My, err, personal Pat Robertson story

Yeah.

I have a personal Pat Robertson story.

Well, I think it was Pat Robertson - I'm almost certain of it - but judge for yourselves.

This post was prompted by a conversation I had with a friend today who suggested I should post it to the blog. He's probably the only person who even knows I have a blog, but hey, maybe some day someone else will and then they will see this post and... oh, I don't know, chuckle?

It involves D&D. Dungeons and Dragons to the uninitiated. To the even less initiated, D&D is a game developed in the 70's that started a whole new genre of gaming, role playing games. It launched several successful, if short-lived, companies, and created a mini revolution of its own. The game is played in the player's imagination, around a table, with funny looking dice, pen and paper. Players create fictional characters that try to solve challenges posed to them by the game master, relying on game mechanics detailed in the rulebooks in order to resolve the consequences of certain actions (such as, say, trying to hit someone with a sword). The setting for D&D is generally Tolkienesque (after Tolkien, the guy who wrote Lord of the Rings), mixed in with elements from the earth's medieval period - and magic.

Now that last bit is where it gets interesting for people like Robertson. See, when you deal with fictional magic you deal with all sorts of things arcane - spells, witches, devils and demons. Hey, the game wouldn't by fun if there weren't some opponents around, would it? Well, D&D is so open ended that a group of players can decide to "play" evil characters, essentially siding with said demons and using some pretty nasty spells. Remember, this is all imaginary.

Well, mix religious idealogy, ignorance, personal charm, a maniacal ego and a serious knack for cynically and continually extorting vast sums money for personal gain from helpless sheep - sorry, believers of a faith - and you get Pat Robertson and his determined attack on role playing games, D&D in particular. After all, it has some seriously evil elements.

Patience, my audience, patience. We're getting there.

I grew up in Israel. Now Israel in the early 80's had one TV channel - a national channel run by the government. We had no cable or anything remotely similar. Many Israelies had TV antennas that would allow them to watch TV stations from neighboring countries. One of our favorite channels was Middle-East TV, out of Beirut (Lebanon). It was a semi-christian channel, but it had a number of fun TV shows as well like Inspector Gadget. Well, being religios in nature it also featured, twice a day, a run of 700 Club, Pat's show for the religious fanatic.

Don't go, I'm getting to the point.

When I was 11 or so I was introduced to D&D for the first time, by a boy (incidentally called "Guy", which in Hebrew means "valley" but is funny in the English context) in my class whose dad was a senior IBM employee who thus got to travel out of Israel quite a bit and bring home things that were virtually unknown in the country. D&D books were one of them. Well, I didn't get into it that much, although I still remember our first - and at that time only - adventure. Typical dungeon crawl. Heck, what could you expect from 11 year olds? I stopped playing after 3 sessions.

A year or two later, I was alone at home, and the TV was on in the background, tuned to Mid-East TV, as usual. I was passing through the living room to the kitchen when something caught my eye. It was Pat in one of his fanatic speeches. The guy can be pretty eye-catching when he gets into one of his little acts. Well, my English being reasonably good already, and being the curious sort, I stopped and watched for a few seconds just to see what all the fuss was about.

It was about D&D.

He was spewing a constant stream of vitriol against the game, hovering over a table covered in game books, dice and miniatures. It must have been a great performance, because I watched it for over 10 minutes until it was done. And I remember distinctly saying to myself: "well, I know I've tried it once and didn't like it too much, but if this crazy guy thinks it's that bad, well, I guess I'll have to give it another go". Typical teenager attitude you might say, but I had already developed an acute sense of mistrust for anything and anyone devout at that age, and so it was no surprise that I turned back to my classmate and asked to photocopy the books so I could read them.

I was hooked.

I have been playing D&D, and other role playing games, ever since then. In fact, I had just completed running for our group (as Dungeon Master) an excellent adventure module, The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, after 3 1/2 years of playtime. I had branched off into many other role playing games since then, and my collection continues to grow every year. I have taught the game to countless people, and have converted many of them to the hobby. Role Playing games led me into boardgames as well, after a visit to the 1992 Gencon in Milwaukee. Boardgames are my biggest hobby by far these days.

I daresay that without Pat's tremendous performance on that show, none of my gaming hobby would have materialized. I therefore am very thankful for that show. It has enriched my life by an enormous degree, allowed me to meet with many people around the world sharing the same hobby, and generally opened my eyes and contributed much to my personal growth through positively influencing my interest in history, mathematics, and critical thinking. Pat, I know it was an unintended consequence, but thank you anyway. Thank you for re-introducing me to D&D. I truly appreciate it.