I'm really at an impasse concerning roleplaying. It's distressing enough to lose sleep over, in any case.

I've been roleplaying online for over a decade, now. Frequently; it's one of my topmost hobbies, and has been for the longest time.

Lately, however, it's drying up. The friends I've made through it have, for the most part, walked away without a backwards glance; the stories I told through it are winding up, and no more are developing that I can take place into. My niche doesn't fit the current trends (monsters and sex, monsters and sex, monsters and sex), so I have little interaction with those who remain, and can't even justify my characters staying in the chat room with them for the most part.

In short, every rational and logical fiber of me tells me that it's over. My time has come. The hobby has reached its conclusion, and I would be wisest to fold it up, put it away, and reflect on the good times as I find something new.

And yet the stubborn, sentimental part of me doesn't want to give it up.

But I don't see a way to reclaim it; I don't think one exists. Even if I did find a new venue to play in, I would be giving up the best characters I'd played, ending stories, and being forced to start from scratch, in a new place, where no one knows me and I'd have to fight for a scrap of recognition. That's misery, even if such a place existed, which it doesn't.

What I want is gone. I just can't accept that I'm looking at a corpse and bury the damn thing already.

A Random Encounter

Cannot... stop... laughing....

I was vastly amused that this guy actually turned out to be a good sport.

XRingRoseX: ::from across a space which could be easily walked he laid his brown eyes upon her. Intrigued, he slowly brushed back the dark hair which partially covered his face so that he could look all over this beauty more carefully. And upon staring furthur the man decided to rise from the ground and walk towards her, once within her presence he smiled seductively and kneeled down at her feet...:: do you take slaves? ::he asked daringly::

Morgan Rampage: Yes. ::said the very male man:: I take them... out into the fields. And set them free. AND DRIVE AWAY! It's the saddest thing EVAH but it makes me cry happy tears of emo delight!

XRingRoseX: sorry to have bothered, didnt know you were male, i apologize

Morgan Rampage: You mean I can't free slaves just because I'm male?! That's totally sexist! I'm going to file a claim under the Equal Opportunity for Slave Freement Act, which I can only assume exists and allows me to file claims!

XRingRoseX: lol

RiverOfSinZ: :He slowly makes his way towards her from the darkness of the shadows, his red eyes slowly sweeping up and down her form as he came before her, his robes flowing around his massive form, tilting his head a bit as he spoke lowly to her: On your knees.

Morgan Rampage: ::The extremely male man looks down, and with dawning realization brushes off the dirt on his pants:: Thanks, I hadn't even noticed that.

I picked up a real winner tonight!

( Read more... )

Years role-playing: I think it's nine. It might be eight. But I'm pretty sure it's nine this year.

Least favorite character: I don't have one, although some are harder to play than others.

Favorite characters: Morgan, because he's easiest to play. Michael, because he's just fun!

Male or female characters: All but one are male.

Oldest character: Drake, for all three interpretations of the question.

Newest character: Michael.

Most popular character: None of my characters are popular.

Character you've never played: The ones tigerphoenix picks up!


Which character of yours would be most likely to...

Jump off a bridge: Yes.

Get drunk and pass out: Aya, if Carolyn was egging her on. Sentence, if it was a bad day.

Kill somebody in a very unorthodox way: Drake. Morgan refuses to kill unless he has to, and Michael hasn't started building doomsday devices yet.

Get married: Yes?

Be far too hyper for their own good: Michael. "I'M ALMOST ON THE SECRET OF FROTHY PUDDING AND MY CHOCOBO IS AWESOME SPAZ SPAZ SPAZ!"

Be raped: Aya. Been there, done that. Wouldn't be so easy to do it again today.

Get lost and refuse to ask for directions: Morgan I'm-not-lost! Knight and Michael Yay-an-adventure! Valkonan

Get lung cancer: Sentence.

Star in a horror movie: Morgan, the victorious hero; Michael, the perky kid who the villains underestimate, or the one who accidentally unleased the horror in the first place.

Star in a whore movie: Ew, no.

Star in a video game: Orion. Jedi franchise power!

Make the world a better place: Aya, because she makes music. Most of the others focus on keeping the world from getting worse.

Have a torrid gay love affair: Aya.


Relate each word to a character of yours:

Love: Morgan

Hate: Sentence

Money: Morgan "Scrooge McDuck" Knight.

Seduction: Aya

Lies: Aya.

Tragedy: Aya

Manipulation: Drake. He's a parent after all.

Violence: Morgan.

Politics: Orion. Stupid Jedi Council.

Fire: Morgan

Ice: Sentence


Would you ever...

Play a prostitute: Naw.

Play a musician: Yep.

Play a pilot: I might.

Play a homosexual: Probably not, though bisexual I have.

Play a pedophile: Ew. No.

Play a politician: Sure.

Create a character for the sole purpose of smut: Nope.

Play a character who commits incest: No thank you!

Anyone have any particular interest in playing a person (or persons, if more than one person responds) from Morgan's past?

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it!)

I am a gamer. I make no secret of this fact; I flaunt it, in fact. I consider it a point of pride. But what, precisely, is a gamer? Certainly I'm not a hardcore Penny Arcade-style player of video games, possessed by all systems and fundamentally aware of the flaws and merits of each individual game, big-named or esoteric and strange. Nor am I a rampant roleplayer, though I might wish to be. I cannot remember the last time I took up the nobles arms of a roleplayer -- sword and shield, or in other words, d20 and rulebook. I have never painted miniatures. I have never played Halo 2, or Doom, or Tomb Raider. Why do I call myself a gamer? Why do I cling to the trappings of arcane, arbitrary rules and enforced interactivity?

When I was young still -- though I beg of those older than I not to lambast my statement, for the truth is that I am still younger than many of those older than I, though in fairness I am also older than many of those whose birthdate follows my own. I make use of the term "young" to characterize a dramatic gap between my current existence and circumstances, and those of the past. To wit, I am at this time an adult in my mid-20s -- a statement which is shocking to write -- living on my own, whereas in the mythical youth I speak of I was but a child whose age could be counted on one's fingers, still in primary education and blessed with a complete family.

Get to the point, the reader says, and cease dithering and digression! Poo on you, I must therefore rejoin, poo and double poo! But there is a point to my recitation, and that is simply this: My bed time was, in these nether depths of time, 8:00 PM. The sole exception to this rule, granted with parental wisdom, was the glorious night of Saturday. Unwearied by the burdens of school, yet lacking need to arise at an hour considered unnatural by the youthful body, I remained awake and alert an entire additional hour! Now, certainly this figure is laughable to we of greater age and less innocent mind, but an hour is far less of our lives than it was to the me that once existed. But musings on the nature of time are far less relevant, if perhaps far more entertaining, to the searching of my gaming soul, than the means by which I spent the extra time alloted to me. I'm certain you've long since figured it out, and indeed wandered off to watch the badgers animation some time ago. But for the sake of completing this, ironicallyt, foresaken essay, I'll spell it out clearly: the Saturdays of my youth were game nights.

And what games we played! My parents and I ventured across many broad spectrums of board- and card-based entertainment. A cabinet full of Milton Bradley products never failed to produce a fun activity. We sought to obtain a Monopoly; we lived the game of Life, where no Risk was too great. Times like those truly qualified as some of the happiest I can imagine.

When my parents divorced, and we moved across the country, such games ended. Though on rare occasion my mother, sister, and I would come together for a brief game of "Careers" or an occasional round of Tripoly, such events had nowhere near the heart of our old family games.

Do I need to go into depth on the effects the separation had? Or can I rely on your surely rich imagination to fill in gaps and make necessary assumptions about the psychological toll it took? I trust in your capability; I trust you can understand why I took such an interest in games, particularly those of the roleplaying variety.

So when I obtained, by coincidence and happenstance, the rules to AD&D 2nd Edition, what realistic course of action could anyone expect? The true surprise is not that I began to play, but that I found a group of others willing to play. Nate, best friend, easy convert, diehard dwarf; Pete, steam-venter, always willing to play a fighter or warrior class; Kostya, the Russian, picked up by freak coincidence in a social studies class, probably best DM of us all save for his crippling inability to prounounce key words such as "peasant", "wand", or "village"; Danny, off-and-on player who was in it for fun; Josh, perverted powergamer who taught us all to beware the rules lawyer; Alex, forever making crude jokes and jumping into danger; Baby Alex, the other Russian, who shall forever be remembered best for the many times he reacted to his own foolish mistakes of sheepish embarassment.

If you have never experience the kind of camaraderie a good game fosters, I cannot begin to explain it to you. The combined creative power of several minds bent to one unified purpose makes even the process of random number generation thrilling -- by which I mean that any fool can sit and roll dice, and cheer himself on for gaining a specific number, but the shared enthusiasm and sheer thrill of rolling a natural 20 at a critical moment, bringing your group salvation, is unparalleled.

To be continued.

Notice! I am working until 3 or 3:30 am tonight, instead of my original time of 11p. There was a call off and I volunteered to pitch in for half the shift. readnofurther, I know this interferes with that scene we have to do, for which I sincerely apologize. tigerphoenix, please feel free to call me or anything if you need support. I know having your family there is rough for you, and I'm sorry I can't be more supportive or helpful. I need the money!

Again, I'm really very sorry for this. Those of you this affects, I apologize... I'm sorry.

Unfortunately, the current Mage VST is still representative of the regime of utter crap (reference this post), re-elected by the close cadre of friends who are shamelessly rewarded in-game. The plots are crap, the storytellers quite unfair, and the overall game miserable. I've never done this before and never believed I'd ever HAVE to do it, but here it is: I'm pulling out.

Of course, this means that my roleplaying schedule is down to near nothing -- just live-action Werewolf every second and fourth Friday. For a dedicated gamer such as myself, this is nothing -- and I'm not even playing in it, I'm running it. How do I get by like this?! I have got to get some more role-playing in my system soon or I'll go nuts...

The live-action Mage game I play in just isn't fun any more. Ever since the new cadre of storytellers got in place, it's been nothing but a giant character-fuck. The PCs face huge and unopposable opposition, every single thing they do is wrong and comes back to haunt them, and there's no opportunity for anything but running and hiding. The actions of the NPC organizations are entirely arbitrary, there's no rhyme or reason to what happens...

I wouldn't mind all of this so much if so much energy wasn't being devoted to a colossal ass-raping of my character. They've hated him ever since they took power -- in all seriousness, he was a specific complaint of many of them during the elections period. I don't even know why I continue to play.

D....Dragonlance...

WANT!

Got pinned at work from 8A to 11P today, totally out of the blue. I have precious few friends, and little time to spend with them, so every time this happens I end up feeling so lonely and forgotten. Life goes on without me, and it's silly to expect otherwise. But still...

On the other hand, my job is boring at times, and I have no outlet for my energy. I sang along to a bunch of songs on the way home -- the X produced well tonight. So I'm lonely, which brain makes into depression, but I'm high-energy, which brain interprets as good mood. So I'm schismatic and about to go nuts.

Work tomorrow at 8, then a frantic total rewrite of my Kinfolk Sorcerer to comply with the entire new book for Cam Sanctioned Play. I wanted to do that today!

Weekend goal: Update resume, start submitting like crazy again.

Ooookay.


Rohirrim


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

And, all of you can suck it. You roleplaying virgins, you utter neophytes!

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	26.42% Has conversations in between massacres	51.9%
Sensitive Roleplaying	15.19% There is no player. There is only.... Zuul.	49.3%
GM Experience	21.01% Closer to a novel than to a campaign	66.1%
Systems Knowledge	83.9% Played in a couple of campaigns	88.6%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	36.78% Carries dice in pocket 'just in case'	58.7%
You are 40.56% pure Average Score: 65.7%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up!

Systems knowledge! Systems knowledge! Someone! LOAN ME BOOKS!

Overall, this was a great weekend.

tigerphoenix got here on... what, Wednesday night? It's all a blur at this point, but that's correct because I had to work on Thursday.

Even though the sushi didn't pan out, we had fun making the chicken wings and running into people down at the grocery store. The Mage game rocked, and the Eat'n'Park run afterwards was great. I need to create an LJ for Vertigo just so he can rant/vent/talk about everything that ended up happening to him after the game in downtime.

Nature: Thrill-Seeker and being a guy who won't take advantage of hot drunken girls = lots of spending Willpower.

Saturday had an early awakening, but for the best of reasons -- the bitch upstairs was moving out! Gone! Adios! Combine that with some much-needed slack'n'downtime, and lunch with friends... life is good.

Back to work for me, though.

Today is getting off to a slow, slow start. My usual schedule is 3-11, but on Wednesday and Thursday I'll be doing 8:30 - 4:30 for training. A heck of an adjustment, don't you think? To make matters worse, I need to use the bus on Thursday, which means a two hour (one-way) bus ride. I can't wait until this week is over.

On the up side, I have Friday and Saturday off. The last Mage game of the semester is mine to deal with as I see fit, and I still have a few more weeks before everyone takes off for the holidays.

I may be a zombie, but I'm a content zombie.

This promises to be a long day. I go from driver's training straight to work, which basically means I'm putting in 11 hours at my job today. Stupid, I know, but at least the training is paid.

In the meantime... bleh. I'm struggling to fight off a mild depression lately. That's hardly surprising, but I have absolutely no desire to be depressed. Normally I would look foreward to roleplaying on Friday, but I can't see how I can possibly do so this week. It's one of those situations I can't actually talk about on here.

Feh. Time to get moving.

Psychotic Garou game tonight, and I'm bushed. Yugh. So much Bad Stuff.

Added new staff to the Mage game. Walked home. So tired.

Start work on Monday.

Night all.

Recovering nicely from teh sick. Chinese food for dinner tonight!

I spent three hours trying to send my Mage ST report. It just won't send. I HATE Yahoo! mail.