Adventurers - Are We As Weird As We Believe?

                     By James Judge

Let me just explain my reasons for writing this article. The first
was Phill Ramsay's article in Red Herring entitled 'Adventurers -
A Funny Breed Of People'.  The second was talking to a couple of
friends who class anyone who is associated with wizards, warriors,
photon lasers and the like completely mad. The third, and the one
that got the old fingers tapping away at the keyboard, was
speaking with MONGOOSE on the 'phone (yes, MONGOOSE, you can now
say you are a inspiration for one of my articles) who said,
through talking about how we got 'into' adventuring and the type
of friendly, nice people there seem to be in the adventuring
circles, that we all are the same - totally crazy.

Not wanting to go on about it on the 'phone, I laughed politely
and continued with the conversation but that one sentence got me
thinking - are we really as weird as we, and other people,
believe?

'No' is the simple answer to that and let me explain why.

The first and foremost reason why we are not weird, crazy or a
breed of people who spend their time locked away in a room staring
at a monitor which reels off endless descriptions of lusty maidens
(see another article for my views on that), terrifying swamp
creatures and amazing magic tricks is that we are human.

To a person we are all humanoid in appearance, we can communicate
with each other and we have a high intelligence. This goes for all
of us and so classes us human. There is no way you can judge one
human from another on the grounds of what they do in their spare
time because what you do is probably as ludicrous to someone else.

True, if there was an adventurer out there who, on good days, went
around wearing a Spock outfit trying to 'beam' people up into his
or her imaginary spacecraft we'd have good grounds to call them
strange as, no matter how much you believe in Star Trek, you know
there is no matter transference device in the making at the moment
and so they are living in their own mind, repelling (in a way) the
outside world, wanting something better than what is there.

That is an example of when people could call an adventurer crazy,
strange or weird but there is no reason why they should call us,
the sane members of the adventuring population, crazy.

Although I do not believe in a God or the equivalent of one, I do
believe there may be a higher intelligence which far outstrips
ours somewhere in the universe.

Why do I bring this up?  I bring this up because the only people
that are able to make judgements on other beings are those of a
higher intelligence. I'm not talking about a few IQ points because
then members of MENSA could then look down on all the people in
the world and proclaim them mad.  I'm talking about an advanced
civilization which has, in our terms, reached God-like status.
These are the only things/people/animals that have the right to
proclaim us mad because, due to their God-like status, they can
then show us an example of what we can achieve and, through
looking at that final goal, we could then see that through
accepting the mystical worlds of Krynn or Middle Earth we are
truly crazed.  As we have not met any of these higher intelligence
races we have no-one to judge us.

My second point is this:

Nearly everyone in what we call the 'civilised' world has got some
connection with computers either through working with them or
playing on them and I'm sure that if you did a survey of all the
people who come in contact with computers 99% of them would play
games now and again, whether they are adventures or platforms or
shoot-'em-ups.

We can now have a look at the two distinctive types of computer
games.
(1) The humble adventure - text, RPG or graphical, it doesn't
matter.
(2) The parallax scrolling world of arcade games - shoot-'em-ups
or platforms.

The adventures deal with one of three things. The first being
Sci-fi. These adventures are set in the future with humans
normally being the centre of the game.  There is no way you can
call these games 'total make believe' or some other phrase these
non-adventurers use because (a) how can you prove that, someday,
we will not come across a new race of sentient being and (b) all
the science that is included in the game which, at the moment, is
nonsense could come to be in the future.

Jurassic Park is a good example of that. Set a few years into the
future, microbiology has advanced beyond all expectations and,
through that, the re-creation of dinosaurs has been made possible.

Look at what is going on in the moment - scientists all over the
world are searching for strands of dinosaur DNA, they have already
been experimenting reconstructing with existing DNA, or fragments
of it. There are many theories about how to get the DNA strand
into an embryo form and how you would raise and care for a baby
dinosaur. What will happen in fifty years time?  I should imagine
the first prototype dinos will have been made and scientists will
be trying to build bigger and better ones. There is no way you can
call this work of fiction 'fiction' because, even as we speak,
science is catching up with science-fiction to make science-fact.

The next type of adventures is the good old fantasy. True, you
have got no worlds, in our solar system, which have the elements
of magic in them but how do we know there isn't a place somewhere
else where there is magic?

Magic aside, fantasy worlds are normally set in a middle ages
setting with the sciences and levels of technology of that time
being exhibited. If you swung an iron sword at a person and hit,
they would bleed and hurt as in these works of fantasy.  If you
jumped, you'd return to the ground, just as in these fantasy
settings.  If you vibrated the air in your throat you'd speak just
as in these fantasy games. The only aspect that is fantasy is that
of magic and even today people believe in it and we have no true
way of disproving it so there is no way we can disregard it. Is
there?

The third type of game is the games set on Earth in either a
present or past setting and we all know that, if the facts are
right, there is no argument as to whether these games are fiction
or not.

Looking at these three types of game there is nothing there on
which to base an argument that adventurers are crazy. The
scientific bits and bobs hold up to investigation and the things
that can be classed as crazy are the things that can't be proved
by a scientific formula.

So, where does that leave us?  We've now established the games we
play aren't strange, as a matter of fact, they are quite sensible.
Let us compare a text adventure that is based on an Asimov book
and one of the most popular platform games - Sonic The Hedgehog.

What have we got?  A blue hedgehog that whizzing around a screen
followed by a furry fox, collecting rings and bouncing into
springs and, on the other hand, a game based on a book by one of
the great scientific minds of the latter 20th century whose many
theories he expressed in his books have come to be or soon will.

We now take two people, one who is a Sonic fan and the other an
adventure boff. They sit down at their respective games and we
must make a judgement on who is the most sane - the one working
his way through a real environment using commands which give a
great flexibility or the one clutching a stick, waggling it this
way and that, watching a blue hedgehog swirling around the screen?

I know who I'd choose...

That is really all I've got to say on the issue of whether we, the
adventuring population, are mad.  I've illustrated that you can't
judge people on what they do and had a look at the three main
types of adventure game which shows that they are all normal and,
just because they don't need a joystick to work and you need to
think about them, you can't call them strange. Finally I've shown
you the great divide between our main 'tormentors' (if I can call
them that) and us. One with a blue hedgehog or Italian plumber on
the mind and the other with riddles which tax their intelligence
on their mind.

I would like to say one more thing on the subject though. I
suppose we like to think we are mad, I know I get a little buzz
out of being the 'odd one out' in the world of computers and I'm
sure that quite a few of you do as well so let's not spoil our
image, shall we?

One more thing and I'll promise I'll shut up (until next time).
Sue said that 'us adventurers' work on a different level to
'non-adventurers', being more analytical and seeing 'strange
things' in ordinary objects. Well, I agree we DO work on a
different level, God knows most people would go to pieces trying
to work out some of the problems we've all faced throughout our
adventuring life. But we don't see 'strange' things to do with
items, instead we are more inventive and (some times) practical.

That's it now, responses to this article will be read and
responded to accordingly. Let's see if anyone among us does think
we're strange (he says, looking at the gauntlet with a strange
glimmer in his eye...).