No Anorak Required

Wildest Dreams by Alan Ayckbourn

Library Theatre Company, 1996

Alan Ayckbourn

An Element of Trainspotting

The action of Wildest Dreams revolves around a fantasy game based loosely on Dungeons and Dragons. Some players of that game can get so wrapped up in the magical world their characters inhabit that the fantasy becomes more real than reality. In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, everything is possible. The playing area can be as infinite as the imagination of the participants, the cast of characters can be as large and varied as they like, the hectic round of exploration, travel, rest and battle can be undertaken at whatever pace the teams decide. In short, it is the perfect armchair adventure – exciting but safe, bloody but painless, thrilling, complex and involving.

No wonder it has such appeal, particularly for the young whose imaginations have not yet been totally atrophied by the ubiquitous zap-pow computer game. A few years ago Michael Begley, who plays Warren Wrigley in this production, was a keen Dungeons and Dragons player. He and his mates would get together to swap moves at each other’s houses, or huddle in the corner of the playground for the other lads to point at. Michael admits there probably was an element of trainspotting about it, but at that age the game was engrossing enough for this not to matter. “It was a good social thing,” he says now, “you made a lot of friends. And games could last years because there was always somewhere else to go. The fantasy lands are huge, like whole countries.”

The origins of the game are lost in the mists of hype, but once upon a time (call it the early 1970s), in a place called Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, there was a group known as the Castle and Crusade Society who liked to indulge in a spot of fantasy wargaming. Their rules evolved into an altogether grander and more ambitious version which became the manual for the Dungeons and Dragons format which is today played throughout the world. Its popularity is not hard to fathom. Not only does the nature of the game give almost unlimited scope to the imagination of the players, it costs practically nothing to play. You can physicalise your characters with little lead figures bought from the local hobby shop, but the only real material requirements are pencil and paper and a few dice. Beyond that, all you need is time, and plenty of it.

A Jumble of Genres

The Dungeon Master is the moving spirit of any game. It is his job to design the layout of the magical universe and keep a secret record of it on graph paper. (In real Dungeons and Dragons, unlike the Ayckbourn play, the Dungeon Master does not actually take part in the game.) Each player then creates his own character, equips it according to luck and taste, and battle is joined.

Dungeons and Dragons is set in an indeterminate past, although the ambience is vaguely middle ages. Other influences are clearly apparent, from the Middle Earth of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the fantasy writings of the likes of Fritz Leiber, Robert E Howard and Gardner Fox, through to classical mythology which has provided the names if not the characteristics of some of the more colourful beasts – manticores, unicorns, minotaurs and gryphons.

The players progress from level to level as their characters gain experience and new abilities, moving inexorably towards the final encounter with the ultimate evil the Dungeon Master has invented. But while the symbolism is strictly comic book, there can be a down side too. Players can become genuinely attached to their characters and, Michael says, “If they get eaten by an ogre or something it can be very upsetting.” Fortunately, unlike real life, the game allows you to create a replacement by the simple roll of a die.

“I Want to be a Gnome”

The existential possibilities of this are intriguing. In the basic game (the Advanced version is strictly for buffs and far too complicated to go into here), there are seven types of character to choose from: fighting men, magic-users, clerics, elves, dwarfs, halflings and thieves. These in turn possess a combination of abilities: strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity and charisma. The level of ability a character possesses is decided by rolling three 6-sided dice. Fighting men obviously benefit from a high strength score; magic-users would require more intelligence than an elf; dwarfs and halflings should have strong constitutions, and so on.

Charisma is possibly the most subtle quality of all: a character of under-13 charisma cannot hire more than five followers, and their loyalty would be lukewarm at best. Sex appeal comes into charisma as well (it’s not a complete fantasy, then) so a powerfully charismatic male character defeated by a witch will not necessarily be turned into a frog but kept enchanted as her lover. Similarly, a highly charismatic female will not be eaten by a monster but kept captive. In the game as in life, blondes apparently have more fun…

And the vast potential of the original game is still being tapped. Beyond the Advanced version there are now space age and superhero formats available, and fans can buy books and packages offering further inspiration for character, incidents and settings. Those who find the paper game too sedentary have even taken to ‘larping’ – that is, Live Action Role Play. Another cast member, Andrew Vezey who plays Larry, has done this. All over the country, apparently, ruined castles are frequently overrun by blokes in cagoules fleeing monsters, weaving spells, discovering gold, and having furious battles with sponge swords and plastic lances.

A Real Lads’ Game

For those who have never caught the bug, the enthusiasm of the fans may seem a bit OTT. It’s easy to mock, but harder to condemn. Dungeons and Dragons is, after all, a relatively harmless way for a group of friends to doff the burden of responsibility for a couple of hours. For young adolescents it also supplies an escape at a time when reality can be very painful indeed. “Young boys,” says Michael Begley, “will play it at a time when their imaginations are working overtime anyway.” Young girls, apparently, have less need of such a release. Maybe they’re more down to earth. Maybe they don’t get so frustrated. Maybe they mature earlier. Maybe they exercise their imaginations in an altogether different way.

Certainly the women in Wildest Dreams have their own reasons for taking part. In the play as in life, the game helps them cope with real problems. “It says something about the imagination,” Michael says, “about the potential power of our imaginations and the extent to which people live in their own private fantasy worlds.”

PS

I probably wasn’t the right person to write this piece, but nobody in the office knew the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons and I must have drawn the short straw. But it was like an exam, you only had a limited time to bash down all you knew, or could remember or glean, about a specific subject, so you had no option but to lower your head, grit your teeth, and get on with it.

It was the days before the interwebs so I can no longer remember where I can have got the details from. Presumably the members of the cast helped. But I was obviously never convinced about the benefits of the game. ‘An Element of Trainspotting’ is the first clue. ‘The origins of the game are lost in the mists of hype’ is another. And my use of the term ‘existential’ is significant: it shows I’m grasping for some perceived meaning or importance that I can’t immediately recognise. (We did Camus’s novel L’Étranger at school, which was where I first came across the then trendy philosophical concept of existentialism, but I never fully understood what it was all about, then or since.)

I regret this attitude now. There is certainly no call ever to look down on the pastimes of others. Just because you don’t understand the joys to be had in, say, collecting beer mats doesn’t mean nobody finds it fascinating. (Anything that has been around long enough to accrete a Latin-based term – tegestology in this case – must have something to it.) And what harm does a hobby do? When people are off enjoying themselves, at least they’re not bothering you are they? Let them go fly their kites, or watch football matches, or knit cardigans. But I wonder about the value of a hobby which can also become so all-consuming that a single wrong move can cause actual physical sadness. I have indeed known someone who played a lot of fantasy games, and he actually went into mourning when one of his elves or pixies got slain. Or was it a fairy? I was so stunned at his reaction I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

I expect things have moved on a bit since then, and certainly even I was hugely impressed by the quality of the images in the PC games my son got into in his early teens. I particularly liked the Formula 1 racing, though I contend I would have been a lot better at them if I had been able to use a proper steering wheel, as my thumb never developed the level of strength and close accuracy required. I particularly liked the hyper-realism of the settings in Red Dead Redemption and the Assassin’s Creed series which recreated in minute and credible detail the realities of ancient worlds. Like a big-budget historical film, the background was rendered tangibly authentic, to a degree that no amount of imagination alone could conceive.