Kiddies, in the olden days there used to be a game called 'Dungeons and Dragons' that was not played on a computer, but with people and many sided dice and graph paper. And the only thing you had to make this game real was your own imagination. Sigh. Those were the days, yep.

Well, I can't say that I was really much of a D & D player, ever. I encountered it when I was in military language school in Maryland and my Dungeon Master - there were no kinky overtones to that back then - was a marine Seargent named Dave. Dave took me and another sailor or two into some truly magical worlds - Hey! There's still nothing kinky about this.

Come to think about it Dave did take me to my first strip bar (and second) so maybe you really could say that he took me to some magical worlds. Anyways, I might have played D & D on and off for about a month before I realized that language school was pretty effing hard and I didn't have time for this. The other sailor, who was also in language school, didn't come to that realization and he flunked out.

If it makes any difference to you, I had a seventh level eighteen double zero strength warrior with a blue flaming sword. He was awesome, man! For the life of me I don't know what ever happened to that warrior of mine, and if he isn't in some other dimension of space and time wondering what happened to me and why I haven't called or E-mailed. To anybody who knows anything about this I suppose that's considered a really lame character, but it took me many hours in a barracks room huddled over the dice to accomplish, though for some reason it's just doesn't seem like so much of an accomplishment, anymore.

Does anyone ever play Dungeons and Dragons anymore? Or is that just an old school thing which only gray haired dorks would ever think about? The thing is, now with all the marvelous on-line games that you can choose to be a part of - why would you bother? The ones I can think of off the top of my head are Final Fantasy XI, and World of Warcraft, and the ever popular EverQuest which is also called 'EverCrack' because of the addictive nature. I feel sad that people are living in these pre-created worlds, spending hours and days, and they aren't even using their imaginations, dammit!

I've spent a few hours with my beloved PS2 and I can tell you that it certainly can be 'addictive'. After spending hour after hour not moving any part of my body but my fingers, I've asked myself what really would be the difference between that and being an opium addict and spending the same amount of time doing ... pretty much the same thing. Okay. Opium costs a lot more money to begin with, also ... I don't know. There are other differences, though, I'm sure of it.

So far, I've only played regular games and they are self limiting at one point or other. You can only play a game until it ends and after that you're done. Unless you want to play the exact same game again, which you probably will.

I've never been tempted to go into one of those online games. For one thing, I would just hate starting out at the bottom of the bottom where you have to spend, like, days doing nothing but killing bunnies to get yourself leveled up and it's not even as easy as that because the bunnies kill you back. That's got to be frustrating. Then the other people who have been playing for ever don't really treat you all that well. It's not a very encouraging process in my mind.

Mostly, I fear getting lost in those other worlds at the expense of this one. I've already heard stories where it's taken over lives so that it costs more than just time, but lots of money, careers, relationships and then when failure occurs in the non-real world, some have taken their lives in this real one. That's pretty scary. I tell you, some of these on-line games look really beautiful and enticing, but all that's going to do is make the one you have to go to bed in look all that more ugly and uninteresting.

About the author:

Steve Sommers is the author of Breakfast with the Antichrist. Visit his Website at http://www.breakfastwiththeantichrist.com