Roleplay Zilantkon

When you read a book or watch a movie, you ask yourself: What would I do if I were there? Games let you answer that question.

Most roleplayers do not seek to escape life, but to make it more diverse. For thousands of people, playing what they refer to as "a Game" is a way of life that they say transforms imagined fantasy to tangible, sensory and altogether vivid experience.

Near a tent camp here, around 150 gamers assumed the roles of elves, dwarves and humans in a bid to recreate the Middle Earth environment of JRR Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'.

Over the next several days and nights they acted out "clashes" between opposing sides, sieges of life-size log fortresses, night raids, campfire songs and scenes of derring-do as all played their parts in recreating Middle Earth.

The event was just one of many like it held in locations throughout Russia in a gaming season that began this year on May 9 and that has, since 1991, ended in a four-day roleplayer convention known as Zilantkon that opens in the southern city of Kazan this year on November 5.

Although the full-blown outdoor games only take place between spring and autumn, there are also smaller-scale events, mostly indoor ones known as "cabinet games" and "languedocs," that take place in the winter.

There are no reliable estimates of the numbers of roleplaying gamers in Russia, but regulars say their sub-culture numbers in the thousands and perhaps the tens of thousands. And they admit that their eccentric hobby sometimes raises some eyebrows.

Contemporary Russian roleplay gaming, a hobby with roots in Soviet-era historical and adventure clubs, was born in 1990 when two teams, one from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk and another from Moscow, got together and decided to re-enact the 'Lord of the Rings' epic.

In the early 1990s, players scoured near-empty shops for materials for use in making costumes, using curtain cloth to sew dresses and slicing up plastic toy hula-hoops into tiny rings to weave intricate chainmail suits.

Today the games borrow themes ranging from ancient history to futuristic high-tech, but are still devised by small circles of fans who then spread the word either through the Internet, at special gaming conventions or simply by word of mouth.

Those willing then apply for a chance to live for several days in a world that strikes their fancy, to take part in the action and to find out whether their story really does have only one possible ending...

Parents of one teenage enthusiast, concerned that her seeming addiction to the books of Tolkien and the roleplaying scene may be a sign of mental illness, took their daughter to a psychiatrist for examination. The psychiatrist asked the parents to step outside the room and then said to the patient: "So, you like Tolkien? You want to play? You're in the elf team? Great, see you there, I'll be in the fortress of Evil."

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