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Full transcriptYou find yourselves on a hill overlooking a town. Its early autumn and the leaves are just starting to change. A small river winds itself around the hill you stand on and makes its way to the village. A loud clamor is reaching out from the village and you can see individuals fleeing from the scene. One on horseback is approaching your location, fast. Catching sight of you the rider alters his course. A decrepit old man arrives and looks down from his mount to addresses the small company. “The deed is done, the gates are open. Don’t waste this opportunity, Drive out that dictator of a marshal and we’ll call your debts squared”. Now what is it that you want to do? Yes you, the audience. In story telling we use plot hooks to grab an audience's attention. That is what that was. This concept can be seen in movie trailers, on the back of books and games. The idea of a plot hook is to give a highly engaging sample of the content of a story. This idea permeates modern story telling, which brings me to the topic of my speech.(!?) My name is Ian hill and this is a brief introduction to a section of modern storytelling, known as Role Playing Games. (!?)Today I will introduce you to Role Playing games, by describing what they are, how the affect other parts of our lives as well as give a brief overview of why they are important. (!?)So first, what are role playing games AKA RPGS? RPGs are usually described as games where the players take on the roles of the character. Thus Role playing games. A major draw for these games is that the narrative is not one you simply experience but also one that you help create. In order to fully take on the role of a character, often times players choose to put a bit of acting into their gameplay. This helps keep the entire group stay with the current setting in game. So its a big group of people playing pretend and creating a story together, where is the game? Well that is where dice checks and Stats come in.(!?)When you played pretend as a kid where were the fights. It was never about who was the cowboy and who was the indian. No the arguments always stemmed from I shot you first, no i did. Now Han and Greedo settled their differences with blasters, we do not have such luck. Instead we use dice and stats. Dice add chance and statistics strategy to the game. Players all play characters, each character has associated statics to go along with them. The statics help define what a character can and can’t do. For instance a character with a lot of strength, such as a great warrior will have no problem moving that boulder, but a wizard who spent all of his time in the library learning the mage craft will find it more challenging. However if everything went as planned it’d be rather boring game wouldn’t it. This is where dice come in. They help to add the seeming chaos of the universe into the game. So yes this sounds complicated, however that is the view from outside.(!?) Like many other traditional games and sports the purpose of such an exercise seems really strange if you don’t understand what is going on. A group of children are running in seemingly strange patterns all over grass that has paint spilled all over it. They are chasing a small object on the ground. Now for anyone who knows what soccer is the game is really simple, but the view for outsider perspective is rather complicated. ?But trust me, once you get ahold of the rules for RPGs its far more about the stories that you create with friends, then what rules you had to follow to make them possible.Now this topic always comes with a stigma and a bad rap. There was a time where playing RPG’s was considered devil worship. Though to be honest, what wasn’t at some point or another. To help combat this stigma the slide will display a list of famous people who play role playing games. (!?) Mostly actors as you can see as well as comedians. Which brings me to a large benefit of playing games. You get rather good at public speaking and knowing how to think on your feet. ?(!?)Who are Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and why do they matter. Role playing games most often cite Dungeons and Dragons as the origin of the genre. The creators of D&D, Gygax and Arneson, were playing a war game and thought to adapt the rules to allow them to add more of a story twist. The result was published by Tactical Studies Rules Inc. and is one of the most significant advances to gaming since humans played games. (!?)Since the dawn of games there has always been a winner and a looser. At the end of the game one person has always defeated another in some way shape or form. DnD marks the first game in history to not have a winner or loser. Instead it had players. Now characters can die and that could be considered losing, but often times character deaths serve as great story points moving forward, so its not so much losing as it is making a move. (!?)Humans are social creatures. We love to interact with others. And if we are not there at the time of an interaction we love to share our experiences through stories. These can take the form of trivial gossip to national news. Combining that with one of the oldest forms of entertainment, role playing games hit the perfect mark of collective modern narrative and games. So may the dice forever be in your favor. My name has been ian hill, thank you.(!?) ................
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