RPGs

Here is a loose transcript of the text conversation I had with a friend of mine today.

ME: We doin BSG tonight?
HIM: We en't, we're coming up with character profiles for a new feudal/medieval RPG
ME: Can I join?
HIM: No
ME: But I'm serious
HIM: No

OK let's stop the conversation here and rewind a bit with a little background information. BSG is short for Battlestar Galactica, so you KNOW I'm a nerd already. Transcript label HIM a.k.a. Devin, is a graduate student in biopsychology. He is long-legged and Italian and I guess if he were an animal he'd have to be a mountain lion [edit: koala]. He hangs around rats all day in a brightly-lit laboratory hidden in plain sight behind locked, unmarked doors. He loves full-season disc sets and Mexican food when the time is right, and has a place in his heart where he likes to belt out the music to Les Miserables. He also enjoys playing RPGs, from which I am forever exiled, and here's why:

After Devin meticulously explained the process of an RPG to me one evening, I proclaimed that I was ready to take on a new creative challenge and that I would like to join a Firefly-based roleplaying game, seeing as I had watched and loved the show, and I was familiar with the Verse. He invited me over to his house one day and his roommate offered to show me some character sheets he had been working on for the game. I eagerly asked to see his handiwork, not knowing what a character sheet was exactly, and he thrust into my hands a huge stack of decorously laminated papers.

I flipped through page after page of lists of character traits, professions and hobbies, everything color coded and dynamically presented.

"How long did this take you?" I asked.

"Hours." The roommate shrugged.

I chuckled a little bit, chuckled a bit more, felt a good laugh rising up in me with no real explanation for it (I read that people laugh sometimes when it's not appropriate because it is a defense mechanism-- your body wants to think the experience is a joke). I flipped to the last page, which was different from the others, thicker because it folded up into quarters. With trembling fingers I opened one side and then another, until finally exposed before me in all its geeky glory was a huge (COLORED) map of the Firefly universe, complete with miniscule labels on every planet and planetary system.

I guffawed, I put the map down, I picked it back up, I stared at it for a very long time, I laughed, I rifted through the character sheets again, I cracked up and couldn't stop for an embarrassingly long time. And the whole time this was happening, Devin and his roommate exchanged glances that were hard to read, perhaps they were fearful, perhaps uneasy. Come to think of it, they were probably looks of souls being crushed. I crushed their souls because I couldn't contain myself. And in my defense, I wasn't laughing to mock-- REALLY-- I was just CAUGHT OFF GUARD...

At any rate, I was never again invited to take part in any roleplaying game, whether it be the planning stages or an actual RP. I still can't stop myself from chuckling every time his gang starts up about their newest fantasy adventure; however, Devin has taken to giving me wry, apologetic smiles every time we make eye contact on these occasions.

As a side note, I do have a goal to participate in a LARP, which is a Live Action Roleplaying game. If I find one cheap, I will do it, and I'll document everything that goes down right here. In the meantime, I will continue to wait in anticipation for the day I can prove myself, as I wait, invulnerable to all rejection, until I can finally be accepted in the world of RPGs.