Horse Feathers

It is a humbling experience, to say the least, to find myself as Editor of a magazine that can trace its roots to the earliest days of the roleplaying hobby. And deep roots they are: Pegasus #13, published fifteen years ago, was the last publication in a run that started with the first broadsheet issues of the Judges Guild Journal, predating even such venerable publications as Dragon. That's a lot of history to have peering over one's shoulder!

I have been a roleplayer and wargamer for over twenty years, and like most gamers who read magazines I have spent much of that twenty years griping about how I could do so much better than the editor of any given gaming magazine. I take it back. I take it all back!

Putting together a magazine takes an enormous amount of work and an enormous amount of skill, most of which can only be learned on the job. It makes that job, and that learning, even more interesting when one unexpectedly has to move to another city on virtually no notice while doing all of this, and a month before GenCon at that! My fellow editors... (how strange it seems to be typing those words) My fellow editors, I salute you. You have my heartfelt respect and admiration. (and Roger, now it's your turn to bring me the big bag of M&M's) In future issues of Pegasus, Horse Feathers will be a full-fledged editorial column, a place where your humble Editor can pontificate on the roleplaying hobby and on the industry. It will be a bit short this month, due to the space used for the introductory section above ... enough about editing, on with the rant!

They're Called Games For a Reason

Back in the late 1970s when I first became involved in this hobby, we knew what we were doing. Oh, we didn't always know what the rules meant, or quite how play was supposed to proceed at times, but we knew the fundamental truth of what we were doing: We were playing games.

There was nothing complicated about it: We played Chess, and that was a game. We played Risk, and that was a game. And, we played Dungeons & Dragons, and that too was a game. It said so right there on the box.

It will be 22 years this Christmas since I opened the package with that little white pasteboard box in it – the box containing "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures." (roleplaying was a new word back then, outside of a psychological context) I took my little white box, and I got together with my friends, and we played games.

Somewhere along the line, some people seem to have become ashamed of playing games. RPG rule sets began to deny their identity as games. They became Interactive Literature, Sagas, Improvisational Drama. Gamemasters became Directors, Storytellers, and a dozen other euphemisms for a proud title. Players, no longer comfortable playing, were now Actors, Personae, and more. Anything, it seems, to disguise the fact that we grown-ups were playing a game. People might laugh!

The interesting thing is, of course, that nobody usually laughs at adults who watch other people playing games. Instead, they are supported and supplied by a multi-billion-dollar industry – professional sports. Why is it more respectable to watch someone else play a game than to do it yourself?

It's time to take back our games!

We don't have to be Storyguides or Actors, acting out roles in a Saga. We don't have to feel guilty that we are not analyzing our deepest psyches, expanding our inner selves, exploring alternative modes of thought, or whatever other buzzwords are hot this week. We don't need to stress about how much authenticity we're putting into our portrayal of a character who does not, and can not, exist in reality. Never mind the theater, the psychodrama, the shared fiction. This stuff is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be entertaining. It's supposed to be stress-relieving, not stress-inducing.

Let's pull out our dice, get together with some friends, order out for pizza, and play some games!