ROLE PLAYING

Seen by many as a pastime for geeks who sit around a table with 97-sided dice, pointy wizard hats and silly, unpronounceable alter egos (in Elven), role playing in its many forms is not something that should be mocked. Yes, you may very well have spent your formative years downing kegs of beer, dressing in togas and engaging in potentially homoerotic hazing activities in a dorm room with twelve football players and a goat (which was no doubt fun at the time) but what is going to be better value in preparing you for the apocalypse? Partying hard or RPGs?

When soldiers prepare for battle they do so by going through training exercises and simulations of the situations they’re likely to face out in the field. This is not just the case for the team on the ground either. Those officers who will be controlling the mission from the situation room go through similar training. This, in essence, is what role playing is all about (albeit with less tanks and more demons).

Whether you play them on your computer, round a table or out in a field (referred to as Live Action Role Playing), this training will enable your mind to act and react instantly to tactical situations and will thereby increase your chance of survival.

There is only one thing to bear in mind when partaking in roleplaying simulations and that is that your opponents are alive. Whether it is a games master or other players – each situation that you are placed in will have been created by another sentient being, whereas when you are out in a real-life apocalypse your opponents will be very much dead and incapable of intelligent thought and planning (very much like those beer-drinking footballers we were discussing earlier actually). They will have no plan, they will be erratic, disorganised, unrelenting and without any battle strategy. You’ll need more than a wooden sword, a latex helmet and 300 power points to beat them in the end.