Alter Egos

                 An article by Graham Raven

Just as much of the computer world seems to be divided into those
who love text adventures and those who hate them, there seems to
be similar divisions over RPGs. Some people find them quite
pointless and lacking in almost any kind of entertainment, and yet
others like me know them to be quite fascinating. The RPG world
which captures my imagination on the computer screen is but a pale
reflection of the magical world which lies deep inside my head.
Somehow, playing the game allows me to access this inner world,
and I derive the same feeling of satisfaction from working with,
and developing, my characters, as the text adventure addict enjoys
solving troublesome puzzles.

Why these games are quite so fascinating I'm not certain, but I
think that the answer lies in the fact that they allow me to
express and develop parts of 'me' which would be impossible in my
'normal' life. Civilisation undeniably does have its good points,
but it can be quite repressive in many ways too. There's often too
much pressure on all of us to conform to a stereotype. Society
likes clones, or so it often seems.  In the magical world of the
RPG however, the restrictions of society are lifted from us, we
can train to be a warrior, a thief, a magic user, a druid, ranger,
assassin, merchant etc. We can become a master of many different
skills if we choose. Should we be feeling seriously pissed off,
yes we can go out and slaughter a whole pack of monsters and no
one is any the worse for it. Should I have the misfortune to die
horribly, well that is usually merely an inconvenience more than
anything else.

In my own magical world, I am legion, which is to say that I have
many different 'shadow sides' to my character and it wasn't until
I found my first large scale RPG (Mordor) that my different
characters started to develop. I tried many different 'characters'
in this game, perhaps twenty or more, but a certain number of them
somehow stood out as being different, and even began to take on a
kind of personality of their own. I remember my son Michael
looking at me strangely when I told him that one of my characters,
'Seek', was tired and needed resting. Did I mean that I was tired?
Maybe? Who knows, however I was able to carry on playing my other
characters into the wee hours of the morning, but Seek really
needed some time out for R&R!

According to Jungian psychology we all have a 'shadow' side to us,
made up of repressed aspects of our personality. I'm sure there
are many of us who feel that the world would be a better place if
certain people weren't in it. Perhaps somebody has robbed you,
pinched your car, etc. and wouldn't it be 'nice' if they were to
suddenly die horribly? We all tend to think that way, even though
it's politically incorrect. We might even repress such thoughts
and bury them, and yet, I think if we could look deep inside
ourselves, we'd find the feelings were still there. We're not
supposed to think things like that of course, and the natural
anger that we feel is repressed, turned in on itself, stifled.
Unfortunately despite good intentions, we're not saints, and we do
think and feel 'bad' things sometimes, and there's nothing we can
do about the situation we find ourselves in, except be
frustrated... or is there?

It's a lovely day outside - but you have to go to work instead! My
word, that young lady over there looks jolly attractive! (Gulp, oh
dear, I'm having an immoral thought, I must beat myself with
nettles!) Maybe just sometimes we'd like to live a more
adventurous life style, and especially if we can do so in a
fantasy world, where people can be resurrected if they
accidentally die horribly! The energy behind all these normal
healthy drives is often stifled in our every day lives, but it
remains inside us, and these repressed energies are the very stuff
which goes to make up what Jung called our 'Shadow'.

We all have a 'shadow' side to ourselves, and contrary to popular
belief, our shadow is anything but evil. Inconvenient maybe,
inappropriate sometimes - definitely, but evil - no.

Thankfully some of us have found an easy and effective way of
expressing many of those shadow sides to our characters which
civilised life so rarely permits. Role Playing Games! The argument
that RPGs are only games and not 'real' is neither here nor there
- they work! Solving puzzles in an RPG is solving puzzles; it
doesn't matter whether it's taking place in 'real' life or not.
Being creative within the confines of a computer game is still
being creative, and can be just as satisfying as being creative in
any other way. And as to letting off steam - you can't beat a
computer game! Mass slaughter can be very satisfying occasionally,
and no one is harmed in the least. I have found it interesting
however, that given a 'world' where you can safely slaughter and
maim to your heart's content, I for one find myself getting very
quickly bored with such activity, and I'm soon looking for other,
more satisfying exercise.  RPGs are good fun too, even if they are
somewhat addictive.

As I said above, in my own magical world I have any number of
'shadow' sides to my character. In my first 'ideal' world of
Mordor, I came to develop eight elite characters, although there
are other characters I have discovered in my head who were not
suited to that world. Their time will come as I discover and/or
create new worlds to explore. Of those original characters, four
gradually came to develop a real presence of their own.  'Seek'
was the first, a good human female and jack of all trades.  She
was both an explorer and a mother figure to nearly all of the
characters who were to come. In time she rose to be guild master
of every profession which she could learn. She was never at the
cutting edge of exploration oddly enough, she felt that was too
dangerous I think *, but in all other ways she excelled, largely
due to sheer hard work.

Later, some younger characters gradually developed a 'presence' of
their own also, though Mordor itself didn't exactly give much
opportunity for individual expression, I was always aware that the
game itself was only a pale reflection of the 'real' world which
was in my imagination. Interestingly the game itself scored very
poorly when reviewed by a well known glossy games magazine, the

   * Although dying was no big deal in Mordor it was possible to
   suffer 'Complications', and that amounted to almost permanent
   damage. You could be looking at a hundred hours work or more to
   regain all your hit points!

graphics were too poor, and for heaven's sake - you could run the
thing on a 486! Oddly enough however, the poor graphics worked to
its benefit as far as I was concerned, and helped to free my
imagination. Eg In Mordor there was no representation on screen of
your characters. This lack of an image allowed my deep mind to
create its own, and I soon found that Lilith, one of my
characters, is of medium build, has long dark hair, is quite
heavily built for an elf, wears a black skirt and has snake
tattoos on both forearms. She favours leather armour despite being
able to wear heavier kinds and her face is quite striking; she has
'character'!

In time I found myself being able to almost talk of them as if
they were members of my family, or good friends. So then there
were four - Seek, Lilith, Silk, Grez,

Seek I have mentioned, she was the first, the oldest character by
far and the first one to survive in this world for any appreciable
length of time.

Grez I have found is very much my 'brother', very powerful and
definitely not the intellectual type. He is however, in some
strange ways a more honest character than I am in this world. He
has no time for pretence, he likes you or he doesn't! Very much a
warrior, what else could he be? I know him, magic isn't his trade
and thieving is too dextrous, something which doesn't come
naturally to him. He fits the race of Ogres well, and brute force
often serves as a good answer to most problems.

Silk is a relatively new character but one who has developed
rapidly and never shirked in her efforts to develop her character.
Silk has a number of qualities but above all she is an elite
thief. In Mordor it was she who finally defeated Asmodeus (the BIG
baddie!) and so brought the game to an end, and she, like Lilith,
now seeks a new world to live in.

Lilith has long fascinated me, and she above all others has
striven to express her own personality, even despite me. She was
created in a light hearted manner, a pretty elf who was to be a
Mage and who could charm and beguile all who met her. Hmm,
however, Lilith had other plans. Small and weak as female elves
are she was forbidden to join the warriors guild, after all, the
very thought of an elf being a warrior is absurd! However, the
paladins guild would take her, even if they did insist that she
worked harder than any other race to earn her progress. I can't
say it was consciously planned, far from it in fact, Lilith didn't
develop in the way I expected. Lilith stuck at Paladins until she
was the fourth best fighter in the game, quite an achievement for
an elf competing with ogres and giants. She did learn some mage
skills, plus some basic thieving too, but she truly excelled at
fighting, and I'm still unsure just why she went that way. Having
spent several hundreds of hours developing her I now know her
quite well.

Haeamund (number five?) - his time will come, Mordor didn't suit
him, too many pigeon holes which he didn't quite fit. Despite
having almost no chance to develop in an RPG world, he already had
a 'presence' of his own when I made him. Physically very strong,
he's a big man, a Monk and healer, who uses a staff for
protection. A friend and protector to all who ask his help.

There were many other characters all of whom had the same amount
of work done on them, but who never appeared to take on a persona
of their own. Now I'm sure there's some psychologist out there who
could draw all manner of insight into my psyche from these
characters. As for myself, I'm not too worried about any such
reasoning, I enjoy playing these characters, it's akin to having a
big dog which only gets out for some decent exercise once a week
and every Sunday morning they get the chance to dash about in a
big empty field!

Work on my new world goes on (albeit slowly). This world will be
closer to my ideal RPG world, a place where there's less fighting
than Mordor and a lot of communication between characters.  There
will also be a great many opportunities for my characters to
develop in all manner of ways, unlike the original D&D which was
rather restrictive - Fighter, Thief, Magician or Cleric.


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