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Show The Thunderbird Monday Apr it 15, 1985 Page 7 Rolling your role in dicey games by Nani Lii Staheli You are wandering up this dark passage and you start to hear voices. What are you going to do about it? I can hide in the shallows and be invisible! The Princess will help you. I need everyone to help me! Intent faces relax instantaneously while the dice roll again, tossing the players into another fantastic sequence of adventures. The quest for power and wealth is the only way to survive and win in this supernatural and medieval world. Dungeons and Dragons is only one of the g current games that has achieved an unusual level of popularity and individual involvement in entertainment. With the objective of personal survival, heightened by superior wealth and power, both the dungeon master and the players claim that creativity and variety spell out the name of the game. Basically, you have to pretend that youre in another world, explains Clark Segler, a communications graduate who has started weekly sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. You put yourself into a character and then act as that character would, while the numbers on the dice determine the situations, Segler says. Segler defines the intrigue of the game as enhanced creativity; this essence of diversity and uncertainty has maintained his interest in D and D for six years. Ive always been interested in science fiction and when I heard about this game I thought it would be fun, he says. I found that its never the same. Every games different. Segler further explains that, although there is literally a volume of rules to follow, there is still room for a considerable amount of imagination as the game master creates settings. Likewise, the players must effectively represent characters that vary from thieves to swashbuckling heroes in order to defeat monsters and compete for power and treasures. Avid players also keep monster manuals on hand for encyclopedic reference to such creatures as role-playin- Games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Star Trek, require dice, imagination and the capacity to play the role of a character who may not share the players goals or personality. the Doppleganger that haunts miasmal swamps. If you come out rich, you come out ahead in D People who have a good imagination generally than those who dont and they have more fun, says Segler. However, Dungeons and Dragons is only one g game that offers high adventure and fantasy. Since 1973, such games as the futuristic Gamma World, Tunnels and Trolls, and The Call of Cthulhu have been developed. Vicki Dennison has been playing Star Trek since the beginning of the school year. I like it because its something different from what I normally do. Its a break from school and work, she says. Dennisons Star Trek group also meets at least once a week and Dennison herself usually plays as game master. Another player indicates that there are some differences between Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons, however; the characters in the former game are intentionally more law who exist solely to abiding than the gain more wealth. fare better role-playin- free-boote- and D, he says. Dennison explains that personal wealth and power are irrelevant in Star Trek. Playing the character of the captain, for example, requires responsibility for the survival of the crew, as well as some quick thinking on your toes. No one really comes out winning or losing unless all the other characters die. Then you have to start all over again. The game officially ends when you finish the mission, she says. According to Dennison, this objective not only includes such benefits as creativity, but also a sense of responsibility and understanding of effective thinking processes: Youll react differently by saying things you normally wouldnt say when you get into a character, but then you have to be responsible for others. But it also gives you a chance to do something more than what you usually can do in Cedar City. 1969: A year for heroes and idols, and collapsing dreams For a lO-year-o- ld boy, vuar seems like by Stewart Smith Editors Note: This is the first of a series of articles 'The Thunderbird uill run during the coming weeks as we remember the 1 Oth anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. On April 10, Americans sat horrified in front of their televisions, watching blurred images of helicopters rescuing Americans and Vietnamese from the roof of the U.S. embassy, and hearing the sound of small arms fire as communist forces gained control of the land and people of South Vietnam. We knew then it was the end of a long, bitter and confusing war. For some, a different kind of ending came even earlier. As the television blared out living color images of a faraway war, four small boys sat quietly transfixed, absorbing references for future nightmares. Images of battle burning huts, crying children, lifeless bodies, death filled the screen with vivid detail. Soldiers e crouched with intensity as faceless reporters dispassionately documented their triumphs and cat-lik- a game but all that can come crashing down without any warning tragedies. Smoke from the fires of war seemed to pour from the screen and into the young boys lives, scarring them subconsciously. As one of the young boys, I watched in amazement the hellish scenes being transmitted from an inconceivable country called Vietnam. Scarcely 10 years old, I considered the network impressions of death and destruction as pieces to a game. The game was war and the object simple death. Real death, though, does not exist to a child. For me it was a mere condition one encountered when playing the game, a prolonged sleep or temporary state of being. A dead soldier, like the ones I viewed on television, were simply obsolete pieces in the game. When the game was over the dead could simply be awakened or revived for the next game. Occasionally I even learned the score. Television news would often display a picture of an American flag and beneath it list the total number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded. Following this they would display a North Vietnamese flag, listing below it the number of their dead and wounded. I watched the flags and numbers the way a fan watches the scoreboard at an athletic contest. At 10, I was in the prime of youthful innocence. My beliefs and values were completely in line with my age and maturity. They were, however, completely contradictory to those held by a large number of Americans. The year was 1969 and the Vietnam War protest had reached its height. It was a time of draft dodgers and hippies, of peace signs and war protests. Looking back, it was too much for a young boy to understand. In that year I scarcely knew in whom or what to believe. Yet 1969 was also a year of heroes and idols. It was the year Joe Willie Namath led the New York Jets to the Super Bowl; the year Neil Armstrong led mankind to the moon; and the year another of my heroes, my father, led a company of soldiers through the jungles of Vietnam. (continued on page 8) |