Amonstering Mazes

So, on the advice of a monkey [who also blogged about this topic today, go look!], I watched that Tom Hanks classic movie. And I learnt something.

Kids that come from screwed up families are screwed up. Bickering drunk parents, divorced parents, it's a wonder they made it that far without going completely emo.

But what I didn't see is what a role-playing game had to do with anything. The movie would have been the same had the kids... been listening to Iron Maiden or reading King Arthur or something! As I say, they were screwed up anyway, so anything would have focused them towards acting stupid.

Besides, saying that role-playing games lead them to Satanism is like saying acting Shakespeare will lead people to think they are in the 17th century. I bet the civil reenactment groups never had people saying that their Christian moralities were being undermined by firing blanks at each other.

Anyway, the point of this movie is that if you use your imagination you will imagine things. And if you are a dumbass, then going into a cave by yourself is a great idea. And when at university, don't do drugs. I mean role-playing games. Drugs are fine, no problem at all, role-playing games are where the evil is at. And don't, whatever you do, have some kind of psychotic break over a missing brother.

Which is what it all comes down to. If it hadn't been for role-playing games then Tom Hanks wouldn't have had a framing device for his psychotic break and his friends would never have been able to talk him down, so he would have killed himself... oh, hang on, role-playing games saved him! Hurrah!

So who, in the end, was the real maze?

[Note: this is admittedly a bit of a mess I wrote as I watched the movie. I am working on a far better write-up of how pro-role playing this movie is, and hope to see that somewhere exciting in the days to come...]

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