You can call me a big geek, you can call me a nerd, and I'll wear the monikers proudly. I love video games, I love comics, I love the internet, but what I truly have a passion for, is role playing. Role playing games have gotten a myriad of opinions associated with them, both positive and negative, and largely misunderstood. Let me start where I've been making a habit of starting in these posts, as far from the point as possible and gradually work my way to the idea I'm trying to convey. It's worked so far.
See, I'm Norwegian by descent. I'm actually a few mixes of nationalities and heritages, but the most prominent and identifiable in my family tree is the blood from Norway. The Norse were a strong, hardy, stocky people, much like myself in a few ways (more the stocky than the others...) I'm not ashamed to admit. One aspect of the people that I have truly identified with, however, is storytelling. A good, thrilling, engrossing story is the most powerful thing in the universe. You can take words, or images, and turn them into emotions, memories, feelings and ideas that can inspire, reshape, or even influence hearts and minds. The Norwegian people embraced this, and it became one of the staples of their society, much like the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and many of the world's strongest and most prosperous societies. I reiterate, nothing on Earth is more powerful than a story.
So stories are fantastic, that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I adore, is the interactivity of role playing. The storyteller, dungeon master, game master, whatever title you give the person spinning the tale, designs a campaign or story. They are creating a rich, vivid universe in which you can freely act and interact within. This is escapism in its highest form, the ability to truly step aside from oneself, assume the identity of a fantasy persona, and experience a completely different world, with completely different rules, with no purpose other than freedom. To play a role playing game is fun, but to run one... that is simply magical.
One of my closest friends, an avid (and far superior to me) writer and storyteller, also of Norwegian descent, put into the most beautiful of words (see? It's what we do!) to analogize the concept:
"When you write a story, it's as if you're laying the framework for a tapestry, and giving the threads to your players. You know what happens behind the weave, so you can see the designs. The players however, only know their own thread, and intertwine with the cords and colors you have provided them with, only seeing the simplest design they weave as it's woven. As the storyteller, you can step back, watch this majestic piece unfold, and marvel at the masterpiece that has created itself."
- James Davey
Sure, I embellished the quotation a bit, but trust me, James talks just as pretty.
He's absolutely right. The thrill of watching a story you've written evolve and unfold is like no other thrill you can experience. The story becomes a being of its own, living, changing, reacting and surviving. There's an old joke among role players, in that it's the storyteller's job to create a thriving world wrought with challenge, mystery, excitement and intrigue. And it's the player's job to destroy it within the first five minutes. But this is what role playing is! It is the ability TO destroy it within five minutes! No limitations, no rules, only a set of guidelines that may or may not be followed, at the discretion of the storyteller.
Freedom at its finest.
Tonight, for a New Year's Eve... Eve party we've gathered, I'm going to playtest the new Hunter: The Vigil campaign I have been writing for a few weeks now. Four close friends are coming over, and we're going to have a blast. Regardless of the troubles we deal with every day, regardless of the stresses of daily life, regardless of what happens tomorrow... tonight we will be five friends. We will be in the World of Darkness, facing terrors from beyond, banding together to stand watch over humanity from the forces of darkness, and somehow survive the night. Hopefully. We'll see how the dice fall.
-TehKnuck out.
Awwww shucks
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