Ahhh yes, the inaugural post of my new blog (that I promise not too throw to much effort into, to, you know, "keep it fresh")
I digress, anyway, over the past few years a group of three strangers (who later, by some strange alchemical mix of camaraderie and Meetup.com) and I discovered and perhaps rediscovered our mutual love of "old school", pen & paper role playing games.
I played these games (if you're thinking Dungeons & Dragons, yes you're right) during my junior high school years. I fondly remember those days spent gaming at the local bowling alley after school. The memories of what my "characters" did during those purple, halcyon evenings of yore are quite vivid. There was a certain elan to what I was doing then. I felt like a rebel; like I was embracing an activity universally frowned upon by my parents and peers as strange and weird. However, it provided me with a means to escape the skull-drudgery of our mundane, often unhappy school days and that was reward enough to continue the hobby.
Fast forward 25 years. I'm 37 years old now and at times and I sometimes experience those feelings of being ineffectual, of living in a grey, grounded world of "what is". I still dream of unseen, unknown worlds, of the immense vistas of imagination and the doorways that lead between dreams and reality. In short, I still feel that decades old desire to escape.
What better means to escape that to pretend for a few hours
that I am a mighty warrior steady and capable of effecting change by a sword?
How about a man of faith with the ability to channel his faith in a tangible
and fantastic way? Or even a sorcerer; a being capable of wielding the vast and
invisible magic that must sure reside in a universe of my imagining… come on,
who doesn’t want to be a f*&king wizard?!
The reason that I want to game, that I NEED to game are all
the same reason WHY I gamed when I was younger. Perhaps they are even more
poignant as I grow older and realize that my primal life energies, my strength
and my health ebb as I age…
Most of the time our gaming sessions consist of inappropriate jokes, smack-talking, eating and general bullshit. However, the times that we do get into our characters, roll those polyhedral dice and slay the horrors that lay-in-wait for us are wonderful, magical (pardon the pun) forays into our collective imaginations.
The imagination is a powerful thing and it is also a muscle; a muscle that will, if we human beings do not use or neglect, surely atrophy.
I confess, I love my gaming group. I love Friday nights and I am sure there will be more confessions to come!
