March 31, 1999
Goal of gaming is character development
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
In the past month, Annaka Dodd has been a Klingon officer, a Wookie and a woman who is half-human and half-cat. The Garfield Township resident is not surprised by these transformations; rather, she seeks them out.
Just last Sunday, she and fellow Klingon officers were tracking renegade Romulans loose on their battle cruiser. Dodd coolly analyzed the situation and gave orders to contain the crisis, working with James Downer, another Klingon officer on the ship.
Klingons for just a day, Dodd and Downer are members of the newly formed Northern Woods Gaming Guild. For the past month, they and two other local 'gamers' have been meeting weekly to play role playing and tactical card and board games. The Klingon scenario based on the original Star Trek series is just on of numerous games guild members come together to play.
"I don't care so much about the system, I just like the basic role playing," said Dodd, who began gaming six years ago while a student at Northwestern Michigan College. "With role playing it's like we're all in a play together and we're making it up as we go."
As a woman, Dodd is a minority among gamers. Her interest in the Society for Creative Anachronism and the theater brought her to gaming, which allows her to combine these interests. She met Frank Peasley, one of the founding members of the guild, at a Society meeting recently and jumped at the chance to join the guild.
"Gaming is a creative outlet for me," Dodd said. "Each person has a character sheet for each game and it is real interesting to give the character personality and make it unique."
Gaming is a low-tech festival of the imagination, where scenarios range from medieval to futuristic, magic to high tech, subterranean to outer space. Gamers use few props or visual aids in their endeavors, mainly character sheets, maps and blueprints. Board and strategy games such as Risk and Stratego use figures and maps extensively.
Role playing games are led by a game master, who is the storyteller, director, writer, producer, diplomat and referee for the group. Game masters work with two to six players at a time, sometimes more, although increasing the number of players can bog the game down.
A good game master keeps the action moving, mediates squabbles among the participants and throws in a lot of surprises for the players to handle. Peasley has been a game master for 15 years and spends up to three hours each week preparing scenarios for the gamers in the guild. A sudden assassination, a dragon lurking behind a door or a nasty storm can throw the players for a loop and challenge them to master the situation.
"Being game master you try to get them to work together," said Peasley of Garfield Township, a veteran gamer with 20 years of experience. "Gaming is very personality driven and an interactive game. The game master can get pretty frustrated with his players sometimes."
The controversy surrounding gaming still exists in the background, fueled by a few role players who took their Dungeon and Dragons fantasies into real life in the 1980s. With the advent of increasingly graphic and violent video games, however, gamers say their endeavors are tame by comparison. Some gaming groups do focus more on the 'hack and slash' aspects of gaming, looking for battles at every turn. Others, like the guild, create a more character driver approach to gaming.
"Video games are in a different class than role playing," said Dodd, who is trying to design a role playing system for the elementary school level, with simplified rules, less fighting and more thinking. "We try to have plot development here."