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The Escapist (website)
Encyclopedia
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s (RPGs) as a social and educational activity, and works to educate the public on the true nature of gaming and dispel myths and misunderstandings about the hobby. It is one of a handful of sites that promote RPGs as an activity rather than advocating or supporting any specific game systems.
The site was created in December 1995 by William J. Walton and has been regularly updated for more than a decade. Originally titled The Gaming Advocacy Website, it began as a research project for a technical writing class. In April 1996, the site was expanded into an online zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
devoted to role-playing and collectible card games, and shortly after, the rest of the material was scrapped and the site focused entirely on gaming advocacy.
Other examples of independent RPG Advocacy sites which have been cited in the media include
the Shakespearean Eclectic Archive and the GAMA "Gaming & Education" site. Such sites counter the efforts of anti-game advocates including
Patricia Pulling
Patricia Pulling
Patricia A. Pulling was an anti-occult campaigner from Richmond, Virginia, and the founder of Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons , an advocacy group that was dedicated to the regulation of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons and other such games.-Biography:Pulling formed the organization...
.
Site self-description
From the site's main page:
Tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons are an engaging and intellectually stimulating activity that promote teamwork, problem solving, and creative thinking. Even better, in hands of a parent, guardian, or educator, they can be a fantastic teaching tool.
Unfortunately, the role-playing hobby has acquired a reputation for being geeky, dangerous, occultic, satanic, and even causing players to be prone to suicide or homicide. Only one of these is accurate — sure, it's a bit geeky, but that's the worst thing that can be said about it. The rest of those claims are pure urban legend.
Projects and features
The Escapist contains several projects that are each devoted to a different aspect of roleplaying advocacy:- BeQuest, which focuses on connecting gamers, game clubs, and game companies with charitable organizations.
- Reading, Writing, & Roleplaying, an upcoming project that focuses on using roleplaying games as an educational tool.
- Terra Libris: The Library RPG Project, which encourages librarians and volunteers to organize and run role-playing games as Young Adult programs at libraries.
- The Young Person's Adventure League, which focuses on getting children and pre-teens involved in the hobby.
- The Square One Podcast, hosted by Sam Chupp and Bill Walton, a podcast geared towards new and inexperienced gamers.
The site also has regular features of interest to the gaming community:
- Tell Me About Your Character is a series of 'self-serve' interviews with roleplayers from all walks of life.
- The Escapist Video Movie Review Report is a series of reviews of movies and television shows that feature roleplaying as part of the story — either based on published RPG worlds, or on gamers and the act of gaming.
- 20 Sided World is an upcoming feature that explores gaming culture in different parts of the world.
Spellcasting 101
The most popular of the site's features is an installment of the editorial column Random Encounter titled Spellcasting 101: Don't Try This At Home. In it, the author attempts to test the claims made by many fundamentalist Christian groups and individuals that the Harry PotterHarry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
books and Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
game contain real magical rituals that will produce effects that can be reproduced. Numerous spells from both sources are put to the test, including Lumos, Body Bind, Burning Hands, Hold Portal, Spider Climb, and others.
The purpose of the column was to point out the absurdity of the claims being made against different forms of fantasy entertainment. Initial response to the column was very favorable, with hundreds of approving emails arriving from all across the world, many of which were reprinted in the following installment of Random Encounter. Numerous websites linked to the column, including the Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
' Daily Illuminator and Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
fansite The Leaky Cauldron
The Leaky Cauldron (website)
The Leaky Cauldron, also called Leaky, TLC, or Leaky News, is a Harry Potter fansite and blog. The site features news, image and video galleries, downloadable widgets, a chat room and discussion forum, and an essay project called Scribbulus, among other offerings...
. Forums and newsgroups devoted to role-playing games, Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
, and Paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
also helped to spread the word, and at least one half-hearted attempt at plagiarism appeared on the internet for a short while.
The column is still the most-viewed page of the entire website, several years since its first appearance in 2002.
William J. Walton
The site creator has been a returning guest of honor at Econocon in New Hampshire and DexconDexCon
DEXCON is a gaming convention, held annually in July in New Jersey, run by Double Exposure, Inc. It has a reputation for attracting leading game industry talent to participate, and hosts several national and world gaming championships....
in New Jersey. He lives in Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
with his partner Paula and their two daughters.
External references
- "Every Day Is Halloween" in the 2005 (Detroit) Metro TimesMetro TimesThe Metro Times is the largest circulating weekly newspaper in the metro Detroit area. Supported entirely by advertising, it is distributed free of charge every Wednesday in newsstands in businesses and libraries around the city and suburbs...
. - "RPG", a 2006 documentary by Binary Star Productions.
- 2007 An as-yet-untitled documentary on play acting and role-playing, the producers of which are hoping to get aired on PBS.
- High Desert Insider - an authorized reprint of the Spellcasting 101 column.
- Two regular site-related columns were published in the now-defunct UK gaming magazine ValkyrieValkyrie (magazine)Valkyrie was a UK role-playing magazine published by Partisan Press and edited originally by Dave Renton and then taken over by Jay Forster....
: "From The Trenches" and "Saints & Sinners". The former was a column of new material, the latter a recap of news items posted to the site. In a reader poll conducted in 2001, both columns were the highest-rated of the entire magazine.