Zombies, Japanese superheroes and fantasy films are as popular as they are ubiquitous. But for some it is a deeper, more consuming passion. Bruce Munro takes a peek inside Otago's fantasy gaming subculture.
It is midweek, after 7pm, during university Orientation. Down the road, 4000 raucous students are being entertained by equally rowdy comedians during filming of a television show.
But here in the Moot Court on the 10th floor of the University of Otago's Richardson Building the mood is more sober, more focused.
''Lots of people see what you see and quietly forget about it,'' Matt Swain, gazing up at a terraced audience of fewer than 20, says.
''Lots of people see what you see and end up in psychiatric care. Lots of people who see what you see are ripped limb from limb and never found again.
''You guys are the damned heroes.
''You are the people who have decided this will not stand; that evil will triumph if good men stand idle.''
It is the first meeting of 2014 for the Otago University Roleplaying Society.
Mr Swain, a 40-year-old Dunedin City Council information support officer and out-of-hours role-play storyteller, is setting the scene for a fresh Live Action Role Play (Larp).
Role-playing, Mr Swain explains, is for those who, when they see a good movie, think 'I could do better than that'.
''Instead of watching, you play a character,'' he says.
''Rather than follow a script, you improvise to help create a great story.''
Tonight the participants are creating the characters whose clothing, talents and personas they will assume one evening every fortnight until the end of the academic year.
To guide them is a 32-page character creation document that needs to be filled out.
When would you kill a human, if at all?
Under what circumstances would you allow a supernatural creature to live? What are your aspirations and breaking points?
Where is your monster at present? It is good if players do not know the answer to that one, Mr Swain says.
''It gives me plenty of scope,'' he adds.
Mr Swain first came into contact with fantasy role-play games (RPG) as a teenager.
He heard about the classic table-top fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) but his parents would not let him play.
''They thought it was demonic,'' he says.
Instead he played a role-play game based on the Vietnam War.
''At its most basic, it [role-playing] is just escapism. It's like a video game, only more social.''
The university society runs Otago's only Larps, which attract up to 30 players.
In January, Mr Swain took part in a two-day Larp in Auckland that had almost 200 participants. He played a fiery, sword-brandishing elemental spirit.
Helen Jones-Rippey (23), who is the society's president, began role-playing at the University of Waikato and continued when she shifted south two years ago.
The third-year geology student's favourite Larp character was a werewolf she played not long after arriving in Dunedin.
''She was pushy and loud. If you don't agree with me, fight me. That sort of thing,'' Miss Jones-Rippey says.
The werewolves were protecting a power source on Signal Hill.
''We went up there one evening to play out one session. My character ended up challenging all the other werewolf packs to a fight. She was good for getting drama going.''
Two nights later, in the back room of Aargon Hobbies in Filleul St, another set of mostly fresh faces is seated around two trestle tables. A Magic: The Gathering draft is in progress.
Players rifle through packs of newly opened playing cards adorned with monsters, castles and warriors. They each pick a card, pass their pack to the left, grab a new pack and choose again.
A young man picks up his smart phone.
''It's probably not worth it,'' the man next to him says.
''No, I wasn't looking up a price. I just got a text from my mum,'' the young man replies.
Choosing cards is a serious, half-hour precursor to the main event.
For the rest of the evening these players will be powerful wizards using their cards to wield weapons, spells and creatures against each other in a battle that only one can win.
Magic is one of the most popular Trading Card Games (TCG) in the fantasy gaming universe.
Games are played in schoolyards and homes in many countries, as well as in more formal competition settings such as this one being overseen by software developer Mark Wilson.
It is a ''complex and engrossing game'' that appeals to ''geeky, analytical people'', Mr Wilson (37) says.
''There is a lot of decision-making and maths required to work out the optimal strategy.
''This is a mental sport, really.''
It can also be as much about trading and collecting the cards as playing them.
Magic is owned by United States-based company Wizards of the Coast. Since 1997, Wizards has also owned the grandfather of all fantasy TCGs, D&D.
Every three months Wizards produces another set of 350 Magic cards that can be purchased in packs of 15 cards for $7 or $8 a pack.
Each pack is guaranteed to contain one rare card and three uncommon cards. Extremely rare, newly released cards can trade for $20 to $30 each.
The most valuable cards, however, belong to older decks produced when fewer people played the game and fewer cards were produced. Some of those cards sell for more than $100 each.
Mr Wilson has what he calls a ''semi-competitive'' Legacy format deck - a deck of at least 60 cards drawn from all official Magic sets since the game began 20 years ago.
''I bought a bad version [of Legacy] for a few hundred dollars,'' he says.
''And then I've slowly added the missing good cards over the course of a couple of years.''
His entire Magic collection is worth about $5000.
Ben Wootten is one person who is more familiar than many with fantasy gaming in its various forms.
It is not simply because the 44-year-old began playing D&D as a 12-year-old and continued doing so well beyond the years he spent studying zoology at the University of Otago.
From Otago he went to Christchurch for a course in illustrating and graphic design.
There he met sculptor Jamie Beswarick who, in 1996, encouraged him to come work for a little-known special effects and film props company in Wellington called Weta Workshop.
Mr Wootten worked at Weta for a decade, including two years as head of the design department. Working on the Lord of the Rings films, he designed Strider's sword and was closely involved in designing the ferocious Balrog creature.
Seven years ago he became a freelance illustrator. Clients have included international RPG and TCG companies Wizards, Paizo and Upper Deck.
He has had the pleasure of being commissioned to rework several creatures that were on TCG cards he played with as a youngster.
''Mum would always say when I was drawing as a kid - I was always drawing D&D stuff, we would play the game endlessly, we were obsessed with it - she would say 'why can't you draw something nice?','' he recalls.
''So it's ironic that this is what I now do as a job.''
Fantasy games have been extensively developed during the past three decades, but the essence has remained unchanged, Mr Wootten says.
''There's a greater variety of them and they have explored different settings, such as space opera and horror. But the idea of group story-telling is still at the heart of it.''
What has changed is the appeal of the genre.
''Computer games have had a big impact.
''They are what has really changed that scene and made it so mainstream ... It's now as acceptable to say you play online games as sport.''
This has reshaped fantasy conventions.
What used to be a celebration of comics and independent publishers now often has computer games and movies ''at its core'', Mr Wootten says.
''Gen Con, which is a convention in Indianapolis based around role-playing games and card games and all that sort of stuff; they must get 60,000 to 70,000 people through. It is huge.''
New Zealand's annual fantasy gaming and sci-fi convention is the Armageddon Expo. It is held in five centres, starting this weekend in Dunedin.
Kimberley Sanson (22) will be among the thousands expected to attend. She will also be at the Christchurch expo next weekend, the Wellington one in the middle of the year, and the Auckland expo in October.
That is because the conventions offer the Dunedin care support worker the opportunity to transform herself into cosplay character Rikku, of the PlayStation video game Final Fantasy X-2.
Costume play, or cosplay as it is known, is a performance art that often draws on Japanese anime (animated productions) as inspiration for its characters.
Most cosplayers, including Miss Sanson, create their own costumes. In Dunedin, that is hardly anyone, she says. Which is one reason why she enjoys the conventions so much.
''A few years ago there were about 10 of us who tried for a while to meet up every now and then,'' she says.
''Going to the expos is fun and confidence-boosting. You can ... stand out from the crowd and mundane life.
''People get to see your costume and go 'wow'. It's fantastic.''
