The Roll Of The Die | My Experience With Tabletop Role Playing Games

Unlike many gamers I do not have that much experience with role playing games of any kind let alone table top games. I played a session of Dungeons and Dragons with my friends in high school a decade ago and I do not remember much other than there was something to do with a magic chicken. Other than that, nothing about the experience really enticed me or made me want to play it again. And I never did after that.

Until recently in Digital Literacies class aka. Video Game Class after a recent play through of Call Of Cthullu, I never understood the appeal of table top role playing games. I thought they were too dull, nowhere near immersive enough, and they relied too much on the dungeon master's imagination and game plan and sometimes they turn the whole affair into a farce or make it too difficult and overall not that entertaining or fun. Call Of Cthullu though shattered those conceptions and showed me that table top role playing games can be every bit as immersive and fun as a console or computer game, if not even more so.

Its amazing how the role of the dice and its spontaneous and unpredictable nature leads to such a engrossing game even minus state of the art graphics and all of the facets that come with a console or a computer game. Unlike D&D Cthullu has more options for the player to physically and mentally interact with the game space in the form of various different physical and tangible clues that the player can gain access to. It also through a strong framework allows the keeper to be creative with how the game is played but not so much to the point where the focus of the game becomes lost. Something that tends to happen with some games of D&D or other role playing table top adventures.

I think my enjoyment and immersion into Call Of Cthullu is also greatly enhanced by my overactive imagination. I have always been in tune with my imagination ever since I was a kid and this game just leads me back to that particular time frame and mindset. I can picture the abandoned burnt down church in my mind as my character and the rest of the group explore its hidden crevices and depths. I can see the eerie reptillian eye scrawled on the walls and feel the chills go down my spine. And due to the games reliance upon imagination, my mind can conjure up horrors that can be more terrifying than what a game developer for a console or a computer might come up with. Horrors that connect right into my soul.

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