President's Day weekend musings

I would have to say that I am immensely enjoying the long President's day weekend. Thank you George and Abe for the much needed break in the work cycle.

While I don't consider my job to be too taxing, at least not until the semester gets rolling, it nevertheless has been good to get the much needed break and rest.

Friday night I attended a potluck mardi gras party thrown by one of the members in my writing group, and though I had visions of it just being an enjoyable night out meeting new people and making friends, while having some good food and drink, it turned out to be much more.

It turns out than when you get an intelligent group of adults together, their hobbies tend to be a little on the esoteric side, so while having a conversation with a member, the subject of gaming came up and this led to us discussing some D&D. As nerdy or geeky as it may sound to some, outside of full fledged LARPS (which I really have no interest in), I do enjoy both talking about and the occasional role playing.

This correlates with writing in the sense that RPGs and even table top games like D&D are rife with possibilities for inventive storytelling, which I believe also stimulate the imagination and the narrator in all of us writers. Some more than others, especially if they are accustomed to writing gaming campaigns and narratives for other players to enjoy, which is the prototypical job description for any GM.

So as a result of me venturing out and for the price of a velvet cake with cheese frosting and some beverages, which were my store bought contributions to the potluck (what can I say, cooking isn't one of my God given talents) I discovered our group is not only blessed with a number of great writers, but some of them share my passion for gaming.

In younger days, I was involved with Dungeons and Dragons, and I think this led to my interest in computer games, fantasy genres usually trumping most others (though I have enjoyed the occasional FPS like Doom and Quake) and in turn to my most recent love of mmorpgs.

Ironically one of the mmorpgs I enjoy playing most is DDO, which in turn led me back to D&D, funny how I have come full circle.

Some people love the community and virtual interactions in a mmorpg, while others prefer the personal touch of actually being in the room while playing a game like D&D. Whatever the case, both have a tremendous potential to both inspire and nurture the imagination, the latter probably more so than the former.

So just like Tobold, who recently shifted the focus of his blog from mmorpg discussions exclusively to his forays into DMing 4th edition D&D campaigns, my interest in such endeavors has been rekindled and it looks like now I will be part of not just one, (the Pasadena D&D group) but two pen and paper gaming groups in the still fairly new year.

OK, now back to enjoying my Sunday afternoon with some serious dungeon crawls in either EQ2, or world of warcraft, or both, before I return to the grind on Tuesday and have to think about deadlines, requisitions or anything else.