I am Me

Remember when you had that cool idea to run an RPG where everyone played themselves?  You know... instead of making up characters, you just played... you?  Would that be super cool.  Yeah.  It would.  But then... what would the world be like?  Would you role play going to the grocery store?  Work?  Sleep?  What?

No.  You would introduce some fantastic element into the world that forced the players to do something that they wouldn't do in their normal lives BUT they'd be doing this fantastic thing in their "real" bodies.  Cool, right?  You'd get to see if YOU could survive in a fantasy world.

Well, Dungeon Quest sort of does that.  At least, it starts with this kid deciding that real life sucks and he wants to go on an adventure.  He leaves home, collects a few friends, starts killing evil monsters and collecting treasures.  There's no fancy device here to explain how this is possible.  The main character simply decides and it is so.  I'd say it has a dreamlike quality to it but that's wrong - it's only dreamlike in the sense that I've had dreams of this nature and wish I had more.

By far the coolest part of the books (there are 3 of them) is the fact that you get to see the characters stats after every fight.  They get new items.  They level up.  They gain skills.  It's all the dorky reward of playing an RPG without having to sit in a room and smell stale farts for eight hours.