Gaming's Timeless Tabletop...

Who remembers Pong in the 1970s? Robyn and I plead guilty. Not only was it cool that mere mortals could control what appeared on their screens; it was doubly exciting that we could physically interract, indeed control, what happened therein. Fast forward, we're playing Atari's square and conspiculously pixelized reality. We thought Intellivision was damn near Skyrim because one could (sort of) make out the baseball cap on the pitcher...

Fast forward again and its the future. Computer (and especially console) games are ambitious affairs with Hollywood's production values. Vintage games were primitive things, and while throwback titles exist, you can tell the difference. But tabletop games, they're timeless. Now the design and physical production might be dated (OD&D was clunky with more than a few oversights); but our theater of the mind was as modern as CGI.

The human imagination, beyond all gadgetry, has better special effects. Of course, a generation born to shoddier (you can see the zippers) movies doubtless refers to them, so maybe not universally; but as a rule, human imagination reigns supreme. And that's the timelessness of tabletop gaming. It's one step away from a Paleolithic clan gathering, but more realistic than centuries spent trying to nail our visuals with technology... 

Friends sharing stories. It's a human preoccupation. And given all the hysteria around television (the 70s version of a modern concern), you'd think roleplaying, with its social bent and academic pretensions, would have been a parent's dream. Another decade's drama, replete with bad religion and 80s hair metal; but it's nonetheless true that while technology tried to tell our tales, tabletop was there well before we finally started catching up.