P.C. Shannon

Recently, I was cleaning out some of my old stuff from my parents’ garage and found a lot of my old childhood books. Several of these were important in my late childhood and “tween” years, so I kept them for Erik. One is The Fallen Spaceman, whose protagonist is coincidentally named Erik; I would have saved it anyway because I have very warm memories of that book. The collection also includes my Choose Your Own Adventure books, a find that got me to wondering: have I always been a roleplayer, even before that fateful day when I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons? And perhaps more importantly, is my son doomed to be a geek?

From the beginning, roleplaying games seemed to me to be a mere extension of childhood play. Kids play dress-up and make-believe, which are clearly role-playing activities. Playing with G.I. Joes is, too, albeit in the third-person. These modes are petty free-form where everyone involved makes up the rules and story as they go along—bossiness of big sisters notwithstanding. The Choose Your Own Adventure books added some structure by setting out the story and limiting choices.

Roleplaying games take structure to another level. They add rules for the objective resolution of conflicts. There is one participant who acts as referee and master storyteller, setting the plot in motion. The other players take on the roles of the story’s heroes.

Certainly in the way I’ve just described, I’ve always been a roleplayer. But I think there’s an underlying thread—I mean, I definitely had childhood friends with whom I played “army men” make-believe and G.I. Joes and read Choose Your Own Adventure and yet they managed to avoid the social ostracism of D&D—that’s best expressed by another treasure from my the time capsule. It’s a preschool “report card” that encouraged me to keep using my imagination.

I’ve never considered myself a terribly imaginative person, but maybe that’s because I tend to surround myself with kindred spirits. My affection for RPGs, like my love for sci-fi, is driven by each genre’s ability to spark my imagination. That’s what makes me a gamer.

Will Erik turn out like me? I don’t know. Any child of mine, male or female, is going to be inundated with science fiction. But I also want to expose my children to sports, art and culture, ethnic foods, hiking and camping, videogames—in short, the things that are important to me. I will admit to having fantasies about playing D&D with my son, but I also dream about dream about Legos and hiking trips.

Even if he has zero interest in slaying dragons or saving the galaxy and instead is passionate about fashion or rubgy or whatever, I will continue to engage him and take an interest in his interests. Just saying that, I feel like I’m dooming myself to being that special breed of uncool dad who cluelessly thinks he’s down with it. Oh well. That just seems to me to be what a father should do.