Ron wants me to play along today, so we must invent a character. I am to enter Amarantis as an IDC cadet, who has escaped the academy via its interdimensional transport system. But first we must create my character's profile. My strengths and weaknesses are determined by a point system out of the GURPS manual. Each character has the same number of total points, but they are distributed differently. The more points a character has dedicated to agility, for example, the more tasks he can perform which require this asset.
During play, rolls of the dice are matched against skills levels to determine whether a character wins a fight, picks a lock, or learns to fly. If a character has spent too many points on wit and not enough on brute strength, he better not get cornered by a monster. GURPS has come up with numerical values for almost every skill imaginable, from quarterstaff combat to spaceship repair. Players may also acquire disabilities – like a missing arm or an uncontrollable lust for sex – which gives them points to use elsewhere. As in Neuromancer, characters must behave according to their profiles. Ron rewards players who, while maintaining their weaknesses, still manage to play skillfully.
For all the mathematics of character creation, the playing of the game itself is quite relaxed and chaotic. When Ron and I emerge from his bedroom we find today's players sitting in the living room, shirts still off, ready for action. Ron sets up a table for himself in the corner with his map, a notebook of information, and a box of index cards for every character in Amarantis.
What's going on here, essentially, is the creation of a fantasy story, where game rules and character points dictate the progression of the plot. A player thinks up an idea and is allowed to run with it as far as he can go until a conflict arises. Each character has an agenda of a sort, but these agendas do not get satisfied to the point where the game can end. For example, an agenda might be to extend the power of a large corporation, to destabilize the government of a city, or, as in my character's case, to spread goodwill throughout the universe.
Ron declares my arrivaclass="underline" ''Suddenly, in a blaze of light, a large metal obelisk crashes through the floor of the stage. Smoke and sparks fly everywhere. The obelisk opens to reveal ...'' And there I am. After I excuse away my arrival as a space-surfing accident – which no one believes – Russel, who plays a corporate businessman, invites everyone over to the Bacchic temple, a religious organization and megacorporation, to join the revelry already in progress. When we go there, Russel proceeds to seduce the young dancer (whose show I interrupted) with the promise of career advancement. As he takes her to his bedroom, I wander around the castlelike church. I hope to steal Russel's prize possession: a flying dragon.
Rolls of the dice decide my fate. The other players, especially Russel, watch on in horror, powerless: his character is in bed with the dancer and can't hear or see me even though the real Russel can. Other players worry for me – they know things about Russel's immense powers that I don't. But my character has a weakness for taking risks, and, disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm for my message of peace and harmony, I feel my only choice is to head straight for the edge and thus either certain doom or certain awakening. I find the dragon in an open courtyard. If I can get it to fly I'll have an easy getaway, but the creature is unbridled. I use my skill of resourcefulness – ''scrounging'', as it's called in the game – to find a rope to fashion into a bridle. I roll the three dice – two 2's and a 1. The other players moan. I'm a lucky roller, and the dice indicate that I easily find the rope. But the hard part is flying the creature. My dexterity is the skill that Ron pits against the dice. He calls this task a "D minus 8'' – very hard. I need to roll a 10 or lower to succeed. I roll a 9. Amazing. Players cheer as gamemaster Ron describes the wiburn taking off into the night. I use the stars to navigate west, toward the edge. Russel stares at me from across the room and chills go up my spine. He reaches for the GURPS Magic Module to find a spell to get his dragon back ... and to destroy me. He plans on using corporate/church money to hire a powerful professional wizard.
''Is the Wizard's Hall open this late?'' he asks Ron.
I look at Ron, who smiles knowingly at me. He had advised me to take ''magic-protection'' as a strength, and I reluctantly had done so. Thanks to Ron's insistence in adding this feature to my character, none of Russel's spells will work on me. I'm on my way to the edge.
FRP's (fantasy role-playing games) are surprisingly engrossing. They share the hypertext, any-door-can-open feeling of the computer net. And, like on a computer bulletin board, FRP's do not require that participants play in the same room or even the same city. Play is not based in linear time and space. A character's decision might be mailed in, phoned in, enacted live, or decided ahead of time. Also, there is no ''object'' to the game. There is no finish line, no grand finale, no winner or loser. The only object would be, through the illusion of conflict, for players to create the most fascinating story they can, and keep it going for as long as possible. As with cyberian music and fiction, role-playing games are based on the texture and quality of the playing experience. They are the ultimate designer realities, and, like VR, the shamanic visionquest, or a hacking run, the adventurer moves from point to point in a path as nonlinear as consciousness itself. The priorities of FRPs reflect the liberation of gamers from the mechanistic boundaries imposed on them by a society obsessed with taking sides, winning, finishing, and evaluating.
Edge Games
These kids are not society's unwitting dropouts. Indeed, they are extremely bright people. Ron and Russel met at a school for gifted yet underachieving high-schoolers in the Princeton area. They were smarter than their teachers, and knew it, which made them pretty uncontrollable and unprogrammable. Their brilliance was both their weakness and their strength. Because the subjects in school bored them, they turned to fantasy games that gave their minds the intellectual experience for which they thirsted. Of course, their elders never understood.
''Parental reaction is negative towards anything that teaches kids to think in original or creative ways,'' Russel reflects. "Playing the games is an exercise in looking at different realities – not being stuck in a single reality. It gives you courage to see how you're following many rules blindly in real reality.''
Russel explains his childhood to me as we share a shoplifted cigarette beneath the train overpass. He has learned that the rules of this world are not fixed, and both he and Ron live according to the principles of uncertainty and change. Like the heroes in a cyberpunk novel, they are social hackers who live between the lines of the system and challenge anything that seems fixed. When Russel is hungry and has no money, he steals food from the supermarket ... but he doesn't believe he'll get caught. Geniuses take precautions that regular shoplifters don't, I'm told, and survival to them becomes yet another ''edge game.''