This month, a movie called: "The Fellowship of the Ring" will come out in Holland, were I live, the first of three movies of the "Lord of the Rings"-trilogy.
Well, that proves your columnist can read news-papers!
Anyhow, this will get a lot of people to the cinema (ironically not as much as to Harry Potter, probably) to see what they've made of this. Well, the book I really enjoyed. Seeing those inexperienced Hobbits grow into an adventure. It was really nice, when they returned to their homes you could see the difference. They become real tough!
I believe this general idea has become very important in any rpg. You adventure and learn, and because of that you get better and better.
Take that, Harry Potter! See if your big hype will produce people role-playing that they are little boys who learn magic! Wait, I'm putting idea's in people's heads...
In real life, we also should be able to adventure. That way we all can become heroes. Don't let modern society take that away from you! Take changes! Live! Buy Alcarin.com-T-shirts!
How we can adventure, while modern society has locked us up in a life where we have to work for the community? Well, while studying to become a teacher, I can see the need is there always. Students don't want to do things as planned by the teacher, they want to try out all kinds of other various possibilities. They can write on paper, but they soon find out they also can not write, but push every part of the paper against each other, forming a big round ball of paper. Then they discover they can throw this much easier than a flat piece of paper, which will go down slowly. After this, they accept the challenge of throwing the paper to a moving target, like the man walking in front of the class. This great creativity, a lot more creative than just writing down whatever the teacher writes in front of them, is rarely appreciated. But the students have to, it's the only way the can gain experience, like not throwing paper balls to your teacher.
This process of being rebellious and learning is going on all of your life, because it's the way of surviving. Learning not to come to close to fire because it hurts, not to close to another man because he will hit you, not to close to a woman because she will kick you, not to close to a gnome because he will become your friend (and you'll have to get him out of trouble all the time).
So, through failure we learn subtle ways of doing things. We learn to handle each situation differently and right. But we have to fail first. But fortunately, humans are very good at that. Some people have to fail a lot. So when someone's house burns down because of me, he actually should shake my hand and be happy that I've learned not to play which matches. I can't help it after all; I have to fail first. Sadly, although we all seem to fail, we rarely appreciate each other failure enough. We rarely say to someone who always does everything wrong: "You must be so wise and have so much experience! I admire you greatly! Can you teach me?"
Another step, trying to fail as badly as possible at everything to learn as much as possible, also is rarely done. Strange... very strange... I mean, by writing a failing column every month, you would say I learn a lot about how to write a right column, wouldn't you?
Of course, one possibility comes to mind; learning from failure of others, learning wise lessons from experience of others; like parents. But this plan has a flaw: who would want to do that? We all want to experience ourselves, that's what makes our live interesting.
And that's why in a way, we already are adventurers, all of us, just in a different measure. And we all can dream about experiencing and learning so much by adventures that we will become big heroes, like the four small and simple Hobbits did. So, whenever you fear to take action, remember how they did so although they weren't sure of success at all, and remember that failure will only teach you, and above all, remember not to blame me when this advice turns ugly.

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