Character Challenge Time!!

If you add up all the moments that I spend inside my two primary characters’ heads. I know a lot about them, including how they think about things, who they love, and what they care about. I think about the previous game remembering it and processing it as they would. All this has become routine, and while it has allowed me to know the characters better, I am used to it.

Today I let my mind drift and suddenly I started looking at my life from their point of view! By turning everything on its head, I was really surprised at what I learned not only about my characters, but myself. Zarnian, my ex-gladiator is surprised at how rich my environment is. The fact I can take a hot or cold bath twice a day if I wanted blew her mind, and she was wistful that I have found the love of my life and get to be with him. She is a little disgusted that I do not take better care of my body, and disappointed that I do not always speak my mind. Candy is my rich playgirl adventurer. She was mostly surprised at how I can be happy being in one place, but many other elements of my life felt the same to her. We both have a great life partner, and we both are surrounded by friends that have become like brothers. She has witchhunters after her, I have bills. They are both aggravating.

So try this. Think about your characters, and then think about your life through their eyes. I think you will be surprised about what you learn about you and your character.

Sometimes things just don't go as planned...

If you are a player of role playing games at all, you know this is true. How often have we all planned and planned for something to happen in game and then…. Nothing. Nothing happens because one of your teammates changed what was going to happen radically. It has happened to us all. I just don’t think these moments are bad things.

Tonight we were supposed to have everyone over to play Dark Sun. We put out three kinds of soup and bread, two kinds of beer, and a big bottle of rum one of the players had left over. Jason drew a very detailed map, and just after Jordan, the first player got here, Eric called in sick. We were already short a player, so no game for us that night. The look Jason gave the map broke my heart, but it is wet erase mat so he couldn’t leave the marker without risking it staining. It had to come off. By then, Jon had appeared and out came the Magic the Gathering card. We tore into the soup and bread, chatted with Regi until he took off to get some work done, and the four of us played some New Phyrexia until we were full and at least one beer had met its end.

Did the night go as planned? No. Did we still have a great time? Yes. Sometimes with games and life, a little flexibility can have great rewards.