Support Our Sci-Fi/Gamer American Troops

Today at DragonCon in the independent dealer’s room, I met Richard Tucholka, President of Tri Tac Systems (Fantastic Games & Graphics). He is collecting donations of sci-fi/fantasy-related or RPG gaming reading materials to American troops over in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, believe it or not but geeks can be soldiers too.

You know, they can’t have a large selection of reading materials and such over there. It’s not like they can run into the Barnes & Nobles or Borders down the street. I mean, it’s hard enough to find good sci-fi/fantasy and gaming materials in the States. I keep thinking of that episode of M*A*S*H where they have no reading material and BJ gets the murder mystery and they’re tearing the pages out and sharing them.

Anyway, in support of our troops, I’m posting his email and address with his permission for you to either contact him or send donations to him. I know I’ll be going through my own bookshelves when I get home. I might even have some extra games to send. Actually, I just remembered that SJ Games’ Dealer’s table is having a big sale on old books; I might stop by there in the morning.

Richard can be contacted via Tucholka At aol DOT com. Be sure to ask to see a picture of his kitchen table. The amount of donoations he’s already collected is quite impressive.

You can mail your donations to:

Support Our Sci-Fi/Gamer Troops
c/o Richard Tucholoka
Tri Tac Systems
235 West Fairmount Ave.
Pontiac, MI 48340

Update: When I went to the SJ Games booth to buy some books from their sale table, I told the sales guy what I was up to and he put together a separate bag of boxes of miniatures to donate as well! Yay for them. I was also stopped by a young man who is in the military and thanked for what I was doing. I wish I’d gone to more booths now and asked for more donations.

Tags: American soldiers, roleplaying games, Iraq, Afghanistan, Support the Troops, SJ Games

Glimpsing My Muse…

I’m feeling kind of odd this morning. Last night I admitted to myself and SuzyQ something I hadn’t wanted to admit but had been feeling for some time. Perhaps I’ve been on the verge of this for a while.

I started playing roleplaying games late in my life in 1994. They have been a big part of my life — the creativity, the escapism, the socialness of it all. I’ve been both player and GM and I’ve both enjoyed and hated both at times. I started Play-by-email games not long after I guess. It’s sort of blurry and there were times when I was in as many as 5 at one time and for a while now I’ve been in just one — I call it my baby though I wasn’t the creator and I joined 6 months after it started and five years later, I’m the only player who has continuously played for all but 6 months of the game.

And I guess I’ve been clinging to the game because it’s my last tie to roleplaying since I haven’t found a roleplaying group in Southern Maine and most of the play-by-email games I’ve seen advertised kind of scare me or sound too silly to me. Personally, I have no interest (anymore) in roleplaying in some literary or televized fictional world created by someone else — o.k. well, I can qualify that a bit — I wouldn’t mind playing in the world of Harry Potter as long as none of the characters were cannon and it didn’t take place in England or Hogwarts, etc. That is J.K. Rowling’s story to tell and I don’t like messing with it. I also wouldn’t mind roleplaying in the realms of Buffy and Angel and the Charmed sisters but again, I don’t want to play with cannon characters and altered universes. I have no interest in playing in the Star Wars or Star Trek realms. Nor do I want to play high school soap operas like Dawson’s Creek or Felicity. I also have very little interest in soft or hard-core porn via email.

O.K. I’m picky. I admit it.

But maybe the truth is that I’m tired of playing in worlds created by other people. Maybe unconsciously my writer’s block stems from the weight of all of the work I have to do to keep the game going. It’s tiring having to nag people to post and nudge the people who are supposed to be telling the stories to actually do so. It’s just not any fun for me anymore…and I really do want to write. I’ve become so dependent on others for storytelling and the stories never go the way I hope they will. Maybe it’s time to focus on my own stories, open my mind to my muse.

Yesterday’s chat with SuzyQ lifted a little of the weight off of my shoulders and chest just by admitting how I feel and just knowing that she too feels the same — though she does have other PBeMs to play in.

And strangely last night as I was falling asleep the niggling of some characters I’ve had floating in my head but had no games for started to expand a little…they sort of spoke to me. I’ve not found a game world suitable to play them in and had no desire to create one for other people to play in and mess up, but what if I built the world and directed the character in that world on pages of my own.

Maybe this is what I need to take back my muse, to daydream once again of characters and scenes and adventures that long since seemed to have abandoned me.

And yet, I’ll miss being the player (if not the GM)…

Tags: writing, PBeM, roleplaying games

Are Role-playing Games Killing My Muse?

When I was little, I was always making up stories in my head. I’d have conversations between characters in there. Sometimes I’d even act out scenes. Sometimes Barbies were involved, I believe.

I also played with the girl next store and we would re-enact movies we loved or pretend to be cartoon or t.v. characters and play in her backyard or my living room. I sort of outgrew that foolishness, but I did turn several of my creative musings that came from this into short stories and one really bad novel in high school.

In college, I returned to the stories in my head, the conversations between characters only I could hear, and even the acting scenes out alone in my dorm room.

Yes, I was weird, but I got weirder.

After college, I got into role-playing games with my circle of friends. It seemed like a good way to feed my creative mind. I even kept character journals for the longest time. I agonized over character creation. I loved interacting with others, never quite knowing what was going to happen next or how other characters would react.

When I discovered play-by-e-mail games, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. After all, what could be better than merging my two loves — writing and role-playing?

I’ve played in quite a few play-by-e-mail games since then though currently I’m only in one. Now I wonder if it’s become too comfortable to depend on others to push the stories along, to come up with the plots, to create the scenes. I wonder if I’ve become so content in that state, that I have lost the ability to muster up my muse and find a world to write in or characters to interact with. Heck, even in the play-by-e-mail games, I don’t like to have my own characters interacting with each other. It’s boring to me.

I miss the muse in my head, developing characters and stories and plots for them. I wonder how to get the muse back in there.

Tags: writing, PBeM, roleplaying games

Be Afraid…Be Very Afraid…

I’ve been semi-looking for another RPG PBeM to play in the last few months. My X-men RPG was the only one I’ve been in for quite a while after dropping some and closing one after much disappointment. So, I was clinging to it and of course, you all know the recent drama. The X-men game has revived itself and it rolling along very nicely. New mods, new players, exciting plots. Nice. I’m much more involved in the day to day than I used to be which is good for the game and probably for me, but I still would like to have something different to play in and just play, not mod. No worries but having fun writing and RPGing.

One of my online PBeM friends and I were/are supposed to be starting an American Harry Potter game with no charries from the books and a realistic bent. We haven’t really been working to get it going though.

So, when the same friend (N2) invited me to play in a Victorian Era Steam Punk game similar to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ironically an hour before I watched the (badly made) movie, I decided to give it a try. Cannon characters for any game universe rarely interest me because I always feel I can’t do them justice, but a requirement for the game is that I have to play at least one character from literature or movies that fits in the time period. SQ and L are playing Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer respectively and they convinced me to play Becky Thatcher. Since very little was really written about her, I have a mostly blank canvas to work with. I also get to play a non-cannon character of my own design from BJ’s failed Steam Punk/Wild West/Deadlands game, which I’m pleased with because I liked the character but never could find a game for her. Ironically the characters are opposites, one’s a complete tomboy and the other is a bit of a pampered princess, though both were feminists and have jobs that during the time were 99% done by men. It should be fun and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m also signing up for a writing class in the fall. It’s just 8 sessions but it’ll be good for me to get back into writing on my own, I think. I just mentioned it to my mom and now she’s going on about my published novel in a year or too. :rolleyes:

But back to the RPG PBeMs, I started this post to actually talk about some scary PBeMs I’ve seen out “there” in the last few months:

• Harry Potter where everyone is on drugs — it seems to me that magic and drugs would be a bad mix
• Rainbow Brite — I’m not kidding
• Punky Brewster — still not kidding
• Friends — SQ was even concerned about RPing with Ross…*shudder*
• Law & Order
• X-Men cross-over with Buffy where Xander is a werewolf and Wolverine’s son… — there really aren’t words…
• Adult versions of kiddie shows — I don’t mean the characters are grown up
• He-man & She-ra
• Harry Potter where everyone is a homosexual
• The Last Unicorn

I am so afraid…and sometimes I have to go look, like slowing down to see an accident…

Tags: writing, PBeM, roleplaying games

Drug-aided Ramble

I woke up again with a headache this morning. However, this time I woke up at 5am with a migraine so bad that I thought I was going to throw up and in fact I wished I would to get it over with. I took an ultracet sometime before 5:30am but by the time I drug myself out of bed at 6:30am, I was still feeling just as bad, if not worse. So around 7am, I took a Zomig — I haven’t had to take one of those in 3 months or so. However, the Zomig didn’t start actually kicking in until around 9am and still the pain didn’t go away; it just seemed to make me sleepy. A little after 11am, I got really sleepy and the pain subsided but the pain started coming back around a quarter to noon.

Well, now I am quite aware of this pattern of waking up with a headache. At first I thought it was because of the insomnia thing, but for the most part for the last month or so, I haven’t had a real problem with that like I used to. Maybe once or twice out of the last month I had trouble sleeping whereas I used to go weeks without being able to sleep more than an hour or two a night. But this pain is extremely distinctive and I’ve noticed the pattern now because my headaches have been better and no so consistant — i.e. all day and all night long with no breaks.

Basically, I wake up with this headache. Sometimes it’s just a minor buzz pain but this morning it was like pain in surround sound. The pain seems to eminate from two places — my forehead and the back of my neck. It feels like maybe I’ve all tensed up in my forehead while I slept. My neck feels like I’ve slept funny, but I sleep pretty much the same every night — on one side or another or on my stomach with my head turned to one side. I thought perhaps those lumpy pillows from the inn were an issue but my nice semi-new fluffy ones haven’t improved the situation. It always feels like I’m waking from somewhere deep when it happens, like a vampire who’s been in tupor all day and now the sun is setting.

The first sips of cold caffiene in the morning usually help, I think, but it could just be getting up and moving around that helps — I hope it’s the later since I’m giving up caffiene starting on Monday.

I did a little research on migraines/headaches that start while you’re sleeping. It was hard to find because most articles refer to the sleep-related triggers as sleeping too long or not sleeping long enough (since I go to bed around 10pm or 11pm and try to sleep until 6am — 7 - 8 hours as recommended, those can’t be the issues, right?). However, I found an article on cluster headaches that refers to morning headaches brought about by low-oxygen content in your blood while you sleep. Well, this condition is caused by sleep apnea.

So, I looked up sleep apnea. Since I live alone and am quite single, I don’t have anyone to tell me that I snore or have a tendency to stop breathing while I sleep. However, now I wonder if this is the case. Some of the symptoms are morning headaches, tired all the time, and restless sleeping patterns. There are others, but those caught my attention. In order to be diagnosed I’d have to go through a sleep study of some sort.

However, I just moved up here and have just designated a PCP for my HMO (though I’m not insured until tomorrow). In order to be accepted by this PCP, I have to go for a new patient physical, which I think is a good idea because it provides a base line for possible illnesses and accidents later. However, the first available appointment for a new patient is mid-July — which was pretty much the case for all the PCPs up here. *sigh* I did ask the nurse about the possibility of my becoming ill or getting in an accident prior to then and she said they would probably do something to get me in right away in that case.

So, it’s going to be a while before I can see a doctor about my headaches and such. In the meantime, on Monday I’ll start the “headache restriction” diet and I think I’ll pull out a notebook and start keeping track of the headaches, possible triggers, and what I eat. I need to lose about 25 pounds, I think and maybe that will help some. In fact, the sleep apnea article said a lot of people that suffer from it are overweight and that when they lose just 10% of their weight, it improves their condition greatly.

***By the way, it was suprisingly warm today. I wore short sleeves to work. I have to wear a sweater at my desk because of the air conditioner blowing on me, but otherwise, the day is beautiful and surprisingly like the Spring I am familiar with. ***I spoke with PW last night — first phone call from my new digital phone — unlimited long distance! I wanted to know about her date.Apparently it was someone from work and while he’s nice and all, she probably won’t go out with him again as more than friends. She said that even if she was looking for a relationship with someone, she just didn’t see a future with him. She’s bent on finding another gamer to be involved on and while maybe that’s an option to keep in mind, the last gamer she married turned out to be more interested in gaming online than interested in her. Peter found an ex-gamer and that seems to be working — at least she understands what he’s talking about and has experienced it all. Mostly, I don’t think of Meg as a gamer anymore; I don’t even think she sees herself that way. In fact, I think she originally got into gaming because of her love of acting.But I digress. Mickey and JB married non-gamers and while neither of them is actually gaming at the moment, they seem pretty happy with the decision.

I suspect if I find someone, he won’t be a gamer. Maybe I’ll get him into board games, but I’m starting to think that finding a roleplaying game up here is going to be really hard if not impossible. I asked someone at The Keep about games that are being run. He knew of a Star Wars gaming being run in the old game system (which is the one I am familiar with) but he warned me that they were particularly strange as a group — warnings about gamers from gamers is often to be taken seriously. The other game he knew about is a D&D Iron Punk game, which might be o.k., but I’m really not familiar with D&D — I played in an AD&D game once and had to have someone else write up the character and tell me what to roll each time.

Plus, most of the people I’ve seen at The Keep were young’uns. I’m in my 30’s already and maybe I’m just too old to find a roleplaying group up here. Older gamers seem to have estabilished game groups that they are comfortable with. They don’t advertise at game shops.

Tags: migraine, Zomig, sleep apnea, roleplaying games