nerd-dom ftw!

In the last post I made, I spoke at some point about how people deal with things that bother them, and I said that I deal with things that bother me by either playing video games or writing on my blog. I just remembered...I have another way of dealing with things, which is actually way more interesting (I think, at least) than video games or blogging, which is essentially playing in an RPG. An RPG, which stands for role playing game, in the sense that I'm talking about involves the nerdiest way possible of dice-rolling and playing 'in character' and all that stuff. I have yet to do something like that in person, because I feel a little intimidated by all that stuff, but the anonymity of the internet allows for a lot of really interesting things like that. I am a huge fan of Star Wars, so I frequently take part in campaigns where you essentially create a character, name him/her/it whatever you want, give said character some skills, and then (along with everyone else in your party, who are other characters created by other people participating in the campaign) embark on your adventure as laid out by the Game Master (GM, for short).

It's definitely super nerdy, but whatever, I'm not ashamed. It being on the internet allows for some awesome things...you can post whenever you want, since it's on a message board; you can talk 'out of character' to other players, to plan certain things such as the composition of your party; the dice rolling aspect has been turned into an electronic thing! You can go to http://www.invisiblecastle.com, and create an account, and it basically stores all your dice rolls since forever on your account. That's good, because dice rolls basically affect the things you can do in the world of the game.

For example, I shall give you one of my characters, who I have been playing for the better part of three years. His name is Vil Gaath, and he is a Gen'Dai. Gen'Dai, the name of his species, is a species that is very long-lived; indeed, Vil is over 3000 years old! He's a gunslinger, but is actually quite gentle...right now, the ship that he was traveling on, along with about seven other people (who are varied in terms of their species composition), had crash-landed on this arid desert planet, and he was almost killed several times (one near-death experience coming from being cut nearly in half by a huge dude with a sword!), and most recently helping the townsfolk beat back a droid army assault. Now, he's trying to figure out how to get the hell off this planet, before the agents of the Galactic Empire reach his location and arrest him! All such good fun.

Another reason I really like RPing (or role playing) is because it actually develops your creative writing skills quite a bit, something I am fond of. I have a book that basically only I have ever seen the contents of, and inside it holds about 20 to 30 ideas for stories, ranging from magical fantasy lands to futuristic worlds, to stories about knights and dragons and wizards to bounty hunters and laser guns and jetpacks. As you can tell, I greatly enjoy writing fiction...non-fiction stories bore me, and even stories set in 'real' worlds bore me, too. I think the fun of fiction is that you can have characters whom you relate to placed in these settings that are entirely fictional, that do not exist in any way. One of my story ideas follows this knight who becomes one of the elite royal guard...but shortly after his ascension to the rank he has wanted his whole life, the Emperor is assassinated, and the Empire over which he ruled splinters into several factions following his death. So, you now have this character who wanted something his whole life, got it, and then immediately failed at it...so the story finds him exploring the issues behind his Emperor's death, and I've actually written so much of the story that at this point, the knight has found that the leader of the Imperial Army has fled to an ancient city in the far north, taking the bulk of the Army with him, and has begun excavating something sinister buried deep underneath the snow and ice, something that was hidden there for thousands of years...yeah, this is one of the fantasy stories, rather than a sci-fi one.

I love both, though. There's something compelling about forbidden magics and lost secrets and ancient ruins that makes for a good story. It's always difficult to write, though, if only because fantasy is inevitably compared to Tolkien and the LOTR books, even if you're just a fledgling writer and Tolkien's works are essentially stuff of legend, as far as literature is concerned. Sci-fi is the same way, although instead of Tolkien, you're being compared to Asimov or someone awesome like that. I've tried to write stories that take place in the present, but it always just ends up being super boring. Writing for a time and place that you have no idea about, only your imagination....well, that's WAY more fun! I have an idea for a story that could potentially be a play, so I might try to work that into submitting for a Drama Festival play for my college next year. That'll be a lot of fun, I'll tell you that much.

To go back to the RPGs, though, they're still super fun. I've played multiple characters, in multiple stories: I played Commander Samuel Sata, the officer in charge of a squadron of pilots in the service of the Imperial Navy; I've played Vil Gaath, as you've already heard; I've played Leo, or LE-001, a medical droid onboard a huge ship when the ship is hit by Rebels, and Leo is taken prisoner; I've played Rik Zarel, a Jedi who skirts the line between being an annoying prick and actually turning fully to the Dark Side of the Force....so many characters, and they're all so unique, with their own reasonings for doing things, their own backstories, and their own relationships with other characters. I've also written several stories in conjunction with other people, also set in the Star Wars universe...there's Shoal Zaala, an elite fighter pilot with a propensity to play practical jokes on his squadmates, there's Commander Jerek Dunes, an officer who saves the capital planet of Coruscant with the timely arrival of his fleet, and is (at the war's end, which the Empire wins, w00t) promoted to Admiral, and later on, Grand Admiral. There's also Vocell, a one-name assassin who does the behind-the-scenes dirty work. It's kind of cool, actually; I've been writing these stories in conjunction with other people (the same 'other people') since literally 2007. It's been over 4 years since we started doing this; I think if we compiled all the work we've done, you'd actually get a pretty interesting novel. It has epic space battles, character development, tense moments where you're actually not sure who would win or lose...the people I've written these stories with are actually quite talented, despite the notion that people on the internet are idiots, haha.

I love writing, when you boil it down. I learned to read when I was 2 1/2 years old, and now I love to write. I would much rather write an essay than do a test, now that I'm in university, and I love writing stories. Poems, short stories, longer stories, plays, screenplays....you name it, I've probably written it. My dream is to, eventually, become a published writer (okay, yeah, I've been published in The Strand and The Varsity, but that's not the same thing, haha), so I guess we'll see. I have yet to finish a story from start to finish, as being a student (with the many assignments and tests and whatnot) is not really conducive to writing for fun consistently...but, one can dream.