My Geekdom
Jul. 3rd, 2006 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orikesI’m pretty happy with my geek life right now. Introspection struck me this weekend when my old group and new groups merged for a goodbye party for a mutual friend. I’ve always considered myself a gaming geek, but at this moment in time, I can wear the badge without any hesitation.
This whole thought process started this weekend with Dr. Angela’s Bon Voyage party. Through a strange twist of serendipity, Dr. Angela became part of both my new gaming group and my long-time friends. She joined the gaming group fairly early on and hung out with us for other stuff. We were out at a bookstore once and ran into my other friends-that-might-as-well-be-family and their girls. We got chatting and decided to go to a restaurant. At some point in the middle of eating, the dad and Dr. Angela realized they knew each other. Apparently Dr. Angela had been one of the interns assisting their OBGYN that delivered their middle daughter. Whoa… Dude. It is a small world.
In a couple of weeks, she’s heading off to the left coast to work at real job. It’s a clinic out in Salem, Oregon. We threw a goodbye party for her and much fun and grilled picnic food was had by all.
Seeing old friends and new friends mingling and chatting is always a bit of a surreal experience. This is where the thought process started.
I love my friends that I used to game with. I still hang out with most of them, but for probably a good ten years, it was like pulling teeth to actually game. I think the last time a regular game was run with all of us was 1994. Maybe 1995. I would have gone into withdrawal, but I found the internet around that time and discovered adequate fixes.
Eventually, though, the distractions wore off. After EverQuest and my bank account started to run out, I was left with more than a little bit of jonesing for some real tabletop style gaming. Luckily for me, I found the worst GM in the state, possibly the world.
This guy was someone who gave me the heebeejeebees right away, but I was desperate enough for a game that I agreed to try his game anyway. Since I don’t have a car and was picked up to go to his house by people I didn’t know, this probably wasn’t the smartest of ideas, but I figured he only lived about two miles from my Aunt and Uncle’s, so worse comes to worse, I go screaming into the night and show up on their doorstep.
Rest assured, no screaming into the night occurred, but there were a couple of times I almost strangled the guy. He was absolutely the most sucktastic GM I had ever had the misfortune to play with. There was at least one moment in the night that I considered walking out and leaving, and probably would have if I’d had my own transportation.
The thing is, there were some interesting people playing his game. They seemed cool and I got the ‘I’d like to know these guys better’ vibe. So, I agreed to come a second time (provided scary GM have someone else pick me up and give me a ride). The next time I came, there was another cool player and he was just as interesting as the other players I liked. The GM still was absolutely horrible, but the players were neat.
I put up with his crappy game for another two or three sessions before the Holiday season kicked into gear and I realized I couldn’t put up with it anymore. Crappy GM had given me even more reasons to be disgusted with him, and even though the other people were cool, the game wasn’t worth it.
Still, it’s hard to keep a good gamer down. Little did I know, but right as I was calling it quits on the game, the other cool players were also staging their own exodus. It took a few months, but eventually we all started getting together on our own without the scary GM. My initial instincts were right, and they were all definitely good people to get to know.
The thing that struck me, though, is that I have probably gamed more with this group in the last two years, than I did with the old group for the years we were actively gaming. The new group gets together every Friday night without fail. We may only get three or four hours of gaming in, but god dammit, we play on Friday nights!
The old group couldn’t keep a game going long enough to set a regular timetable like that. We’d have a couple of seasons where we got together regularly, but eventually the game would fade out and no one would pick up the reigns to run a new one.
Gone are the days when we would have gaming sessions all day and into the wee hours of the morning (well, there are rare exceptions – like the Lightning Rail battle this past week that ran until 2am), but also gone are the days when the game dies because the GM got bored. With the new group, if whoever has been running hits a wall and needs a break, someone else picks up the reigns and runs for a while.
I’m quite happy with my geek life right now. Quite happy indeed.
This whole thought process started this weekend with Dr. Angela’s Bon Voyage party. Through a strange twist of serendipity, Dr. Angela became part of both my new gaming group and my long-time friends. She joined the gaming group fairly early on and hung out with us for other stuff. We were out at a bookstore once and ran into my other friends-that-might-as-well-be-family and their girls. We got chatting and decided to go to a restaurant. At some point in the middle of eating, the dad and Dr. Angela realized they knew each other. Apparently Dr. Angela had been one of the interns assisting their OBGYN that delivered their middle daughter. Whoa… Dude. It is a small world.
In a couple of weeks, she’s heading off to the left coast to work at real job. It’s a clinic out in Salem, Oregon. We threw a goodbye party for her and much fun and grilled picnic food was had by all.
Seeing old friends and new friends mingling and chatting is always a bit of a surreal experience. This is where the thought process started.
I love my friends that I used to game with. I still hang out with most of them, but for probably a good ten years, it was like pulling teeth to actually game. I think the last time a regular game was run with all of us was 1994. Maybe 1995. I would have gone into withdrawal, but I found the internet around that time and discovered adequate fixes.
Eventually, though, the distractions wore off. After EverQuest and my bank account started to run out, I was left with more than a little bit of jonesing for some real tabletop style gaming. Luckily for me, I found the worst GM in the state, possibly the world.
This guy was someone who gave me the heebeejeebees right away, but I was desperate enough for a game that I agreed to try his game anyway. Since I don’t have a car and was picked up to go to his house by people I didn’t know, this probably wasn’t the smartest of ideas, but I figured he only lived about two miles from my Aunt and Uncle’s, so worse comes to worse, I go screaming into the night and show up on their doorstep.
Rest assured, no screaming into the night occurred, but there were a couple of times I almost strangled the guy. He was absolutely the most sucktastic GM I had ever had the misfortune to play with. There was at least one moment in the night that I considered walking out and leaving, and probably would have if I’d had my own transportation.
The thing is, there were some interesting people playing his game. They seemed cool and I got the ‘I’d like to know these guys better’ vibe. So, I agreed to come a second time (provided scary GM have someone else pick me up and give me a ride). The next time I came, there was another cool player and he was just as interesting as the other players I liked. The GM still was absolutely horrible, but the players were neat.
I put up with his crappy game for another two or three sessions before the Holiday season kicked into gear and I realized I couldn’t put up with it anymore. Crappy GM had given me even more reasons to be disgusted with him, and even though the other people were cool, the game wasn’t worth it.
Still, it’s hard to keep a good gamer down. Little did I know, but right as I was calling it quits on the game, the other cool players were also staging their own exodus. It took a few months, but eventually we all started getting together on our own without the scary GM. My initial instincts were right, and they were all definitely good people to get to know.
The thing that struck me, though, is that I have probably gamed more with this group in the last two years, than I did with the old group for the years we were actively gaming. The new group gets together every Friday night without fail. We may only get three or four hours of gaming in, but god dammit, we play on Friday nights!
The old group couldn’t keep a game going long enough to set a regular timetable like that. We’d have a couple of seasons where we got together regularly, but eventually the game would fade out and no one would pick up the reigns to run a new one.
Gone are the days when we would have gaming sessions all day and into the wee hours of the morning (well, there are rare exceptions – like the Lightning Rail battle this past week that ran until 2am), but also gone are the days when the game dies because the GM got bored. With the new group, if whoever has been running hits a wall and needs a break, someone else picks up the reigns and runs for a while.
I’m quite happy with my geek life right now. Quite happy indeed.