Tag Archives: act

Role Playing is Playing a Role

Posted on by
2

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.

When You Google Yourself

Posted on by
10

Phantasy Star 2 Wanted

To the right: Phantasy Star 2 (Sega Genesis).

When you Google yourself, you expect to find yourself in at least a few places that you didn’t expect to be found.

What no one expects is for some idiot to treat their blog like it’s some pre-teen’s live journal and talk about you unkindly as if no one would ever know it was you. If someone were to do that, you’d at least expect them to try and hide who you are. Like say “this guy” or “someone I know…” or “…we’ll call him Bobalicious…”. If they still used, not just your first name, but your whole legal, given name, you’d figure they’d at least have a reason to… like some kind of vendetta. Maybe you keyed their car or slept with their sister. Maybe you kicked their dog.

What if all you did was try to be polite?

A friend of mine ran into someone she used to know. During the conversation, another old mutual friend came up. She asked how this friend was doing, what they were up to, and even took down their number. She did it just to be polite, never called the number, and didn’t even think about it again until much later.

Much later, she was playing everyone’s favorite internet game: Google myself!!

When she Googles herself, she gets a lot of results from people who are spell check impaired since her name is close enough to real words. There are other people with the same name. Nothing too noteworthy…

Then she found this (all misspellings, bad grammar, etc. I kept, but the names are ***ed out):

 
“So I wonder what’s gonna happen when ********** calls my cell-phone. Will I answe it? What would we ever have to talk about. Apparently we’ve been living in the same town for quite awhile- I wonder why she doesn’t ever come downtown. ***** said she looked the same, acted the same. It would be a shame if she’d never blossomed. Maybe she just still shy. I’m terrified of talking to her”

 
She was satisfied with telling her friends about it and us all saying ‘what an ass’, but I was a bit more pissed. I wanted to call that number and give this guy something to be terrified about.

Another friend did some reconnaissance and found the blog. I left a comment. I even left a link to my blog…

 
“So I wonder what’s gonna happen when ********** calls my cell-phone. Will I answe it?”

When? Don’t you mean if? Just because she was polite enough to ask for your number doesn’t mean she’ll call it, especially if you’re posting this.

“What would we ever have to talk about.”

Life? Is there really so little that has happened to you since you last spoke that you’d have nothing interesting to tell an old friend about?

“***** said she looked the same, acted the same. It would be a shame if she’d never blossomed.”

She still looks and acts like ****. Yeah, I know, too bad she didn’t conform to the way she should look or act.

“Maybe she just still shy. I’m terrified of talking to her.”

She’s shy but you’re terrified of talking? She’s like barely five feet tall and an openminded individual. Whatever she had to say, I bet it would have been nicer than what you had to say on the internet.

Well, no need to be afraid. I’m sure she won’t be calling you now.

 
I hope he reads it. I hope it makes him blush. I hope he then links to here and sees that I talked about it in my blog. I hope he then writes a follow up post either bad mouthing me or trying to defend himself.

Never blossomed? I’m sorry that we’re not all flowers or bloomin’ onions. We’re women who come into our own, but not exclusively in ways designed specifically to appeal to your own individual male sensibilities.

Look the same? Did he expect her to have a problem with not being a six foot blonde with a paper thin tummy and mushy melons? Did he expect plastic surgery on his behalf?


Sound the same? She’s always had interesting things to say and an amazing singing voice. Who should she sound like…

Him?

And all these conclusions are jumped to because he talked to someone who talked to her.

Is the terrifying thing that he may hear about how great she’s doing? She’ll tell him all the places she’s been and things she’s done, and he’ll feel small and empty and write about it on his blog. So instead of calling her, and judging for himself how this friend is doing, make a preemptive strike online. He belittles her so he can feel better about it when she calls. If she calls. She isn’t going to call him. Why would she?

He apparently has nothing much to say anyways.