The Happy New Year Post

I'm sure I wont be online much today (and I have a nice cold bottle of cava ready for the ball drop tonight), but I thought I'd point folks to a fun link. For anyone who was a dork in high-school or college and who ever wasted a lot of time playing table-top RPG's, check out this from Unlocked Wordhoard:

I spent this evening watching a group play a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) called "Ars Magica." For those of you unfamiliar with RPGs, these are basically the "Dungeons and Dragons" style games, where players create characters and run those characters through adventures. The games are refereed by someone who is not playing, generally called the "Game Master," though the GM has only limited control over how the story will play out -- if the characters decide to do something different than the GM had expected, the GM has to be flexible enough to make that story adjustment work. In many ways, RPGs are collaborative storytelling.

"Ars Magica" is set in mythical Europe, which is nearly the very same as the medieval Europe we all know, except that in this world magic is real (and the players generally play characters who are mages). Unlike games in pure fantasy settings, however, "Ars Magica" is expected to stick pretty closely to our own historical world. The game I saw (I was able to participate a little) took place in Germany, along the Rhine in the 13th century.

I was struck by how much more educational this tabletop RPG was than any MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online games are the online roleplaying games like Everquest and World of Warcraft). Because of the collaborative storytelling aspect, tabletop RPGs allow the players to be more deeply involved in the creation of the world in ways that MMORPGs cannot allow. In the game I observered, the players and GM had the following discussions about the 13th century Rhineland:

How does one arrange a dowry?
How much would a dowry cost?
How would one initiate contact with high-ranking Church officials?
How would one initiate contact with mid-ranking nobility?
Would a mill or a forge be more effective for starting a community?
How fast would river travel have been?
How far and fast could a medieval peasant walk?
If there had been mages in the 13th Century, would they have pronounced Latin in the Classical way or the ecclesiastical way?

Ah...for the days when I had more time than I knew what to do with....

Speaking of time, it marches on. I hope evertone has a safe and happy evening. Here's to the New Year, may she be a damn sight better than the last one.