Rambling For My 56th

Effin' WIZARDS, Man.

So today I've officially survived 56 orbits of our local star, which means I've been playing RPGs for over 44 years now.

Why?

Because they're fun. Because I can become someone I'm not and walk a while in their shoes. Because I enjoy building worlds and societies and finding the edges of what I know about how everything works. Because controlling fictional powers beyond the ken of mortals gives me hope.

Why did I choose choose the image of a patch for the 56th Operations Support Squad? Because Wizards. It spoke to me. And I'm sticking with it.

Today I write to find out.

Yes, I've watched the clip from this bsky post and read through the blog post talking with Paul Czege about The Ink That Bleeds. And I'm writing. So let's suspend our rationality and see where this goes.

Sometime writing provides escape. The world is just too crappy to deal with, and sometimes immersing your being in another world that offers more control grants therapy of a sort. Making something new that didn't exist a few moments before gives me a rush, like stage performance but more subdued. Writing covers both feelings in a single experience.

I sit, facing the blank screen, fearful that I have nothing to say. I tentatively tap a few keys. Runes appear in stark contrast to the consuming emptiness. I continue typing, filling the void with words and thoughts. Suddenly the fear transforms from the lack of ideas to the overabundance of them, crowding the point I'm trying to make in a sea of vaguely-related threads. My brain shifts from "write something clever" to "let's edit to tighten this up", and instead of adding more abundance, I remove some chaff and whittle points on the ideas that surfaced.

Sometimes I write to empty my head, as if somehow the expression of ideas clears space in the infinite space between my ears. Sometimes I write to explain something to myself, and possibly others might be able to use that construct to make something cool. Sometimes I write simply to reach others, to find similar minds across the chasm of difference and indifference.

Hopefully the rest of my tribe still exists, even though I may not have seen them for decades.

I feel like a fool, like I've pushed life away in the pursuit of a career, whatever that means. "Someday when I'm stable" carries the weight of my existence, and drains the color out of life as I miss opportunities to connect, to bask in the joy of being in the presence of other humans for simple, everyday communion and an aimless chat about nothing in particular.

We had a tornado scare last night. I assembled the crate and we carried the cats to the basement, confined in a cage too small for the three of them. We waited as the atmosphere spun, and stopped spinning, and rained, and thundered, and tried to blow the house down. We all survived, humans, cats, and house. We didn't even lose any trees.

Being stuck downstairs with years of boxed memories surrounding us, I idly wonder why I'm driven to keep so many things.. All my games from years past. All the notes from past campaigns. The old character sheets, erased nearly through the paper.

But they all mean something to me. Possibly nobody else, but that's OK. They remind me of a time when I connected with others through the lens of a shared reality, of rules that might not work all the time, of the comradery of overcoming adversity, even fictional adversity, as a group and becoming stronger for the experience.

Why do I play games?

Because they make my world broader and deeper and richer and more colorful.

What could possibly be better than that?

And with that, the editor refuses to edit this stream of consciousness, and chooses to post it with merely a quick spelling check.

Enjoy!