On occasion I have gotten together with friends to play an RPG game and it has turned out to be a fun experience, although the most we have managed to make it last was only a few weeks. In contrast, in Canada there a Dungeons & Dragons game that’s been around for over 40 years and it could be said that it is one of the most acclaimed in the world.
Robert Wardhaugh, a history professor at the University of Western Ontario, is the creator and in charge of keeping alive this game that fans from all over come to play and see for themselves what the experience is like.
To give you an idea, according to the calculations he has made, if he plays an average of about ten hours a week, that means he has been playing for 20,800 hours throughout all these decades. An impressive figure, but not as much as that of his collection of figures that exceeds 30,000among which there are orcs, dwarves, dragons, zombies, vampires, spiders, etc.
But this is not the only thing he has in his possession, since he also has countless pieces of land. More than anything because it needs all kinds of places to give a greater immersion to the events, hence it has towns, forests, winter landscapes or buildings as huge as a coliseum that it is difficult for it to hold it with its arms because of how big it is.
Each and every one of these places has been designed by hand and painted by himself.. In fact, the same thing happens with the figures, because he also paints them in his spare time, but the most curious thing is that he considers them so important that he does not allow anyone to touch them. Robert is the only one who can move everything on the pitch, no one else.
It is in the basement of his house where the game takes place. It is an area that he considers his sanctuary and where those who come will discover an alternate fantasy version of our world. In this sense, you can get to visit real places like Athens, as with a new history, philosophy or religion along with new races, nations, cultures, mythologies, etc.
There are certain plot arcs that have come to last for a great number of years. Something understandable if we take into account that throughout these more than 40 years they have come to parade more than 500 characters who have had their descendantsthey have gone through stories of love and revenge and they have not lacked thousands of secondary stories or secondary campaigns.
But not everything is as pretty as it seems, because players always run the risk of their characters dying at some point. If this happens and they have no other secondary characters or descendants, they will have no choice but to leave the game. Even this has caused players to burst into tears at not being able to move on.
Even so, he considers that it is something positive because it is what gives emotion to the game, the fear and the knowledge that if you run out of characters you will not return or you will not be able to continue using that hero that you have kept alive for months or years. For all this, it has designed its own rules different from the official ones that you can read more carefully from here.
At this point, Robert already has a daughter who has taken to Dungeons and Dragons from 6 years old. At that time he joined the game with a fairy and today, at 20 years old, he is still playing. What’s more, this has caused a curious anecdote because his boyfriend also wanted to play, but his father warned him that if he broke up with him he wouldn’t be able to kick him out of the game and he would have no choice but to continue seeing him.
On the other hand, Robert is convinced that this is the best Dungeons and Dragons game in the worldsomething that honestly is not for less considering that dozens of players have come to his house to play, including his childhood friends, which helps him to keep in touch with them after so long.
Although he does not know what the end of the game will be, what he does know is that as long as he can, he will not stop painting figures, setting up scenes and playing for the rest of his life. Now that is a great hobby and dedication.