).

So to start things out lets start with the beginning. Everyone has a different way they got started playing RPG. For me it was kind of a process. I was living in Charlotte NC at the time, and one of my favorite places to go and have fun at was called Laser Quest. I had always enjoyed laser tag, but this place took laser tag to a new level. The place was HUGE and they gave you packs that were both comfortable, and fit to your body well. I say this because anyone who has played laser tag in a two bit laser tag place will understand what I mean. The lasers were huge and you could see your laser beam extend all the way across the entire expanse of the maze. This made it VERY easy to sit up high in a good “snipers nest” and shoot people from the other side of the maze.

After awhile I started becoming a regular there, and one day I asked the manager if I could apply for a job. He handed me an application, which I filled out, and before I knew it I was hired. TO THIS DAY Laser Quest was the best and most fun job I have ever held. One of the things that made working there so much fun was the staff. We all had code names we used for each other, and we hung out after work all the time. One afternoon Eric (who we all called Ring Master) invited me over to his house to play Vampire. I was certainly interested in playing, having always had a love for vampires, but I had to tell Eric that I had never played an RPG before, and really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Eric told me that it was not a problem and they would teach me to play.

I still remember that first game. It was me and Eric, along with two other friends who also worked at Laser Quest. Eric was the Dungeon Master or in this case since it was not D&D the Game Master (for future reference Dungeon Master will be referred to as DM and Game Master as GM). The other two were rouge vampires who were out creating havoc in a peaceful city. My character was a human detective that was investigating into several murders that all seemed connected. The connection was they were all done by my two friends characters. As my character got closer and closer to catching the two rouge vampires, he started to realize that he was not dealing with something human. This made him plunge into the world of the Vampire. My character had no knowledge of anything vampire related, and I as a person didn’t know anything either. So as a character and a player I had to learn all I could about vampires in order to catch the two rouge vampire killers.

Looking back on it now i realize just how good Eric was as a GM. By helping me create a character that had no knowledge of vampires, and me myself having no knowledge of the game, Eric used the game and my character to teach me about the game. By the end of the first game I still needed help knowing which dice to role, but I knew a great deal about vampires, and I was closing in on the two killers.