“There is nowhere left to go. And none left to fight but us.”
This line may sound like a quote from an end-of-the-world box office thriller, but every Friday night in Tureaud Hall members of the LSU Wargaming and Roleplaying Society meet and play out these very lines.
The “special interest organization,” as President Danielle Lauzon referred to it, meets weekly to create and act out scenarios in different interactive games.
“It’s like a form of escapism,” Lauzon, an animal science senior, said.
Gaming, the term for this type of activity, begins with the participant taking on a personality and acting as this personality would act. A gamemaster leads the group and comes up with stories and challenges for the participants to act out.
According to Lauzon, there are several different types of roleplaying.
Live Action Role Playing, a type of gaming, is ideal for the more interested player. In LARP, players act out conflicts and situations, sometimes in costume, Lauzon said.
The society holds a variety of games every Friday for players of any level of experience. These games range from “Dungeons and Dragons,” one of the more well-known games, to “Vampire: The Masquerade.”
Although some students take it so seriously that they dress in their character’s clothing, Lauzon said “the ultimate goal is just to have fun.”
Suz Boyle, a biology and
creative writing senior, agreed. Her favorite part of gaming is “the
interacting with people and creating new characters.”
In each of the games, players create characters with special attributes to challenge other characters based on their attributes. Players keep the same characters until the end of the semester so they can grow and develop, Lauzon said.
“Dungeons and Dragons,” one of the games the society plays every week, brought gaming to the mainstream in the past decade.
The gaming society has been on campus since the 1970s, Lauzon said.
Mike Surman, an LSU computer analyst, was president of the society in the 1980s.
Surman said the society “has been meeting regularly” since it started more than two decades ago. He said the games played were more “war-game oriented” because of the mindset of the country at that time.
Surman said many students find the social aspect of the game appealing.
“Games turn into social events,” he said. Often students start a game at the beginning of the semester and continue it off campus, playing several times a week.
Surman enjoys gaming because it “can be an escape from reality.” He said it was like taking part in a play.
“It’s like any other hobby,” Surman said.