Dicing with Dragons

Today Radio 4 broadcast a programme, Dicing with Dragons, looking back at thirty years of roleplaying. I've just listened to it on the BBC web site, and it was fair enough but a bit depressing to listen to. As a retrospective, it mostly spoke to people who played then but thirty years on aren't active players. The impression given was of a hobby which has declined, which is fair enough, but it would have been nice to hear some recruiting propaganda rather than a balanced report! :-)

Someone who's recently taken roleplaying up was interviewed briefly and, positively, she was female. The other interviewees were, unsurprisingly, predominantly male. However, Louise Yeoman was involved in researching it and Cheryl Morgan was also interviewed.

It presented reasonably, if not compellingly, why roleplaying appeals to its players, and it also covered some of the history. The only significant flaw in the programme is one that I wouldn't have picked up myself, as I'm not involved, but reaction mailed around after the programme aired suggests that a more positive view of roleplaying's current state would have resulted from looking at the phenomenon of roleplaying online.