I have met a few folk who seem to love roleplaying games, and mostly of the video game variety. With Skyrim, Mass Effect, and the brand new Ni No Kuni (which looks amazing), there always seems to be a game around the cornerworth getting lost in. Hell, I started my own little fantasy journey with Final Fantasy for the original Nintendo. Of course, I was eight, didn’t really know what I was doing, and never got past the damn bridge of the first kingdom because the save file kept deleting. But it was still fun to make up my own party and just go out there and fight imps and vampires. Good times. But the roleplaying game didn’t originate on that old 13″ Color TV you had back when you were a kid. The roleplaying game found its inception…conception…reception…birth in Dungeon and Dragons (aka D D). Dun DUN done.
A game that seemed to be ridiculed by the a lot of the nerd community, there are plenty of people who enjoy a little table top gaming. It was where you used your imagination to play the narrative and you’d roll a 20 sided die to figure out if you hit someone or not. Sure you were normally surrounded by other men who would play as women and sure the Dungeon Master was a douchebag on ocassion, but you escaped into a fantasy world! The best part was, that D D spawned other games that dealt with vampires, the future, a distopian world, and even the modern plane. There was a game for everyone, and that’s what made it so great and so popular. As a matter of fact, I listen to a podcast called Critical Hit, that is a, so far, 3 or so year ongoing D D session, and it’s great fun to listen to. But that’s the thing. I listen to it, I can imagine the characters, which is harder to do when you’re surrounded by folk. Okay, well, it’s really not that bad, because the last time I played, it was cool and I had my ex-girlfriend with me, which made it easier to play. But being around a lot of real life human beings was not my scene in roleplaying games when I was a teen…oh no!
When I was a teenager, during the dawn of the…internet…err…there was not much to the web, especially when it came to games. There were MUDS (Multi-user Dungeons), where you played a text based program and interacted with other people that way. Then there were Yahoo chat rooms, but people mostly had cyber sex and shared dirty pictures, but you’d still find people roleplay that way. There were also e-mail mailing lists where people would roleplay en-masse, and it was one huge, shared game. As much as I dipped my toe into those ponds, the game I really took the plunge in was the message board roleplaying game. The MBRPG.
Personally, I thought this was gaming for the hardcore. I figured that anyone could type commands, roll dice to make things happen. The real challenge was if you could write a narrative with others and make a collective, cohesive storyline that got people involved, invested, and interested in you and your character! Even video games, where you created your own character and had an open world, it took a lot of patience and you were still limited to the confines of the game. In a message board, your limitation was your imagination…okay, and the the rules of the universe you were playing in. But still, you had much more control, and you could let your mind create the characters and the scenarios and the world to anyway you and your fellow writers saw fit. I found that it made the world more rich, more vibrant, and your actions more important. There were no experience points, no talent trees, and “leveling up” was completely based on your creativity. It was your story, your book (even if it was based off someone else’s book series), and your “reality”. At the time, I was surprised this was not more of a thing, more popular.
My first experience with this type of gaming was really all my sister’s fault. She and I were huge fans of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, and amazingly I can remember just stumbling onto this website through a webring. Wow, does anyone remember webrings? It’s how similar websites used to connect with each other before there were these fancy, shmancy search algorithms. So here I go searching for Sword of Truth websites and end up finding this message board roleplaying website. I had no idea what this was, but it was a new game and I thought, what the hell, why not play? I was an avid writer of fantasy back then, so I thought I could really flex my creative muscle with this. And since I actually liked the company of my sister (which people are surprised about), I asked her if she wanted to join with me. She agreed, and I started this game by creating a character for her first. Her name was Evangline Desdara…
My sister never visted the site and there I was, with this character and no one to play her. I figured I wanted to test drive this game anyway, I might as well do it with Evangeline and see if it’s any good. So a few hours of writing a biography and back story I start my gaming and writing adventure. Right off the bat the two remaining Sisters of the Light (the female good guy society of the book series) accepted me with open arms, wrote with me and we were off like a rocket into writing bliss. For however long it was (it was a long time ago, I can’t remember), I played this game, wrote with incredibly talented writers, and made friends on these message boards. We were all having a grand old time. But then these people I got to know as their characters, wanted to talk with me out of character. They wanted to know the real me. No one knew I was this guy roleplaying as a girl, and I was a little embarrassed at the time. Apparently it wasn’t a popular thing to do at the time, roleplaying as a girl when you’re a guy. And through my entire MBRPG playing days, I am pretty sure I was the only guy on my message boards that ever played as girls. Sure I had male “toons”, but I felt comfortable writing for both genders.
Enough banter from my fellow roleplayers, they wanted chat with me and so we take it to ICQ, or AIM, or Yahoo messenger, I don’t remember which, and I chat with my fellow gamers. Of course the first two people who want to talk to me are women, and honestly, at the time, I wasn’t thinking that they thought I was a woman too. So when I start chatting with them, it was all fine and dandy. Hell, I have a girl’s name for Pete’s sake. Francis! Why would anyone in their right mind think I was a man? So after a bit of talking with one lady in particular, I figure I had to go for the big reveal, because I can tell that she thinks I’m a girl. I pull back the preverbial curtain and type out – “I am a man!” As expected, laughter soon ensued and she did not believe me, which seems to be the story of my life. She told me I wrote like a woman (which was actually what my friends would tell me when I showed them my stories. Romance novels they would say…) and I had to find a way to prove I was a guy. With no webcam, digital camera or voice chat to speak of, there was only my word. People seemed to be a pretty trusting bunch back when the internet was new. Therefore, somehow, I was able to convince her I was a guy. Or maybe she figured it was weird for a girl to fight tooth and nail to try and prove to another woman that he is a she, no matter how affeminate her narrative. Either way, in the end, I got an enduring friend out of it all who knows I am a man.
That game got me into more and more message boards of various flavors, and more and more games. I met people, found love, found lust, and this roleplaying made me an internet addict. I would spend hours at night, sometimes not sleeping, just chatting with folk from all over the world and creating stories and characters and scenarios that turned into real life memories. I got to explore new ways of thinking and see the best and worst of myself and others. Of course, I understand you can experience this in other ways and other games, as a friend of mine recently telling me of her LARPing exploits, but this was my big deal. It was the first time I was a part of a huge, international community, and I still remember and think about those people I met.
This walk through memory lane was brought to you by this website – http://grey-tower.net/ When I mentioned a character of mine from my MBRPG days on the Critical Moment podcast, Jay short for Jay decides to actually Google the name. Low and behold, my old biography is still up and one of my old MBRPG websites is still active. A decade and a half later, this place still stands, and it’s awesome. A flood of memories of how cool it was (and I think, still is) came to me, and I had to share my experience. If you’re a fan of writing, I highly recommend looking into something like this. You will meet a cast of characters that not only share your interests, but might help you grow as a writer. And if you like roleplaying games, I still think it’s worth a look. It’s a way to play the game without the paper, the dice, or the controller, and let your creativity and imagination do the talking. It’d be amazing to see a resurgence of type of gaming, but maybe that’s just the nostalgia talking.
Alas, in the end, the Message Board Roleplaying Game barely exists. With all forms of video games, LARPing, and other more interactive ways of playing, it doesn’t surprise me that such games are near extinction. Still, it was nice to go down memory lane and maybe even get someone interested in the old message board gaming. I know I’m playing with the idea of going back in. I just hope I write stories better than I write blog posts.
