Lucinda Albers

Do you want to escape the humdrum of normal life? Try a role-playing game.

“It’s fun to do things in these games that you can’t do in real life,” says Ahleorn, a graduate student at SDSU. “It’s an intellectual challenge and makes you the hero of your own game.”

Ahleorn has been playing for about 26 years, and started with the game Dungeons and Dragons around the age of 10.

In many role-playing games, players use to represent characters that have adventures.

Chris Bos plays Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings book trilogy. He says he likes the freedom that comes with such games.

“MERP allows you to explore the world that (Tolkien) created,” Bos says. “It also allows you to do more than what a computer would allow you to do.”

Role-playing games are played throughout the United States and the world, says Ahleorn.

He’s traveled to several other countries, and found that gamers are easy to find.

“Even when I went to school overseas, I still found people to play,” he says. “There are gamers all over the world.”

When Ahleorn came to SDSU he was surprised that there were no school clubs for gamers. But soon he met Jim Lurvey, an Instructional Technology Specialist at SDSU and a member of the Brookings chapter of Midwest Area Gaming Enthusiasts.

Together, they created a club for SDSU for students who wanted to share their gaming interest with others.

While there are many clubs that may appeal to gamers, there has not necessarily been an outburst of players.

“Gaming has been pretty steady, but probably peaked more towards the ’80s,” says Lurvey, who has been involved in gaming for about 40 years.

Another veteran in the gaming genre is Todd Brost, co-owner of Brost’s Aquarium and Hobby. His store sells many books, figurines and models for gamers. Brost’s, which is located on Main Street in Brookings, has been running for about 12 years now.

“Gaming probably got more popular within the past ten years,” Brost says. “But even more so since card games such as Pok