RPGs & the Armed Forces - a liability?

[diaglo]

RPGs are weapons, mang

 

[justawhit]

I am currently in my 3rd enlistment in the military spreading my service over a 24 year period. During my 2 previous enlistments I have observed or played in several games. From what I can remember no one either encouraged or discouraged any of us from playing. The groups I became involved with consisted of enlisted personnel so I didn't have the benefit of what an officer thought about RPGs. One of the biggest issues we had were people leaving for other duty assignments.

What I find with my current enlistment is this time around I'm in a national guard unit and not on active duty. This takes a weekend a month which is prime playing time, and the unit I'm in is in another county so I don't socialize with the fellow soldiers while off duty. Plus, my wife along with my work does the dampening on my playing time and not the guard. Otherwise if I was on active duty, and I wasn't in the field, then playing almost every weekend would be a dream.

 

[tensen]

While I don't think RPGs make anyone a better or worse serviceman/woman, in my own experience, it sure made map-reading a heck of a lot easier.

Any potential for it to aid in strategy would probably only benefit those of the higher ranks instead of those at the low end of the totem pole as they are not usually in on the "big picture". Heck, as a Captain, sometimes all I knew was my little piece, not the grand scheme.

Oh yeah, map reading is tons easier. Although it made me ask for contour maps when gaming. "What exactly is the elevation of that cliff? Is it suitable to rapel down?"

When I was in college the gaming club was sponsors by the ROTC. In fact one of the intelligence officers routinely ran war gaming demos.
To this day I'm still not sure if he was pleased by the number of times I wiped out his troops by sacrificing soldiers to various tasks.

The question came up, that yes I knew it was only a game and wasn't sacrificing real soldiers. If I was commanding in war at the level of the general I'd probably do just what I did... more troops lived. But had I been leading at a level where I actually personally knew the troops, I'm not sure whether I could have done that.

 

[Treebore]

The US Military does way to many of its own role plays for RPG's to not be helpful.

For example, my D&D group on my ship was exceptionally good during our security drills and we were frequently noted in the drill write-ups. We were about as good on all the casualty drills as well. I think it was because RPG's made us above average in our "think outside the box" situations/drills.

 

[Samnell]

The question came up, that yes I knew it was only a game and wasn't sacrificing real soldiers. If I was commanding in war at the level of the general I'd probably do just what I did... more troops lived. But had I been leading at a level where I actually personally knew the troops, I'm not sure whether I could have done that.

I dimly recall reading once that when Ike's Crusade in Europe came out a lot of people were furious with him for his rather candid talk about his decisions as to the number of casualties an objective was worth. Of course it's fair to say that being so far up the totem pole as Ike was he didn't personally know even a fairly small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of troops under his command. He did, however, do some touring of their facilities and getting face time with them before D-Day. There's a photo of him shaking hands with a fellow from his native Kansas.

 

[boerngrim]

I'm a USAF vet and my longest running group was almost all active duty. Except, oddly enough our main DM, who was a local. I knew of several other active gaming groups in the barracks though. As far as I know gaming wasn't officially sanctioned, but wasn't frowned upon either.

 

[Banshee16]

RPGs are weapons, mang

Only if the books are big....the World's Largest Dungeon and A Game of Thrones RPG in particular...

And dice are nasty if you step on them in bare feet....a little like caltrops..



Banshee

 

[Kunimatyu]

It's cool hearing people talk about the military and their D&D games, but just so everyone knows...this particular article has popped up -- and been discussed -- many, many times already.

 

[diaglo]

Only if the books are big....the World's Largest Dungeon and A Game of Thrones RPG in particular...

And dice are nasty if you step on them in bare feet....a little like caltrops..



Banshee

bah, with real RPGs all you do is point, click, and shoot.

blow things up, mang.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Former Intell weemie - when I was in Germany we had a group that numbered in the twenties at one point. As a matter of fact, I would say that a large percentage of the MI folks that I worked with were either RPG'rs or online style gamers. I was Army, but it wasn't limited to service either.

Even though I'm out now, my current group consists of a large military background. Myself and another player- Army enlisted (he's still in the Reserves) , my co-DM former Navy enlisted (also MI BTW), another player former Air Force enlisted (another MI geek) and another player is former Navy officer (Aircraft Operations). So there you go, all walks of life, and across three services.