Kombat and Politiks
If there is one thing that has caused a lot of misunderstandings amongst my circle of friends and I, especially among my close, geek-knit crew, is that I really don't feel like talking or socializing that much these days. I wave it off, explaining I'm stressed and going through some difficulties right now. I know a lot of people don't read this blog, so if they press hard enough I tell them I'll send them a link to the first entry later, because I've always been better at expressing myself through the written word than by speech*.
*- yes, I do realize that given my frequent disregard for basic english rules, that's saying something.
I'm just kind of tired of talking to people these days. There's no way to say that without offending someone, because among most of the people I know, talking to others every day is a way of relieving their stress and refreshing their emotional happiness. Talking, in and of itself, does not make me any happier. Here, let us sit and discuss trivial every day events for two hours. Let us refill our mana bar through laughter and nostalgia. My mana bar does not refill from these activities. My mana bar refills from creative works, tests of endurance, and visceral thrills. It is sometimes it is very difficult to find those three sources of mana in real life, or absorb them without bad consequences. It would seemingly be easy to find them in a role-playing game.
But alas, almost every game I've been in or run lately has been about 'politics'. That's all I seem to hear from my gaming group, except for one or two players. In real life, I hate politics. I despise politicians. I resent the fact that my disability and job issues are decided by faceless people beyond my access. I find the facebook bickering over political parties to be completely absurd. This greatly contributed to my resistance to therapy in the past, and although I'm seeing a good therapist that I'm comfortable with, in the back of my head I still wonder if this is a waste of time.
I can talk to people in real life every day, constantly. Even on my most depressed and withdrawn days, I am never completely alone. You know what I can't do in real life? Punch things in the face. I cannot punch the SSA in the face. I cannot punch my past in the face. I cannot punch Alport Syndrome in the face. I can't even punch people in the face, because that is generally frowned upon in modern day society. So when we sit down to the gaming table, and everyone else wants to escape into a calm and quiet fantasy, and I want to mow down the hordes of Mordok the Unmerciful, there's a bit of values dissonance. I'm usually alone in my desire to go showering the countryside with mook and minion blood, unless Ryan showed up. He has to work a lot on Fridays, though.
I just feel so bored sitting there, waiting for my turn to haggle with the shopkeeper or talk to a random NPC for the seventeenth time. Everybody knows I'm bored, but any kind of challenge or combat is only added to the game as a quick and sloppy way to 'appease Joey', so they can all 'get back to the fun part'. I like seeing my friends and socializing with them, but this recent trend in our gaming has left me very frustrated. I need an outlet for my rage right now, a vent of some sort, and I'm not getting one.
Some of my favorite characters in fantasy are powerful monster-men who broke through the shady manipulations of others and just went on destructive rampages against foes that could not be confronted any other way. I loved characters liked Conan the Barbarian and The Incredible Hulk. Both of those characters definitely hated politics and 'the system'. Conan fought wizards and kings who ruled through deceit. Hulk fought a corrupt military, and sometimes other superheroes, who were always lied to about who he was and why he needed to be brought in. They didn't give a damn, and fed a primal appetite for action that remains untapped in any kind of modern media.
Some of my happiest memories from past games are the lazy days where we sat around with a hex map and just had wargame-like battles with superheroes. Teenage arguments about who would win in a fight between Batman and Conan were met with 'lets roll em up in Champions and go over to Roberts house this Saturday'. No one else in my current gaming group seems interested in indulging me for a few hours in this silly endevor, although they sure do play a lot of violent video games when I'm not around. I never could get into video games. Maybe I should start.
Duke Nukem Forever is looking pretty good right now.
If there is one thing that has caused a lot of misunderstandings amongst my circle of friends and I, especially among my close, geek-knit crew, is that I really don't feel like talking or socializing that much these days. I wave it off, explaining I'm stressed and going through some difficulties right now. I know a lot of people don't read this blog, so if they press hard enough I tell them I'll send them a link to the first entry later, because I've always been better at expressing myself through the written word than by speech*.
*- yes, I do realize that given my frequent disregard for basic english rules, that's saying something.
I'm just kind of tired of talking to people these days. There's no way to say that without offending someone, because among most of the people I know, talking to others every day is a way of relieving their stress and refreshing their emotional happiness. Talking, in and of itself, does not make me any happier. Here, let us sit and discuss trivial every day events for two hours. Let us refill our mana bar through laughter and nostalgia. My mana bar does not refill from these activities. My mana bar refills from creative works, tests of endurance, and visceral thrills. It is sometimes it is very difficult to find those three sources of mana in real life, or absorb them without bad consequences. It would seemingly be easy to find them in a role-playing game.
But alas, almost every game I've been in or run lately has been about 'politics'. That's all I seem to hear from my gaming group, except for one or two players. In real life, I hate politics. I despise politicians. I resent the fact that my disability and job issues are decided by faceless people beyond my access. I find the facebook bickering over political parties to be completely absurd. This greatly contributed to my resistance to therapy in the past, and although I'm seeing a good therapist that I'm comfortable with, in the back of my head I still wonder if this is a waste of time.
I can talk to people in real life every day, constantly. Even on my most depressed and withdrawn days, I am never completely alone. You know what I can't do in real life? Punch things in the face. I cannot punch the SSA in the face. I cannot punch my past in the face. I cannot punch Alport Syndrome in the face. I can't even punch people in the face, because that is generally frowned upon in modern day society. So when we sit down to the gaming table, and everyone else wants to escape into a calm and quiet fantasy, and I want to mow down the hordes of Mordok the Unmerciful, there's a bit of values dissonance. I'm usually alone in my desire to go showering the countryside with mook and minion blood, unless Ryan showed up. He has to work a lot on Fridays, though.
I just feel so bored sitting there, waiting for my turn to haggle with the shopkeeper or talk to a random NPC for the seventeenth time. Everybody knows I'm bored, but any kind of challenge or combat is only added to the game as a quick and sloppy way to 'appease Joey', so they can all 'get back to the fun part'. I like seeing my friends and socializing with them, but this recent trend in our gaming has left me very frustrated. I need an outlet for my rage right now, a vent of some sort, and I'm not getting one.
Some of my favorite characters in fantasy are powerful monster-men who broke through the shady manipulations of others and just went on destructive rampages against foes that could not be confronted any other way. I loved characters liked Conan the Barbarian and The Incredible Hulk. Both of those characters definitely hated politics and 'the system'. Conan fought wizards and kings who ruled through deceit. Hulk fought a corrupt military, and sometimes other superheroes, who were always lied to about who he was and why he needed to be brought in. They didn't give a damn, and fed a primal appetite for action that remains untapped in any kind of modern media.
Some of my happiest memories from past games are the lazy days where we sat around with a hex map and just had wargame-like battles with superheroes. Teenage arguments about who would win in a fight between Batman and Conan were met with 'lets roll em up in Champions and go over to Roberts house this Saturday'. No one else in my current gaming group seems interested in indulging me for a few hours in this silly endevor, although they sure do play a lot of violent video games when I'm not around. I never could get into video games. Maybe I should start.
Duke Nukem Forever is looking pretty good right now.