Yesterday’s venture into role playing again

I stared down at the lonely few numbers scattered among empty spaces on the form. At the top was boldly emblazoned “Character Sheet.” I’d filled out similar forms before, but according to different rules and over a decade ago. Role playing games are full of numbers which affect other numbers which affect what the character can and can not do in the game. Even in my roleplaying heyday (20 years ago now) I was never in it for the numbers. What I enjoyed was the community creation of a story where one person, the Game Master, creates the plot and setting. Everyone else creates a character. All these elements are thrown together and an adventure begins to emerge which is different than anyone expects before hand. I love the interaction of characters and plot bouncing off of each other. It is why I write fiction.

But before the play, comes the character creation. I remembered loving role playing games, but felt overwhelmed. Howard, of course, had his character all ready to go. Howard games every Thursday night, so he isn’t out of practice. He was the reason I sat there, with empty spaces daring me to figure out how to fill them. It was a chance for us to play together, to laugh together. Such time is critical to maintaining a solid relationship and for us it had been very sparse lately. So I was there despite my worries about the cost of the time and of the creative energies which such a game requires. Howard helped and the spaces on my character sheet began to fill.

There are two common approaches to take when creating a character. One is to ask “who do I wish I could be,” the other is to ask “who would be an interesting character for this game.” Going the wish fulfillment route is difficult for me because I’m pretty happy with the person I am. But the person I am doesn’t make a very good character for an adventure story. So, I looked closely at the setting and the other characters. I created a character who filled skill gaps and who would bounce interestingly off of the other characters. Lady Brona Raylethorne was heavily lifted from the cartoon character The Tick, but I thought that would be fun. Unfortunately part of why The Tick works is because he strings together elaborately odd mixed metaphors. That is incredibly difficult to do on the spur of the moment. We began to play and I found that I was not doing my justice to my imagined character.

I got better as the game continued. Everyone did. It is the nature of role play that the characters and players develop together as the game continues. The magic of the game is in the playing. I became so completely absorbed that hours disappeared without notice. It all began to flow. There was much laughter and adventure. It was so fun that, rather than break up the game, we moved the game to our house so that I could tend to my kids and still play. Playing with the kids around worked far better than I expected it to. We’ve all agreed that we’ll play at our house again. I walked away from the game spinning thoughts about the characters and wondering what will happen next. I want to play again. Only this time I want to manage the kids better (things got a little chaotic at bedtime) and I want to watch some Tick ahead of time so that I have some of those lines in my head.