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I almost thought that I wouldn't write a gaming column this month. You see, I spent half the month of October in NY visiting my in-laws, and the other half either preparing for the trip or recovering from it. My trip spanned 3 of October's weekends, and the weekend after I got home, gaming was canceled. In short, I barely got to game at all this month, and if not for the little EarthDawn game hosted at my home, I would have only gamed once in the entire month of October.
Quite understandably, I'm suffering from a bit of gaming withdrawal. After hearing about everything that happened in our D&D game while I was out of town, I'm eager to play again and get to portray my character's reaction to the fact that so many people died while, she - the healer- was held captive. Not to mention working on converting the sudden influx of evil people towards something more closely resembling good. Alas, I got back home from NY the day after the most recent D&D game, and we only play every other week!
This isn't the first time I've experienced gaming withdrawal, and I wouldn't be surprised if you have, too. It's pretty common for groups to cancel their games if a player or two can't make it, leaving you high and dry and bored. What to do in a situation like this? Most people would probably suggest "Get a life" but they really don't understand that we're role-players and as such have dozens of lives. So, from one RPer to another, here's my list of suggestions.
- See if you can get a few people together for a one-shot side game. Throw-away games lend themselves well to silly character concepts or ridiculously high-powered parties, or even finally settling the "Oh yeah, well my paladin could kick your barbarian's ass!" debate that's been raging in your group for the past three years.
- Log on to an MMO and actually roleplay your character. Of course, it will probably take you about five minutes to get frustrated with all the people who won't play along . . .
- Pick a role to play in real life for the day. Convince everyone around you that you're insane! Act like a completely different person, maybe even a fantasy character. Bonus points for dressing up and ignoring all comments about it not being Halloween. Bonus bonus points if instead of ignoring them, you come up with witty retorts.
- Go out to a public place with your RP buddies and have loud, animated conversations about your games, with heavy emphasis on the killing. Watch everyone around you freak out.
- If you're really desperate, you can do what I used to do for my RP fixes - go to a free-form roleplay chat room. The good news is, anything goes. The bad news is, anything goes. You can play any character you like in the relaxed environment of most chats, but unfortunately, so can everyone else. You could make a drinking game out of counting invincible characters, but you'd probably give yourself alcohol poisoning.
- Do some RP-related stuff. Work on your character's background story, or maybe a story of something that happened in some downtime during the game. Make a back-up character. Draw your character. Paint a miniature for your character. Research things related to the game. Curl up with a good gaming book. Write a gaming column for your bullwhip-wielding editor.
That's it for this month. Short and sweet! Tune in next month as I help you gear up for the holidays with my annual Geek Gift Guide!
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