Kitty Litter
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Disaster Area
(Wrote this after seeing a great post in Edrie's journal about roleplaying. Now Edrie is a serious roleplayer, the kind I wish I could campaign with. But...)
I love role-playing games, and my greatest disappointment is that it’s hard to get our old TS:SI group together for a game. Suffice it to say that GM mercy plays a huge role in our games as our long-suffering GM, Polar Bearball, merely has to give us a situation, then he sits back and watches us screw ourselves over. I think he’s given up all hope of actually running an intelligent, authentic campaign, and I don’t blame him.
Serious role-players would be appalled by our group, and I apologize on my group’s behalf. It takes at least a teaspoon of brains to play Dungeons and Dragons, which is probably why we have never attempted to sully the game thus. Certainly the macho men I game with aren’t going to enjoy the Sweet Valley High role–playing/board game about getting to the prom which I started with.
If you’re familiar with the comic strip Knights of the Dinner Table, imagine five Bobs and Daves all together, with no Sarah or Brian to slow us down. We don’t have a rules lawyer (that being our GM, unfortunately), and with the occasional exception of the Brujah Louie and Marty the Martian Solution, we’re a happy bunch of “shoot now, ask questions when?” idiots.
Here’s a sample. Once, on a recon mission, our characters were supposed to infiltrate an African village, take photos proving some kind of perfidy, and leave. Sneak’ n ’peek, in game terms. Of course, when we made our elaborate plans to get it, we all forgot that none of our characters was black enough to pass as an African. One of us wanted to requisition a missile launcher, and despite having a strength of 47, intended to haul it every inch of the 120 miles between the base and the rebel village “just in case.” Except for me, everyone forgot to bring water. None of us remembered to check our equipment, and on our way out, our fearless leader was barely prevented from leaving eight ounces of C4 on a gun in a machine gun nest. You of course will have figured out by now that only one of us remembered to bring a camera, and nobody thought of bringing spy cameras and recorders. The GM wound up having his non-player character (NPC) do all the dirty work; the poor mook wound up having to be Rambo and McGyver.
Lines overheard during the game: “Can I blow this up NOW?” “I said, no explosions!” “Okay, then how about if I just set it on fire?”
Here’s another conversation: “I’m bored. Maybe I should do a Braveheart. Let’s moon the village!” “It’s midnight. Who’s gonna see you?” “Yeah, well, but it’s the thought that counts!”
“Did you bring something to eat?” “Eat? Uh…no.” “Think anyone will notice if I ask Louie to snipe at one of the chickens, and I get it and roast it?”
Had we been real soldiers, we would have died, and if by sheer dumb luck we’d made it back alive, we ought to have been court-martialed and hung thrice for our boneheadedness.
But it’s the fun we have playing the game that makes it worthwhile. It’s not pretending to be soldiers that turns us on, although it is a big thrill for other TS:SI players, and I know other, better players who do the research for spectacular authenticity.
No matter how stupid we can get (i.e., “Hey, I’m going to throw my Rambo knife across the Grand Canyon!”), our GM is so tolerant that he just rolls his eyeballs and lets us morons go wherever we like. I think it’s the sense of having fun together rather than the actual game itself that makes us happy and eager for the next session. It’s gotten so bad that, whenever Louie, Carding, Jhun, Martin, and I find ourselves together with the Polar Bearball, we begin chanting, “S.I.! S.I.! S.I.!” We’ve even gone as far as bribing him with food to run a game.
The last time we played was over a year ago. I miss pretending to be a special forces operative, albeit a completely unworthy one. I miss “watching” the other players fall out of trees, pick up bombs thinking they were litter, and wading into combat zones to retrieve lucky rabbit’s feet. I miss blowing on the dice and begging them to roll low percentiles. But most of all, I miss laughing until my tummy is sore.
So Polar Bearball, when’s the next game? :D
posted by Kitty Litter at 9:50 AM
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