Games for Geeks

I've never liked fantasy novels or role-playing games; I never enjoyed all the work of learning the rules to someone else's imaginary universe. But in the past couple of days, I've been participating in a workshop on these historical role-playing games developed by Barnard College. Each game takes place in a historical crisis, and each student is assigned the role of a historical figure in the crisis. For example, in the French Revolution game, the game involves writing a new constitution for France. Students play the roles of the king, the revolutionaries, the clergy, the crowd, and various other real people. Students get role-sheets that outline their characters' objectives, motives, and secrets. Each student aims to complete his or her own objectives and has to make alliances and strategize to do so. The crowd has a riot card it can throw a couple of times to stop the assembly, but then the die might be rolled, and some of them might be executed.

Anyway, we've been playing a game on a succession crisis in Ming China, and I was assigned the role of a Confucian extremist (yes, I know it sounds like an oxymoron). My role was to be as strident and critical of the emporer as possible, and ultimately to pursue martyrdom. It was pretty fun. I would never have made a public speech calling one of my colleagues (and friends) obsequious outside of a game-playing situation.

I read a while back that when psychologists analyze boys' and girls' play, they find that in boys' aggressive play, they compete against each other and learn that competitive behavior does not mean their relationships are on the line even if they're insulted, defeated, etc. The scholarship suggests that girls' more empathetic natures lead them to play games through which personal relationships are negotiated, and they're less likely to leave the games behind. Thus, women become less comfortable with competitive behaviors throughout their lives.

I know it's a bunch of chickens and eggs, and I'm not sure if I buy all of it since I know some men (and women) whose confidence is tied to winning and losing. But I wonder if role-playing games give people the opportunity to experiment with different personality strategies. Of course, in actuality, I felt that my game playing was strongest when I was pretty much acting like myself, just keeping my character's objectives in mind. So, who knows? Anyway, whatever the gender theories I may develop as a result, Julie says that my clear relishing of the game was irretrievably geeky.