1 in 25

I admit it. I'm an RPG geek. I play Pathfinder, and have played and/or run D&D, GURPS, and In Nomine. I'm itching for a chance to play Dogs in the Vineyard, Don't Rest your Head, Burning Wheel, Aberrant, Mutants & Masterminds, and Shadowrun. I eat the experience up. Why? Because it allows me, at least for a while, to toss all of the encumbrances and ambiguities of the real world, stare down pure evil, and spit in its eye. RPG settings offer a refresing opportunity to erase much of the gray from the world, take up a heavy object of stark white and in the words of an infamous D&D parody, attack the darkness. It's no substitute for doing good or fighting injustice in the real world, and in the real world, one cannot use the methods of a typical RPG PC, but, like a good crime thriller or fantasy novel, it allows you the satisfaction of doing so without any of the real-world consequences of doing do in the most efficient way possible, except it goes one better than other pieces of fiction and puts you in the story. I realize that others get something else out of the experience, but for me, having my paladin draw his sword, walk through the flames, and send the villain screaming to Hell is what it's all about.

However, this very concept is also why it's important to maintain the line between fantasy and reality. Unlike many people these days, I do believe that true evil exists in the world. There are people out there that are utter sociopaths, who will steal, kill, and abuse their way through the populace for no better reason than that nobody has stopped them yet. About 4% of the human population, if I remember my reading, can be classified as sociopaths. That means that, at any given time, there are about 260,000,000 remorseless monsters in human skin walking the planet. Add another 40 million and you'll have roughly the population of the United States. Praise be to God that they don't all live here. That also, however, means that there are twenty-four times that many people who aren't as likely to shoot you as shake your hand out there. As I test for police departments, I routinely hope that when the time comes, I have the wisdom to distinguish the one-in-twenty-five from the other 24, because unlike my paladin character, as a sworn law enforcement officer, I will not have the luxury of simply smiting those who have done evil upon the world and walking away. In the real world, thinking oneself judge, jury and executioner is a really good way to join the ranks of the 1-in-25.