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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Geeky weekend

I know what you're thinking. Oh, so she's actually going to live up to her blog title now, is she? Yeah right. Well, I am, dammit! I am a geek, just like I said. And now I'm going to prove it to you.

On Saturday (yes, I know it was days ago, I've been trying to sit down and write this for like two days), my husband and I played in a Star Wars RPG. For those who don't know, a role-playing game, or RPG, is a game in which players create characters, roll dice (to make it more realistic by adding the element of chance), and are led on a series of adventures by someone who writes a story for them, or GM (for game master). Yes, like Dungeons and Dragons, only that's not the only RPG. Far from it. They can be about pretty much anything you want them to be about, but really a good one will include some elements of a mystery, some combat, and some good acting (which happens to be my favorite part, an amateur aspiring unpolished dabbling actress myself). My husband and I have participated in everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Call of Cthulu to superheroes (his personal favorite) to Shadowpact (a fantasy-type world that is more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and my personal favorite -- I mean, I get to play a slayer [who is not unlike Faith, for those familiar with the show], and how cool is that?).

Lately the only games I've played have been run by my friend Aaron. He is an excellent storyteller, and he does not put too much emphasis on rules, both of which make for a good GM. He runs the Shadowpact games (and soon, superheroes), but his current campaign (like a novel or movie in which individual games are like chapters) is a Star Wars game. It takes place roughly 100 years after the original trilogy, so the only familiar character in the story is R2D2.

Anyway, the game was the shortest I've ever participated in, lasting around 3 hours. I didn't even have time for my ADD to kick in! It was a lot of fun, as Aaron's games always are, and I even got an extra character point (these are a reward from GM to players for awesomeness, and are used to "buy" new skills or improve existing ones; an example would be if someone was a martial artist skilled in karate, s/he could use those points to get better at karate or maybe pick up judo. Like in the real world, when you have a teacher, you can get better at something you're good at over time, or learn new skills from him/her). I was very excited about my extra character point, because he gave it for a "really cool bit of roleplaying" in which my character and my husband's character had a really intense argument. I must mention that my husband and I were not arguing, but our characters were, much like in a play. This is why it's my favorite part. Stage fright is not an issue when you're acting in front of less than 10 of your friends. Well, and buying pretty dice is fun. Yes, I'm a geek. But I'm a girl geek.

After the game, we stayed for dinner and then watched some Firefly after the kids went to bed. Sunday Brandon went to play a Dungeons and Dragons game by himself. He invited me to join in, but I just wasn't in the mood to play D&D with a bunch of guys I don't know very well (most of them not at all, actually). I didn't know that they would be playing two games. Note: Most games last a really long time. See the bit above where I say that the three-hour game was the shortest I've ever played in. I've played in several that last upwards of eight hours. Also see the bit above where I mention my ADD*. Fortunately, these games were designed to each run a total of 4 hours. Still kind of annoyed me that I didn't know about it. But what really pissed me off is that after his first nap, Adam decided that he was going to be the crankiest fussbudget ever. He wouldn't sit, he wouldn't play, he wouldn't nap, he just whined. I could have really used another pair of hands, and my whole family was at my cousin's wedding in Massachusetts. We couldn't afford to go, so I was stuck in my apartment for 12 hours with a whining infant. Brandon called twice to tell me he would be later than he thought. The thought going through my head was, I am so blogging about this.

But like I said, I've been trying to write this post for about two days, and I didn't get the chance to whine at all of you. :) After he finished playing the D&D games, he went out (at nearly midnight) to go grocery shopping for a bunch of foody-type items we needed, and when he came back, he also had ice cream, chocolate milk, and flowers. The flowers were alstroemerias, which mean "I'm sorry". Awesome. Ice cream = even better. Chocolate milk = OMG. No no no. You don't understand. I am a chocolate milk FIEND. Nine times out of ten, I will choose chocolate milk over alcohol -- even if I wasn't still nursing. It's truly like crack to me. And then all day Monday he was doing nice things for me, favors and such. Almost like having a personal slave. Almost. He did have schoolwork he had to get done for class today.

Good weekend.

P.S.: Tonight, because apparently we did not get enough Star Wars in our geeky diet, we watched A New Hope. Sigh. There is no chance that my son will not be a geek.

P.P.S.: I want to apologize for this incredibly verbose post. I will endeavor to write future posts earlier in the day, in an effort to rein in my rambling nature.

*I do tend to talk about ADD casually sometimes, but in this case, I am actually one of the roughly 4% of Americans who suffers from Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. Not ADHD, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder -- I'm not bouncing off the walls, I just have a hard time concentrating, paying attention, remembering things, and procrastinating. A hard enough time that when I was in high school, I did see a behavioral specialist (against my will, at first) and take medication to treat it. Not Ritalin, but Adderall, which is milder (Ritalin is usually for ADHD).

I mention this because I don't mind sharing bits of my personal life with you, but I want to spell out the facts, rather than throw around terms carelessly. Occasional casual references are fine, but continual misuse of the terms really bothers me. I assume that people are, at least at their core, decent human beings, and if someone misuses these terms, I assume it is because they misunderstand. Thus, if one of these terms comes up, I try to educate the user. If the terms are abused, I get pissy. Just sayin'.

2 comments:

Amanda

You just gave me a craving for chocolate milk for some reason after reading this. Since I don't know much about the games you were talking about, but chocolate is a language that I speak....lol

Mel

Yeah, I know RPGs aren't well understood by all. Hopefully the explanation helped a little, but I didn't want to bore you with the details of that particular game if you didn't know about them (or care). But chocolate of any kind, and its powers over our free will, is fairly universal. :)

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