“What are you doing?”
“Hooking up Super Nintendo?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s what i do when i’m sick.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Do you know how to play Secret of Mana?”
by krisis
games
Krisis's coverage Dungeons & Dragons and 5e-Compatible supplements, board games, and the occasional video game.
There is acting, and then there is playing a role. Acting is straightforward … based on material given to you ahead of time, and meant to be consistent and the same every time. Role playing is something entirely different … slipping into the mind of the character you portray to make decisions and reach conclusions for them. It’s the difference between a movie-star shooting a single film and a soap opera star who has played the same character for decades; with the latter, we expect them to occasionally stray from their normal portrayals, if only because we’ve had a chance to ascertain what normal really constitutes. One is not harder than the other. In fact, to consistently act and to act consistently are two different concepts entirely.
Okay, so, what i’m trying to say is that i didn’t get cast in Fiddler, but in my ever-loving geekdom i started a role-playing campaign of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons tonight with other assorted Drexel Players. We sat around in an attic bedroom for more than three hours, talking to each other as who we were portraying rather than as ourselves imitating a character. Eyes were shifty, and stories were inconsistent. We began to establish the baseline of how we would act from there on out. Stories were told around campfires, relative lack of wisdom was played with Keanu-like naivete, and secrets were kept.
We’re going to meet again next Thursday. Most of the other people have rehearsal most of the nights between now and then, but i don’t. And, really, it’s not a problem.
Six college students sitting around on a Sunday afternoon after a late brunch. You might imagine us taking part in an enlightened conversation, going outside to get some exercise, or even making plans to see a movie or go shopping.
You would be wrong. Try again. Whoops, wrong again. Here, let me just tell you what we did.
The six of use opened up a collection of Millers, WineCoolers, and CiderJacks, and whipped out the Sorry! board. Now, being an only child with a significantly less-than-average amount of friends, i apparently didn’t get to experience the entire broad horizon of board games. However, i think i can safely say that Sorry! is the meanest game i could ever inflict upon a child. It’s similar to Parcheesi in that your two main purposes are to get your piece “home,” and to fuck over everyone else. And, trust me, four slightly buzzed college students with a cheering faction of two is pretty good at fucking.
We played Sorry for two hours, during which i might have been threatened with physical removal from the game area if i didn’t “shut up and sit the hell down.” Yes, this means i won the first game and that everyone was pissed — can i help it if i am a blood-thirsty player and not a sore loser? (Apparently pointing that out directly after doing one’s victory dance is considered bragging. Did i mention that we were drinking?) After my stunning come-from-behind victory (two pieces landed home in two turns) we invented a drinking game and a turbo version.
I knew that higher education was good for something…
How did it get to be midnight? I guess this is what happens when you stay up until dawn alternately playing StarCraft with your hostees and trucking through the 600’s of Infinite Jest. I deserved it though, if not for getting an A in Philosophy then for my all-day cleaning binge. And, so, up i stayed, mindlessly click-clicking on my Hatchery to “build more zerglings, goddamnit!”
In one of those between-game intervals i happened to glance out of my back window to find that my oft-spied-on neighbor had his lights on. I idly kept my eye on his window as i delved through page-long paragraphs in Jest until i saw a bit of movement and perked up — to find him taking a naked post-shower stroll through his room. The whole seeing him naked bit is rather anti-climactic after all this time (but, really, who the hell gets dressed before they get back to their room after a shower?), but i suppose he forgot that i had been spying on him after i left him alone for a while. Now he seems fond of sitting directly in his window with a huge drawing-board; i can’t imagine why he draws there … it’s not as though there’s any natural light. Could that be his convenient way of spying back at me? He has such an easy bead on my computer from there that he easily catches me turning around to glance at him before i can even see him in my peripheral vision.
Or maybe he just likes to draw. I wonder if he does nudes.
As if i wasn’t distracted enough at work already, now i have a new toy. I’ve always been really horrible with vector-related games like this because i naturally bring my mouse way in back of the vector to get finer leveraged control of it, but here that’s the equivalent of shooting a golf ball out of a cannon. Via the ever-distracting and much-loved Meg.
Update: I was only one over par on my second try, but i feel as though playing against other real players will scare me and i’ll be awful. For such an incredibly straightforward and simple game, MiniGolf has too many damn subtlies!