Here, for you today, is an essay. Woosh! Let me know whatcha think. PNEK MEKS

“Let’s Pretend” for Big Kids

When I was seven, hell, when all of us were seven, we played many different games. I remember playing games like Explorers, Cowboys and Indians, Knights and Princesses (I always got to play the Dragon), and House, just to name a few. All of these could be classified under the title of “Let’s Play Pretend”.

Now, “pretending” really didn’t have any rules to it, you just made things up as you went, right? Wrong. There were some rules, the conformity that the oldest got to be the lead explorer, the Indians never won, the dragon was always slain by a knight, and the youngest always played the baby. Of course, the rest of us had to jock for position of who would play what. Sometimes we were appointed by the oldest, sometimes we played rounds of “Skunk in the barnyard”, “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, “Thumb wars”, and then there was always arguing over who got to be what until mom stepped in and ended the game before it started.

For many, this “talent” died when you hit middle school, (high school for us late bloomers) and it was “un-cool” to play childish games from elementary school; reality was hitting us hard. However, for some of us, this talent still existed. We just did not call it “Let’s Play Pretend” anymore. Instead it was endowed with copyrighted titles such as “Dungeons and Dragons”, or for people like me, it was simply referred to as “Role-playing”.

Now, there are 3 different types of role-playing. There is the “Dungeons and Dragons” breed, also called “Table-Top” RP (role-play), which was first published in 1973 by TSR. (“What is D&D?”) This version involves a gross amount of different detailed rule books and dice to decide a good amount of what happens, not to mention the word or the all mighty overseer, the DM or GM, otherwise known as the Dungeon Master or the Game Master. The second is the Video-Game Genre known as RP. This simply means that the game revolves around a character for which you decide their future by controlling what they do and when they do it. The third, and the one that I prefer among the rest, is Online Chat Room or “Note-Pass” RP, which is the title me and my friends have bestowed upon it.

However, since we were older, the game became more in-depth, required more skills, and became a lot harder. You are probably wondering, “How could a seven-year-old game become difficult?” Just like I said before, one game type involves a large library of rule books, rolling dice, and an overseer who has the final say. However, that’s not the one I understand the best. I’ll explain to you the complexity of “Note-Pass” RP, where my expertise lies.

Now, the name “Note-Pass” is what my friends and I have been calling it for years. We gave it this title due to the fact that we mostly RPed by passing notes to each other in class. Of course, this was because we did not all have computers or the internet at that time when we were first learning. I put the basics on paper since computers were lacking. Soon, we founded a few of our own rules and regulations, but it did not differ much from the true version of Online Chat Room RP.

The first rule of the “Note-Pass” version is that only two people can play, where as in a Chat Room you can have numerous players at one time. The next rule is to be able to read and write. This is a necessity, as the game is no fun if you can not do either. The third is the most important, in my opinion; you have to have at least a good imagination. There are usually no drawings done in “Note-Pass” or in the Online Chat Room version, so you have to be able to picture the actions and write them in words. Having a decent imagination to come up with a good storyline also helps. Face it, who wants to read a story about someone sitting around watching TV? If you can not come up with a good story line, it is pointless to RP.

After the top three rules, we get into some more nit-picky rules about “modeing”. No one ever wanted to be called a “Moder”. In simple terms, “Moder” meant “Asshole”. “Modeing” was when a player refused to accept any hits in a fight. “Moder’s” were deemed ignorant and absurd, not to mention they were no fun to play with. To sum all those nit-picky rules, we titled this rule simply “No Modeing.”

Now we must get into the “tools” of the trade. In RP, there are several different sets of symbols and ways to type and or write out a “post”, your action response. The way you would type an action is like so:

:: a young woman walks into a bar ::

OR

a young woman walks into a bar

These are the two different ways to type an action. Notice that they are the same action; one is just done with a double set of colons at the beginning and end, and the other with . That would be a successful post. Now, there are other things you can do in a post, such as have your character speak, think to himself or herself, talk in a different language, and so on. The few that I named would be done like so:

:: a young woman walks into a bar :: Kinda scruffy in here. Uh, hello? Is the bartender in?

an ogre sits down next to her No, he’s out at the moment.

In the above post, you see an action, a thought, and speech in two different languages. The action is again represented with the double colons or the . The thought is shown by the symbols. Normal Speech or “Common” is shown by simply typing and any other language is shown in italics so that everyone can still read it. These are the basics of an In Character post or IC post. There is also an Out Of Character post or an OOC post. The same symbols are used in the same way, except it is all enclosed by double parenthesis on each end to signify that you are talking OOC. Example:

(( blinks How is there an ogre in the inn? ))

These are the tools of the trade. The only other things you need are either paper and a pencil or computers with internet and chatting capabilities. Pick any character you like, find a friend, and RP. I guess it’s not as highly complicated as I originally stated, but it is different from the childhood game of “Let’s Play Pretend”.

One more thing, you need a character. Not that hard. Unfortunately, the simple characters from our childhood will not last long in this game. The characters that true RPers use have legacies, lives, futures, and pasts all shaped and formed around a bit of imagination and what all happens in the different RPs the character participates in. I happen to have a character just like that. His legacy has been sculpted and created through my entire RP career and he is still growing and changing with each new one I play. It’s not a game that lasts just an hour or so anymore either. Some RPs can last anywhere from a few hours to years. It all depends on what and how you want to get to the end, or maybe you have no end in mind, and one day it will just sneak up on you.

In conclusion, RP has taken the simple joy of “Let’s Play Pretend” and made it a bit more entertaining for us by disguising it with rules and fancy names. Deep down, most of us are still kids, and we still like those childhood games. I’m one of them.

Works Cited

1. Hahn, Joel. “Introduction to rgfd”. 1 Feb. #A1 .