Random Encounter
Not every teenager is skilled at making new friends. When I was in 6th grade, my English teacher Ms. Hendon asked me to be friends with a kid I’d never spoken to before. It was that painful phase of adolescence where I hadn’t come to grips with the reality that I was, in fact, terrible at sports. Luckily he also appeared to suck at anything involving precision velocity of spheres, and was a gifted storyteller with a more open mind.
Naturally, my first chances to hang out with him were in phys ed. In the locker room, drowning in the noxious gas of spray deodorant, he invited us to play a game called DragonStrike. A little social maneuvering later and a small circle of loosely familiar people were acquainted enough to attend a sleepover at his house and give the game a try.
DragonStrike
TSR put this board game out in 1993 so that we proto-nerds could discover it and be funneled later to their main product: Dungeons & Dragons. In its defense, the game was fine; and being adolescents hungry for new experiences, we ate it up. We insisted on playing every scenario provided and made sure to have all the D&D core rulebooks.
The DM (dungeon master), our Dragon Strike host, provided his music collection as a soundtrack to the games, broadening our horizons on another level (whether we liked it or not). When the adventuring session ended, we watched movies to immerse ourselves in even more new experiences. Eventually, we branched out into White Wolf games like Vampire: the Masquerade, and found that we had formed a friendship beyond the confines of the campaign setting. Without realizing it, our DM was opening us up to new ideas and ideologies despite the natural defensiveness of teens aching for consistency in their life.
Choose Your Class
We still gravitated to our real world cliques, as high schoolers do; the band geek, the football player, literature hound, language guy, and the science kid. It’s hard to say if we all would have found David Bowie, Stanley Kubrick or Siouxsie and the Banshees through the people our curriculum grouped us with. What I do know, is that this particular circle of friends was who I felt safest to take risks with, even if it was my Ranger taking the hits.
The freedom of social exploration in a role-playing was the butt of many a joke from 90s stand up comics. But consider the idea of being able to feel free to try anything, and welcome criticism of people you trust who say “Whoa, man, you shouldn’t say that.” It may not be perfect, but its better than the comments section.
Teenagers screw up, and teenagers learn better from their mistakes than obstinate adults. Role-playing games spare the real world from damage when you experiment with pushing boundaries but have the safety net of kindred spirits to steer you back to responsibility. Even in the campaigns where you’re evil. Especially in the campaigns where you’re evil.
Learn Through Play
We didn’t set out to learn about equality and fairness and accountability by gaming. We didn’t overcome all of our biases. What we did do, was lay a groundwork by which we could continue to learn well into our obstinate adulthood, including the knowledge that it was okay to change.
A friend of mine has a soon-to-be freshman in high school expressing interest in playing. They never got the chance to try tabletop games when he was growing up, and asked me to DM an introductory campaign for him, his wife and son. Of course I said yes.
His son is a good kid with a kind heart, but he’s still an adolescent, and I know how quickly that can change. It’s important to reinforce the good stuff early, so you don’t have to figure out those boundaries later in life. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to grab my dice and run off a thank you note to Ms. Hendon.
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