Happy Easter to all readers!
You readers may have, while looking at www.alcarin.com - fantasy & role-playing, accidentally have stumbled into the picture gallery at the Town Square (the new article "Role-Player's Night - the photo report", red.).
This includes some nice pictures of our role-play-party, including a very hairy person fighting a very long person with empty cola-bottles and an IDIOT with a grin that is not physically possible. Some of you probably think we are LARP-ing (Live Action Role-Playing) here, but that is not really the case.
It's just that in our party two guys are always fighting, some guys throw over their glasses with cola a lot, the DM has body-functions that are not possible, some have way to much hair, some are way to tall, some can make noises that damage your ears considerably and so on. Any lost traveler that would happen to stumble upon our rpg-party is in for a big surprise.
He might think to walk in on some guys that are playing to be other guys in a fantasy-world. Of course no non-rpg-er really gets this concept at all and might wonder what the fun of it all is.
But when he will walk in at our party, he might be treated to a song at first, way too loud and not very keen sang, probably some child-song that has been messed around with.
If he ducks in time, he may be lucky and not being hit in the head by a cola-bottle. If he then can raise is voice as much as to make himself hearable and introduces himself, he will hear terrible word-jokes made out of his name, which he will try to forget by drinking loads of alcohol for the rest of the poor guys live.
Other things he might see are: fire eating, of course human sacrifices and maybe even evil clowns.
After this neutral observer, who will have ran away screaming, when he is lucky enough to still being able to, that is, will try and tell outsiders, no-one will believe him, luckily.
Questions that rise are: are all role-players idiots? Are they all accustomed to physically abusing one another? Is role-playing just a cover to act crazy?
It seems that mostly students are role-players. This is the case in our group, at least. So maybe we can blame it all on the too demanding school-system, that makes us have to unload too much stress. I think this is a pretty good theory. Screaming, after all, unloads stress. Singing children-songs, running around, hitting one another, all of that helps to get it out of your system. And the role-play-group provides for all kind of youngsters that have the similar need and therefore can trust that their nuts behavior does not leave the room. And to one another they have no respect after all. Why should they? Come on, they are role-players! So they use each other to unload.
But is role-playing a cover for actually just craziness? Well, to answer that last question I will have to find someone in that group to ask if there also is some real role-playing in a night. Well, I guess I will do.
Well, as a role-player in this hectic group I can tell you: yes. We also really role-play (most evenings, at least). After all, role-playing itself is an interesting hobby, which you can unload your stress into as well. And this is just good, sensible fun with rules and statistics and everything.
Well, and it allows you to cast a snowball-spell at a gnome, attacking your party-members, buying slaves, giving exploding presents, etc.

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