Joachim Breitner's Homepage

Recently, at a summer-school-like event, we were discussing pen-and-paper role playing. I’m not sure if this was after a session of role-playing, but I was making the point that you don’t need much or any at all of the rules, and scores, and dice, if you are one of the story-telling role players, and it can actually be more fun this way.

As an example, I said, it can make sense if one of the players (and the game master, I suppose) reads up a lot about one aspect of the fantasy world, e.g. one geographical area, one cult, one person, and then this knowledge is used to create an exciting puzzle, even without any opponents.

I’m not quite sure, but I think I fell asleep shortly after, and I dreamed of such a role playing session. It was going roughly like this:

I (a human), and my fellows (at least a dwarf, not sure about the rest) went to some castle. It was empty, but scary. We crossed its hall, and went into a room on the other side. It was locked towards the hall by a door that covered the door frame only partly, and suddenly we could see a large Ogre, together with other foul folk not worth mentioning, hammered at the door. My group (which was a bit larger in that moment) all prepared shooting arrows at him the moment it burst through the door. I had the time to appreciate the ingenuity that we all waited for him to burst through, so that none of the arrows would bounce of the door, but it did not help, and we ran from the castle, over a field, through a forest, at the other side of which we could see, below a sleep slope, a house, so we went there.

The path towards that was filled with tracks that looked surprisingly like car tracks. When we reached the spot there was no house any more, but rather a cold camp side. We saw digging tools, and helmets (strangely, baseball helmets) were arranged in a circle, as if it was a burial site.

We set up camp there and slept.

It occurred to me that I must have been the rightful owner of the castle, and it was taken by me from my brother and his wife, who denied my existence or something treacherously like that. When we woke up at the camp side, she were there, together with what must be my niece. My sister in law mocked us for fighting unsuccessfully at the castle, but my niece was surprised to see me, as I must have a very similar appearance to my brother. She said that her mother forbid it, but she nevertheless sneakily takes out something which looks like a Gameboy with a camera attachment and a CompactFlash card from her mothers purse, puts it in and take a photo of me. This is when I realize that I will get my castle back.

At that moment, I woke up. I somewhat liked the story (and it was a bit more coherent in my mind than what I then wrote down here), so I wanted to write it down. I quickly fetched my laptop. My friends at the summer school were a bit worried, and I promised not to mention their names and concrete places, and started writing. They distracted me, so I searched for a place of my own, lied down (why? no idea), and continued writing. I had to to touch writing on my belly, because my laptop was not actually there.

I also noticed that I am back at the camp side, and that I am still wearing my back protector that I must have been wearing while fighting in the castle, and which I did not take off while sleeping at the camp side. Funnily, it was not a proper medieval amour, but rather my snowboarding back protector.

At that moment, I woke up. I somewhat liked the story (and it was a bit more coherent in my mind than what I then wrote down here), so I wanted to write it down. I quickly got up, started my laptop, and wrote it down. And this is what you are reading right now.

Off to bed again, let’s see what happens next.