Are you a level 5 fair elf maiden? Or are you a level 30 hideous orc? Whether in a game or in real life, everyone has roles to play.
“I’m running the wrong avatar, but Greg doesn’t know I’m leading this double in-game life, in more ways than one.”
When Lesh (who plays MMORPGs) meets Svetlana (who dungeon masters while others roll the dice), the question of what is roleplaying and what is real becomes harder to define.
Why is this on our bookshelf?
You start reading, and a geek might be like. Oh, this is so not the book for me.
But it is. You just don’t know it yet. It doesn’t matter if its a tabletop RPG or an MMORPG, role-playing takes on many forms in fantasy and in life.
Rating (5 stars)
I thought this was going a YA romance with a geeky twist. I was wrong.
Guy in Real Life is so much richer than that description. In fact, author Steve Brezenoff manages to capture the self-discovery of adolescence and combines it with the concept of how people play roles in their own life. Everyone has a role they play to fit in with their friends, their community, their society.
So yeah, expect an awesome chapter from the perspective of an MMORPG orc (hilarious). And expect Svetlana to gush about the dragons and creatures created for her RPG. Expects geekiness… and then expect something more.
Read this book:
Even if you would never consider picking it up normally.
Don't Read this book:
You can’t be sympathetic towards characters that like heavy metal.
Once you're done, do this:
Pencils or pixels? Pick your role-playing game and create your character.
