Even after all this time, I still find myself rolling dice and telling lies as one of my main forms of entertainment. The dice may more often be digital than dimpled at this point, and the table at which I sit to sling them a computer desk rather than some plastic or metal-and-wood contraption under fluorescent tube lights, but the idea remains the same; I get together with people to make up stories about made-up places and people and to chat outside of doing that about what I do with the rest of my life. And it remains good.
I'm not sure I had anything to say about it, other than that.
Maybe that's enough, though. I know we're in a cultural moment that admits of things like D&D and, if still recognizing their nerdiness, does not single them out for opprobrium as once they were. But I do remember the Satanic panic, in which people were convinced that playing such games was a deal with the devil and a surrender of control to ghastly or infernal powers. I remember when a polyhedral die was taken as an invitation to harassment and bullying--and not always from peers, because even the cubes that might could pass were seen from on high as gambling tools. And they were, to be fair, but not with money, but with story outcomes.
A stock portfolio is no less gambling, but it somehow does not strike others' eyes as objectionable.
I will not attempt to sing a paean to the RPG here. I do not need to, and my voice is not one that does well to be lifted in song, anyway. Nor have I the time to say all the good about such games that I could say. For now, it is enough to say that it has been good and is still good, at least for me and others I know.
Maybe more people should try it.
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