It was eerie to read this book, because Mark Barrowcliffe is my doppleganger. We are the same age, and experienced many of the same things growing up. And I cannot say this about most people, primarily because most people did not share my adolescent obsession with role-playing games.
From sixth grade until my Junior year of High School (when I discovered drugs and basement bands), I was obsessed with wargames and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls, Traveller, Bushido, Ogre, and more. Every weekend I and three other friends would visit each other's houses (or, better, spend the night) and play games until dawn's early light. It was at my friend's that I discovered the conceptual art-rock of Rush 2112. (To this day, progressive rock is my preferred genre.) We played the album over and over while we played Runequest.
With this group, I skipped school and bicycled from the West to the East side of Indianapolis to visit a gamer's shop. I purchased games online. I designed dungeons. I could go on, but you get my point.
Barrowcliffe's observations on his own life and gaming experience resonate with me. He astutely recognizes that "D&D involved a wholesale rejection of cool and a celebration of things that were, to the average schoolboy, utterly naff" (75). Girlfriends, fashion, sports - none of this mattered. (And perhaps one of the reasons my friends and I were so devoted to gamers was that we couldn't play sports or find a girlfriend. Or perhaps its the other way around: because we were so devoted to gaming, we didn't have time for sports or girlfriends. It all depends on where you put the emphasis.)
Barrowcliffe offers this observation regarding why role-playing games were so popular with young boys: "They provided a trellis work for the imagination to climb upon and thrive. Unsupported, your dreams can wither; backed up by rules, pictures, model figures and the input of others, there's no end to the amount of brain space they can consume" (139). Unless you are familiar with gaming, it is nearly impossible to communicate the amount and depth of the rules. Whole volumes of books were devoted to rules!
Barrowcliffe points out how the uniqueness of the story-telling style and participation in D&D is virtually unprecedented in human history and accords with our basic human need to listen to and tell stories: "It's a story you can listen to at the same time as telling it. You can be surprised by the plot's twists and turns, but you can surprise too. It's more interactive than any other sort of narrative I can think of... This is why D&D is so addictive when it's played right. It's like the best story you've ever read combined with the charge a good storyteller feels as he plays his audience" (139-140).
I don't regret my devotion to D&D, but now I understand how my love for it shaped my life and my tastes. From the beginning, I was into an alternative way of viewing things and had no problem rejecting the status quo and longing for more.
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