Monthly Archives: April 2008

Role Playing is Playing a Role

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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Pools of Radiance Japan
This post is brought to you by AD&D: Pools of Radiance for the NES, or should I say Famicom? This screen shot is inviting heroes to step up in New Phlan. Really, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I recently started role playing again, and as much as it feels like sitting in that comfy divit in an old chair, I think maybe I picked the wrong chair.

A game master (aka GM or DM: one who runs the game) puts forth a framework in which to operate our imaginations. By playing in their game, we are accepting to follow that framework alongside the imaginings of the fellow players. The GM provides the world and our tasks, and we provide the heroes.

I realized that is my problem with this game I’ve recently joined. We didn’t provide the heroes. We had to fill in most of the lines on the character sheet- like our starting equipment, but we didn’t get to pick the name, sex, race (eg: elf), class (eg: wizard), or background (recent & far past) of our characters. Since we are a sum of our experiences and genetics, that sort of sums up the whole personality of the character we’re playing. We didn’t come up with our role to play while role playing.

At first, I saw it as a challenge. Play a character you would have never come up with on your own. I thought it would be kind of closer to acting in a play. I thought it could be fun.

And it is a challenge, so much so that not only do I feel like I don’t relate to my character in any way, I feel like I don’t know what my own character would do in most given situations. If given time to think I might come up with a list of things he might do with reasonings, but I don’t exactly have that luxury while playing in real time. It’s getting frustrating.

I love characters. If you would ask me why I write fiction or read it… why I play the video games I do or like the movies and shows I watch, it’s the characters. I admire the way they are developed through the story, their interactions through dialogs and gestures, and seeing how they grow and change. In a good story, you get to know the characters as if they’re real people and feel interested and invested enough in them to care what happens to them.

Is it such a stretch to think that the reason I love role playing is coming up with and playing a character? I love being the GM to make up and play many roles. Players only get to be one, single hero. I’m feeling like I’m fitting into my role like it’s a few sizes off, and it’s no wonder. I didn’t come up with or chose it. The one bit of creation that a player is allowed is their character, and I was denied that chance.

And so, it’s no wonder I’m thinking of leaving the group. It makes me sad because the players are top-notch. I really like playing with them a lot.

And the GMing isn’t so bad either, it’s just that he inadvertently took away my favorite part of role playing.

A lesson learned, I guess, but it’s a lesson I already learned once before.

In Milford, MA there used to be a gaming store called The Gamers’ Guild. I was in a game once where I was only allowed to play if I took on an existing NPC (non player character). There were two I was able to chose from. I selected the one I thought would be more fun based on her class.

Then, I tried to develop her as a character through playing her. I was told that my character wouldn’t do this or say that. I found out my character had a history and personality and relationships that I wasn’t aware of. Every time I tried to speak or act, I found myself defending my actions to one player in particular. In short, I found out that this wasn’t my character.

Yet again, they were a group of pretty awesome players, but it wasn’t allowed to role play, I was just a warm body rolling for a NPC of someone else’s imagination.

So, I feel like I don’t want to mess up the game by quitting. I also don’t want to stop playing with these neat people, but I’m fast losing interest in trying to play this character. For all of you thinking I should just kill him off, the in game situation makes even that very difficult.

Should next week be my last game? I can overcome any number of other game flaws if I enjoy playing my character, but without that, I’m not sure anything else is enough.

I think it may be time to take up the mantle of GM once again.

Dumb Questions

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Bubble Bobble
This post is brought to you by Bubble Bobble for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). When programmers run out of ideas (and inside jokes) for levels, they can always use that itself for inspiration.

Remember when growing up you were told that there were no dumb questions?

At some point we stop asking. We stop because to admit that you don’t already know makes you look ignorant and stupid. Even if we don’t care what other people think, we stop because the people we ask treat us like we’re dumb.

I propose again, as we learned when we were still in Kindergarten, there are no dumb questions. If you are really trying to learn, you have to find out somehow. We can read and read and read (Wikipedia), but books and online articles are incapable of human thinking. We sometimes need someone to give us a point of view, rearrange our thinking, and make things make sense. Maybe we just need to hear that we are on the right track. Or perhaps we need to hear that we’re not even asking the right questions. And yes, *everyone* misses the obvious at some point in their life. That includes you.

I have always thought, since I thought to wonder about it, that life is a big learning experience. Why else would we be born knowing nothing but basic instinct with an infinite capability to learn? Why if that was not what we were meant to do?

I wonder if when you ask someone and they give you a snarky response, it’s due to their own issues with their own quest for knowledge. “Well, no one would tell me, so why should I hep you?”. People often take their own insecurities out on others. So, if they have answers and don’t want to share, it’s because no one would help them. Maybe they like having the knowledge and power and it feels better to keep it to themselves. If they don’t have answers, they don’t want to admit it and show their own short comings. So they will answer with a huff, and a puff, and a ‘I don’t know, but hell if I’m going to tell you that!”

So, we’re conditioned to not ask. In being conditioned not to ask, we don’t find answers. Not asking these dumb questions breeds ignorance.

If someone is brave enough to ask me, I hope that I am always brave enough to answer honestly and openly. I hope I will always admit when I don’t know and give information even when I don’t feel like giving up my secrets or taking the time to explain. I’ve always tried to be there and do this for my younger siblings. As the world is fast teaching them about dumb questions, I counter that with an offer: “You can always ask me.”

What Do You Do?

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Armed Dragon Fantasy Villgust
This post’s screen shot is from the NES game Armed Dragon Fantasy Villgust. This guy is reading the first chapter of Adventuring for Dummies.

What you call yourself? What do you say when someone asks what you do for a living?

Many people say: a student. A student of what? That sends many into a flurry. If you’re a student of everything, aren’t we all? And aren’t you forever a student of your field(s)? You don’t wear a cap and gown and quit learning…

Many people cite what they do to make money. However, what you currently do for money may have nothing to do with it. Working at Dunkin Donuts is a means to an end, not a living. Have the confidence to associate yourself with your longterm goals and dreams. Little sister would say she’s a musician. And she is. She was when she worked at KFC and she still is serving donuts and coffee. Her ability at the oboe doesn’t diminish as she uses the cash register.

Money has nothing to do with it. Was Ray Charles not a musician until he got his first paid gig, or signed his first record deal?

It has everything to do with passion.

What would you still be doing even if no one were paying you to do it? There may lie your answer.

FourmRuler & Writing is Born

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I attribute my writing to a natural result of reading so much, but the internet surely played a large role as well. I started writing once upon a time in the (then) magical land of Compuserve. Sure, before that I wrote long posts and emails and even sort of ‘message role played’- but it was just communicating thoughts and words. It didn’t occur to me that I was writing stories, poetry, and essays.

The lame story of how I figured this out was an encounter with a luser with the handle of “ForumRuler” mocking me even though he didn’t know me. I was about ten and not going to let it go. I had a “Well, I rule more than you do.” attitude and online persona. We went back and forth and finally he threw the gauntlet down. He challenged me to a contest of words. The rules were that we write a poem about our own awesomness. Who ever wrote the better one would be the true forum ruler. I think he was expecting an easy win because I was “Huh… never wrote a poem before”.

We were working something close to real time, both online, so I wrote:

You first hear footsteps,
Then the smile,
You know you will be dead,
In a little while,
You say why me?
You whine and run,
But you know what will happen,
She is the one,
She is the one I say,
The one you despise,
She is strong and charming,
and she is wise,
Whom is she you say,
Why has she come?
It doesn’t matter,
Your life is done.

He admitted it was ‘not bad’ having posted four lines of clever ‘roses are red I rule ‘n stuff’ and I never heard from him again. He probably had to change his handle and start over. I, on the other hand, found it very satisfying and started writing for the sake of writing actual works for the first time.

Notepad and I would sit down and write poems, story lines, dialogs, beginnings, middles, ends, and scenes. I wrote about taverns without ever have been drunk. I wrote about dueling with swords and sorcery, even though I’d never fenced. The real bits were always in the poetry and the characters. I only wrote about emotions, motivations, and interactions as I understood them. This was the a part of writing I fell in love with.

My true motivations for writing were somewhere between escape and expression. I felt better after all the jumbled thoughts in my head came out and made some sense on paper. Those thoughts didn’t have to be me, they became characters in far off worlds with much more important things to accomplish. They had much bigger trials to face.

The stories in my head were no longer just bedtime stories to myself after closing my eyes. They bore some sense of importance that I might one day get them down properly and share them with others.

Work & Work

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The system is that was go to school to go to school to get a job to get money to live. Where’s the time to enjoy the life or the money we make (if there is any left after living). Many of are expected to be at work even when we’re not working or be on call. We look forward to retirement which may not happen before we die and when it does we will be either too old or poor to enjoy it. We take part in this cycle because it’s what we’re born into. The most that most of us can do is try to get that job that you somehow identify yourself with. That way, when it becomes the all consuming meaning of your life, it won’t feel quite so empty. When you admit that you are so much of your job, hopefully it is something you can at least take a piece of pride in. Relate it to a piece of your true self are a large notch above most of the working world.

The double irony of all of this is there are those of us who enjoy working. My entertainment mostly consists of work, but it’s work that I chose to do. It relaxes me in its own way. I put my full self into it with gusto. This is the sort of thing most of us dream about getting paid to do on a regular basis. Many people can be happy with a job they don’t identify with. I am the type of person who will probably not feel completely whole unless I have a job that I own. I want to work somewhere were I have pride, pronouns like ‘my’, and see myself in products of my labors. That may sound a little selfish, but all I’m asking is to work in the world as me, and not just be a moving, warm body that goes from day to day. I want more, I’m willing to work hard for more, but none of us knows how to get that (even the people that have it). They would look at you or I and say “I dunno.” or “Work hard.” as if that’s all they did to get where they are. They say it as if it’s not what you are doing. A few honest people have told me to be in the right place at the right time or talk to the right people.

Life doesn’t give you much to go on. It’s so hard even just to be and remain you.

I look at the people my age who I know and they are struggling with this aspect of their lives. They have college degrees and resumes and mad skills and talents. Yet, still, they fall into few categories. I have friends who get jobs they love, but they’re temporary or don’t actually support them. Internships are supposed to get you the better job tomorrow, just like college was. How many jobs is a person supposed to have to support their life? I have friends who find themselves out of work due to weather, economy, and simply being the low man on the totem pole. It seems like we have to pick up the ‘any’ job or drown. And then there are those that have better than the ‘any’ job, secure, but still somehow utterly miserable. They work for X Corp. which is part of their field, but no matter what they were hired as, they find themselves as little more than a glorified receptionist / personal assistant. Low man on totem pole is always looking for work whether or not they have a job and is scraping by for money even when they have a job. If you have the money for fun after everything else, it’s a must to survive life. You can’t work so many hours at a job, even one you like, and then when the weekend comes say, “I would socially interact with you, but I need to pay the bills.”

We play the ‘whose bills’ game with each other. Who has the worst student loan debt? Who has the lowest bank account balance? We all have savings accounts, but they’re for good intentions and future hopes at this point. Who gets by without getting any money from the family since they moved out? Anyone? Anyone?

This is my generation and I’m trying hard to be the exception. But then, most of us are.

Quantity VS Quality

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This is somewhat in response to the Twitter spam ‘discussion’ between Scoble and Badera.

There’s a lot of cliches that begin with the phrase ‘there are two types of people’. Though the world is not simple enough to classify everything as one or the other, there are dichotomies in this world and people especially.

When I look back on why certain relationships with people have failed, I think it has to do with a fundamental difference in values. I’m not talking about religion, I’m talking about people who are about more about quality and people who care about quantity.

A quality person is someone who values the intangible essence of something over the actual amount. They would rather have one moment of true revelation that a million okays. They actually believe that the thought is what counts. They are someone who’d rather hang out with a few people and have in depth discussions. Quantity people can deal with being wrong, losing a game, or considering other viewpoints, because they aren’t keeping score.

Quantity people are all about keeping score. They are worried about numbers of instances over the content of the instances themselves. They’d think the better gift is money rather than a well thought event planned by the giver.They’d go to a party at someone’s house advertised on a flier and try to say hi to as many people there as possible without really getting to know anyone. People like this are about life as a competition and being right.

There’s nothing wrong with that type of person, it’s just not me, not how I view the world and go about things. I think the unquantifiable things are what make life worth living. One real connection means so much more than a hundred passing hellos.

That’s as much true on the internet as it is anywhere else. I’m prefer my little online community any day of the week than a bunch of faceless, passing, generic comments.