Although I prefer the more conventional strategy and simulation games, on rare occasions I participate in role-playing games. By curious coincidence the day the Winter SI arrived was one of those occasions, and our conversation soon turned to the article on RPGs.

An interesting point was raised among us. The nature of role-playing games is that each of the players takes on the "role" and persona of an imaginary person or character. Exciting, heroic situations in that character's imaginary life are resolved using the complicated rules that each game provides.

As would be expected, such games hold a special appeal for many people who are quite often unsatisfied with their own day-to-day real-life situation. Although most RPG gamers are welladjusted people with full lives, anyone who has spent much time around RPG conventions, clubs, or specialty shops will soon be left with the impression that a sizable minority of hard-core gamers do not seem to have much of a social life outside of their role-playing-game activities. Some, as evidenced by Bink Pulling and Dallas Egbert III (the tragic suicide victims mentioned in Cardwell's article), are not particularly emotionally well adjusted.

This leads to our point. How many of these people might be even more unhappy, lonely, and depressed if they did not have this social activity, its personal interaction, and the escapism and feeling of positive accomplishment that often come through these games? In short, how many potential suicides may have been prevented by roleplaying games?

Peter Huston
Schenectady, N.Y.