Forging a New (Virtual) Reality

Things have been pretty frantic over the last few days and it has been pretty damned good. Lets start off with World of Warcraft. I had a potter for a few hours on Saturday morning but other than that I haven't touched it for about a week now. And guess what? I've hardly missed it. OK, thats a little shy of the truth - I'm not missing the game, nor am I missing the people, but I have got those odd feelings of compulsion and a little guilt regarding the guild. However the actual gameplay is just not needed. Thats very strange, especially considering the amount I have played the game. I don't know how long my WoW holiday will last, but at the moment it's going fine.

So, if I am not playing WoW, what the hell am I doing with my time?

Roleplaying has taken to the ascendency in a major way as of late. A couple of weeks ago we played a session of Pendragon that, I believe, most people around the table would rather forget about. I haven't mentioned it specifically in 'The Bottom of the Glass' because so much was mentioned about it elsewhere. I would rather dwell upon the way that, I believe, it acted as a little wake-up call for many of the people around the table.

Maybe we had become a little complacent? Maybe we were a little too full of our own cleverness? Maybe we just forgot that we were there to ROLEPLAY? I have no idea. However our last session was nothing short of magical. Nigel excelled himself in the GMs chair by taking things a little slower, slipping in some tried and tested GMing tools and making the game focussed wholly on the characters. Around the table the banter and near constant WoW side references stopped dead. We played. We played in-character, we expanded the story, we energised the setting. It was just brilliant. Moreover, we also established 'Steak and Cinema Sunday' - a Sunday once-a-month where we have something to eat and then see a suitable gamer-esque movie. Our first one will be '300'.

Subsequent to that session we have been abuzz with relationship mappings, ideas for storylines and other hints and help. Really, it is 'Ask not what your GM can do for you, but what you can do for your GM' at the moment.

Omniverse continues apace and we had our first real face-to-face playtest session. It was amazing. I cannot really describe the buzz of seeing people you respect taking your little game very seriously indeed. Questions were asked, debates were had and you know what - they 'got it'! That was the best bit, they seemed to understand and buy into the ideas I had put down. Oh, I know it was only character generation but it made me feel magnificent.

A smorgasbord of gaming and related pursuits seems to be my fate at the moment. And that, readers of my sometimes rather pessimistic blog, is a VERY GOOD THING INDEED!!

Neil