With this column I conclude three years of column-writing for this mailing-list. After a time as that, you sort of get the hang of it. A column is changing from something you fear to something that is just part of live. The confidence about being able to complete it also gets better. Off course, friends of mine will state that talking loads of rubbish about a subject and being confident about it's worth has always been well-trusted trades of mine.

I have already told you about myself two years ago and about the columns last year, this year I will tell you what connects me and column-writing to fantasy and role-playing, to complete this puzzle.
It all started with me getting drawn into role-playing by friends (who sometimes claim to regret inviting me for the rest of their lives). So they have gotten me into the Dungeons and Dragons world. They have filled my head with the knowledge of D&D, or, at least, tried to do so, as some of them would state (I am especially thinking of one hairy person among them who makes most of the cynical remarks about me. As someone with the knowledge of both ordinary rpgs and rpgs played on gameboards, he seems to think my knowledge of D&D is far beneath him).

This is a jolly group of people, who are just about my best friends in the world. We fight, we bite, we talk and insult. And we role-play a bit along the way.
This game of escaping and showing ourselves through others gives us something 'real' to do. It multiplies the possibilities to bother each other tremendously. Even killing each other's characters is not out of the question.

And then, after being at this some time, patterns of playing arise. People tend to play some kind of character the most, some characteristics keep popping up in every character a player has. And then, if you think about it while playing home, you can realize how this characteristic has always been a characteristic of this person you know. You know that the character is and always will be just some form of the player.

And then you can realize even more. You can realize that the way your character walks along with the stupid, irritating and chaotic gnome and the ruthless, mannerless and stinking half-orc, on adventure after adventure. And if something goes wrong, if some struggle between those specific characters arises or some change of opinion, you will still try to get through it together and to get in yet another adventure.
And then the parallels are not hard to find. This is just like how it is in real life. You walk along with the stupid, irritating and chaotic player and the ruthless, mannerless and stinking other player on all adventures life has to offer in a way very similar to that of your players. The friendship in the game, I believe, is sort of similar to the friendship in real life.

And I guess that is what we role-players seek, to live a real life with a structure and real happenings with people around us, even if we have to toy with reality a bit to get to this. That's why we've got rules to give it form, just as we have done in reality.

But I'm getting off track once again. The point was that we seek our friends because there is something we seem to like about each other, making us to want to go through life's adventures together. And that's why parties often are surprisingly easy to form with fantasy-characters and get on so well.

And I guess that's the case with my party. I must conclude there must be something we like about each other. Probably to make fun of each other, some would insert here. But hey, they are too late, now I already did! Wrahahaha!

Greetings,
Wouter

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