Madison Traditional Gaming group builds community, sans technology

Madison Traditional Gaming group participates in table-top role playing games every Tuesday at Pegasus games on the Westside. (Mackenzie Krumme/Madison Commons)

Every Tuesday at 6 p.m. a game shop on the Westside becomes a community of warlocks and barbarian-overlords who crawl out of their dungeons to play make believe.

Madison Traditional Gaming group hosts these fictitious role-playing games at Pegasus Games on Odana Road. Traditional gaming doesn’t involve the Internet, an Xbox or even electricity. In this form of gaming, community is built through face-to-face interactions that span generations.

Madison Traditional Gaming’s more than 300 online members range from young adults to individuals who have been role-playing since the dawn of Dungeons and Dragons in the early 1970s. Members come from various backgrounds, including a Madison College faculty member with a Ph.D. in statics and high school students whose parents drop them off. 

The important thing, however, is not your age or qualification but that you are prepared to have an imaginative interaction, cast spells and create a community, said Victor Raymond, the man who started Madison Tradional Gaming.

Ingrid Stark, Jeff Griesel, Jennie Devereaux-Weber and Joel Krautkramer wait to start the first round of table-top role playing. (Mackenzie Krumme/Madison Commons)

The Game

According to Ingrid Stark, an avid player since the 1975, the game begins as individuals become specific characters whose personality traits are based on the role of a dice. 

The games can last four months at a time, though depending on the group games can sometimes go on for years. The development of the game creates a deep relationship between players. This doesn’t mean things can’t get heated.

“If the person’s character is a real absolute asshole and that person is playing a really good absolute asshole, you could really want to do something to them,” Stark said.

Madison Traditional Gaming has a group of regular attendees, the moment, said Stark. It isn’t always the case, though, that you have a group of people that mixes well.

“Not all people who are involved [in the games] are terribly socially adept humans, most of us are okay, but it happens,” Stark said.

She then pointed to a sign that read: “People attending events in this space are expected to conform to personal grooming standards. You may be asked to leave if you or your clothing have an odor offensive to other players, including smoke of any sort.”

Role-playing is as new as cops and robbers

Victor Raymond, a faculty member in the sociology department at Madison College, started the Madison Traditional Gaming group six years ago after moving from Minneapolis.

Victor Raymond started Madison Traditional Gaming six years ago. He started playing traditional role playing games in the early 1970’s. (Mackenzie Krumme/Madison Commons)“Community is the product of the people in it. And here, we at Madison Traditional Gaming we come for fun but also for magic, friends and connections,” Raymond said.

Raymond and Stark have been playing Dungeon and Dragons since 1974.

According to Raymond role-playing started way before this.  

“If you think about it what kids do when they are growing up is role-play, cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians,” said Raymond. “People say these role-playing games are somehow weird and different, but no, we play make believe all the time.”

In the last couple of decades, role-playing and science fiction has become its own popular culture. For instance, after the release of the Dungeons and Dragons player’s handbook in 2014, it quickly hit number one on Amazon’s best sellers list. Most major television phenomenon such as Star Trek, Star War and the HBO series Game of Thrones can be the bases to a role-playing game.

Role-playing is for everyone

The group believes Madison Traditional Gaming is available to any class, gender or race.

“There are all kinds of different games. You can go into a used book store and pick up role playing books for a dollar, or you can go to a fancy game convention where they sell specialized gaming tables that cost $1,000,” said Jeff Griesel, a long-term gamer. 

Madison Traditional Gaming also is provides an outlet to have a good time and be creative.

Jennie Devereaux-Weber said the things she can do in real life are nothing like what she can do in the gaming world.

“If I decide my characters is going to stand on the wing of a plane in midflight or shoot a sorcerer in the head with a pistol I won’t get tried for murder,” Devereaux-Weber said.

And Joel Krautkramer describes how gaming is an outlet.

“People observe fiction and they see wonderful worlds being rolled out of fiction, but maybe they don’t have time in their personal lives to write, so they create fiction here,” said Krautkramer.