“Okay, so: after a long week of journeying down the Long Road, and surviving ambushes by gnolls and even an owlbear, you are finally reaching your destination. Thagnor, you and the rest of your party are just arriving at the gates of Waterdeep. Ahead of you is–”

“Syntax error, Eric. My name is not Thagnor. It is Simon. You know this.”

Eric lowered his DM screen, a look of ill-concealed frustration on his freckled features. “Simon, we went through this earlier. You are playing Thagnor. We made him together. He’s your character.”

“Correct,” Simon quipped in that melodious voice of his. “But you keep addressing me as Thagnor. While I am controlling Thagnor through my words and descriptions, I am not him. I am Simon.The fact that this appears to confuse you is concerning.”

Eric let out an exasperated sigh. Normally he wouldn’t be doing this. Normally he, Liz, Jeremy and Aaron would all be continuing their campaign, either in the school library, or at Liz’s place, or here in his basement. They had already made a lot of progress: Aaron’s had been having a ton of fun playing as a heroic Fighter, Jeremy’s Rogue had been going through an interesting character arc where he was learning to trust people instead of just steal from them. And Liz…well, she had been itching to have her Wizard use some of her new level two spells on something. 

But the library had been closed ever since the librarian, Miss Mona, had disappeared; Aaron was sick, Jeremy had said he had to help his brother with something, and Liz….well, he didn’t want to do a session with just Liz. It would have felt awkward. Really, uncomfortably awkward.

So here he was, at home, trying to teach the family robot how to play Dungeons and Dragons. And so far, failing miserably.

“Okay, yes,” Eric muttered in exasperation, “I know that. I know that you aren’t REALLY Thagnor, you’re just pretending to be him.”

“Pretend,” Simon echoed, swiveling his orb-like to the side, his unblinking blue lenses scanning intently. “I am still having difficulty understanding this concept. I understand its definition, but its application remains unclear.”

Eric pushed his glasses up to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. They had been going at this for almost an hour, and Simon just wasn’t getting it. And even though Eric knew it wasn’t Simon’s fault, he still found himself getting increasingly frustrated with him. He wondered if this was the sort of thing Dad had to deal with in his “departmental lead” role at the Loop facility. Maybe that was why he was always so cranky so often.

Not for the first time, he toyed with the idea of opening Simon up and fiddling around with his programming, to see if he could make him more receptive to the idea of “imagination” and “pretend” and “playtime.” His parents, however, had been more than a little upset with him the last time he had tried such a thing.

“Okay,” Eric breathed. “Let’s look back a bit. When we started this, I asked you to think of someone different from yourself. Someone who was unlike you.”

“Yes,” Simon said, nodding his spherical head in agreement. “And in accordance with the parameters set down by your rulebook, I thought of a half-Orc Barbarian. It is big and strong while I am not. It is of limited intelligence while I am not. It is an organic being where I am not.”

“Right, right,” Eric said. “Now, what we’re doing here is we’re telling a story. A story about Thagnor and his companions, and the adventure they’re on. But even though I’m the storyteller of this adventure, I can’t simply tell you what happens. You have to tell some of this story as well. You have to imagine what Thagnor would do in the situations I’m telling you about.”

Simon stared at him with those unblinking blue headlights of his. “But Eric, I am a machine. I cannot imagine.”

Eric nearly groaned at that point. As frustrated as he was getting, he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t Simon’s fault: as Simon had said, he was a machine, and trying to get a robot to understand things in human terms was next to impossible. A Herculean task, as Liz always liked to say whenever she wanted to show off her advanced vocabulary. That was one of the things that Eric honestly thought was pretty amazing about Liz.

He thought back to what Mr. Petersen, his science teacher, had said about robots, and about machines. Even though they were designed to carry out tasks humans couldn’t do, and be superior to humans in a lot of ways, they couldn’t think the way humans could. They could not imagine. The one way we’re different, Mr Petersen said, is that we are people. We have feelings, and emotion, and imagination. Robots only have pre-programmed commands, and logic.

“Okay,” he breathed. “This is all one hyper…hypno…hypthometical–”

“Hypothetical?” Simon offered.

Eric nodded. “Hypothetical, thanks. This is all one hypothetical scenario. Thagnor and his companions– the wizard, the rogue and the ranger– all approaching the gates of Waterdeep. The town guard is at demanding that they state their business. Now logically, in this scenario, what would Thagnor the Barbarian say?”

Simon seemed to pause and consider the question. “As Thagnor likely would not want to risk undue confrontation,” he said, “he would state the truth: that he and his companions have come to Waterdeep seeking a place to stay for the night before they continue their journey.”

Eric was smiling now. “Yes!” He beamed. “Yes, you’ve got it! Make me a persuasion check!”

Diligently, Simon took up a D20 in one claw like hand and gave it a deft roll. “Fourteen,” he stated.

“The guard seems on edge, but shows no sign of disbelieving you,” Eric described, happy to be back in scene for a change. “He and his fellow guard move to crank open the lever, and the gates of Waterdeep start to swing open.” Eric paused to allow himself a sigh of relief. “See, Simon? This is how you do roleplay. This is how you pretend.”

Simon stared blankly at Eric. “I still do not understand the purpose of this endeavour. What function does it fulfill?”

Another question. Simon had been full of them all throughout this session. One of the things he had always noticed about Simon was that, in addition to being diligently and unquestioningly servile towards Eric and his family, always happily doing whatever chores or housework they needed of him, he was also quite curious about everything as well. It was something that Eric had always noticed, even if his parents didn’t.

“I mean, this is all just for fun,” he said. “Like when we watch TV, or play Super Mario, or things like that.”

“But you use appliances for those last two,” Simon noted. “For other modes of entertainment, you do not need to…pretend, as we are doing here.”Simon paused at that moment, as though considering its next question. “Why do humans pretend?”

This, admittedly, was not a question that Eric had been expecting. Sometimes Simon had a way of asking questions that even Eric wasn’t sure he knew the answer to.

“I mean, the same reason we do anything else to entertain ourselves,” he said slowly. “So we can forget about the real world for a bit.”

“Why?” Simon’s face, devoid as it was of human features, was nonetheless unblinkingly honest. “You live in the real world, Eric. All of your hopes and aspirations revolve around the real world. You have told me yourself of how you one day want to work in the Loop facility and make great advancements in computer technology and robotics. Why would you want to forget about it?”

Eric paused for a moment. He knew the answer of course, Every person did. He just had to stop and think for a minute on how to describe it in ways a robot would understand.

Above, he heard a thump, and then muffled yelling. Mom and Dad were arguing again. Possibly about money, or about working hours again. Or possibly because they just wanted an excuse to yell at each other.

Eric slumped uncomfortably in his seat. “We just do, okay?” he snapped. He pushed his glasses back up against the bridge of his nose. He wanted to at least get through a little more of this session before either Mom or Dad started calling for him, wondering what he had done with the robot.

“And so, you and your party enter Waterdeep…”

******

Name: Eric “Lazer” LaSalle

Class: Computer Geek

You know exactly what is important in life: to break the record in Super Mario Bros, to build revolutionary programs on your computer, to understand how a robot works, or to cast just the right spell to save the party during roleplaying nights. Who cares what the others think?

Key Skills: Calculate, Program, Comprehend

Iconic Item: Toy lightsaber

Problem(s): My parents are always arguing; the tough guys always hit me

Drive: I love puzzles

Pride: When shit hits the fan, I don’t back down

Relationships to other kids: We are different but we are still friends

Relationship to NPCs: 

-My friend Elisabeth has built a computer program that cracks codes, and we used it to listen to a scrambled radio communication. Someguys, who called each other fish names, talked about her mother as “one of the targets.”

-Everyone seems to have nightmares about that horrible teenager, Peter

Anchor: Guy who owns comic shop

*****

Tales from the Loop is another RPG that’s been on my radar for a long time: I in fact did manage to DM a one shot of it back during the pandemic, but I’ve never been able to follow through with more of it since then. The RPG itself is set in an alternate 1980s, where early advances in particle acceleration technology have jumpstarted other developments, such as hovercars and robotics, resulting in a Cold War set against the backdrop of a weird, futuristic society. The player characters are all kids living in this alternate 1980s– kids who, as is often the case in these kinds of stories, find themselves noticing strange, supernatural or bizarre events that fall beneath the notice of the adults, and being forced to act on them when the grownups won’t.

I will admit that one of the big draws of Tales From The Loop for me is that it is essentially the closest RPG equivalent to Stranger Things, a show I’ve been rabidly following since it started on Netflix, though it also shares some of its DNA with Dark, another show about weird things happening in small, isolated European towns. And I think it goes without saying that the fantastic artwork of Simon Ståhlenhag, which the RPG is pretty much based upon, is another big draw, showing the futurist and the fantastical juxtaposed against the familiar mundanity of small town life. Typically, the game will take place either on an island community in Sweden or a small town in Nevada, both of which house “Loop” supercollider facilities. For my own one-shot, I instead had it set in Owen Sound, Ontario, because, well…I am Canadian, and figured that my players would appreciate it being set in their own country.

The system is interesting in that it is very rules-light, with no stat blocks or fancy abilities outside of whatever the kid in question has a natural aptitude in. As such, this is a system that I find works best with a fairly easygoing DM who is more interested in telling an interesting story than in throwing difficult encounters at their party. I feel it’s also worth noting that the RPG itself seems very interested individual storytelling, giving players a lot of options to flesh out their character’s background. And it doesn’t pull any punches either, allowing the players to dive headfirst into issues such as bullying, fighting or neglectful parents, loss of loved ones, struggling with being neurodivergent, or a lot of other issues that can be impactful in childhood, and while the player characters cannot actually die in Tales From The Loop, they can still suffer emotionally from the things they experience. I personally always appreciate it when the RPG itself gives the player and DM ideas for story arcs, or even just background problems that can help shape a character. It is partly because of this that I am curious to explore the other RPGs that Free League has done, as I always love it when a character creation system gives the player more options than simply combat stats.

As to whether I will actually play Tales From The Loop…who knows. It feels like an RPG that works best with a party that is committed to the storytelling aspect, though honestly I feel the biggest challenge may be getting a bunch of adults to remember what it was like being a kid.

Next: Cyberpunk Red