Sporting Chance
The term “elf game” or “magic elf game” is a slightly dismissive term for fantasy RPGs. It’s typically used in message board discussions as a tension breaker when arguments are getting to heated. The intent is to remind people that, at the end of the day, everyone is still just talking about an imagination based game where people pretend to be elves. It’s taking the piss out of debaters.
I respect that but find it a little insulting as it could apply to so many other activities that people also take seriously. Football, be it the Superbowl or UK league rivalries is just “sportsball”. Chess is just a board game. Heck, money is just little strips of tree bark. All of human art, history, and culture is irrelevant and needless given the inexorable march towards entropy and inevitable heat death of the universe.
So much of the world is us imparting importance on otherwise ridiculously unimportant things. That a role-playing game is not really important in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter as we’re still emotionally invested. We have made it important to us, and pointing out the irrelevance of the game is just trivializing our emotions.
Another intriguing and delicate topic on which I share your thoughts.
For me a RPG is more than just a game; many games help develop teamwork mentality and skills, but RPGs do much more. A game usually has a set of rules, and the plays develop in a repetitive way. RPG plays are different, just because by making up a fantasy world a DM has the opportunity to get the players confronting with a pletora of different situations, encouraging them on problem solving by thinking out of the box. And in the world we’re living in, this proves to be a very useful skill.