Okay so...

It's definitely been a while but I think given that I had a wedding to help organise I can be forgiven. Also I fell victim to the usual August malaise that seems to affect everyone. Having said that we punted out a couple of podcasts and got some RP done even despite this.

It's only the poor old blog that seems to be suffering. I have to say that it hasn't really been a time for profound thought, or indeed even interesting thought. Mostly I've just been getting through stuff and ploughing ahead.

Mrs, myself, the doodler and another friend have all booked and paid for our places at the upcoming games weekend organised by a friend in the wilds of Derbyshire. The experience is unfailingly a complete escape from reality for a few days. I myself have never experienced the specially extended version of the weekend that goes from Wednesday night all the way through to Monday morning but I imagine the sense of reality dislocation is going to be the most intense it's ever been.

The good thing about that is that you come back to real life suffused with the feeling that you have actually experienced a Narnia-esque amount of time in a parallel dimension. The bad thing is that the reality shock sucks really really bad.

Still, the highs of such an experience are way in excess of the lows, so bring it on!

The cat has been to the vets for a little family unplanning and is staggering around the house with stiches in her side and one of those funny collars on. It has to stay there for ten days. It's quite upsetting because we're used to her leaping about the place full of beans and looking, well, like a cat. Now she's trying to be energetic, but also trying to ditch the collar and the stitches appear to have had more of an impact than she'd like to admit.

I'm looking forward to ten days time when she might start, once more, to look more like our cat.

We're having a board game session tonight followed by the Season 2 finale to our Over the Edge campaign on Saturday. So for the next five weeks life looks set to be fairly normal.

I guess I can cope with that.

Love In An RPG

Despite the fact that your average RPG will be rife with jaunty skull splitting and base quests for filthy lucre the topic of affairs of the heart never really presents itself to go with the power fantasies and the fortune fantasies.

I don't anticipate that No Dice will be much different. Part of the core book, the seemingly interminable and yet incredibly useful part, is a guide for players and Hosts to the roles present in various dramatic situations. I'm using an off the shelf taxonomy of these situations and several of them deal with the topic of love.

It isn't entirely impossible that a Role Playing character could get involved in some sort of affair but it is extremely unlikely. Although No Dice does away with the need to be described entirely in terms of how effective you are at turning people's insides into outsides it's still not an effective tool for role playing a burgeoning romance.

I think the central problems inherent in the role playing of a romantic affair are two fold. Firstly you only have two choices of partner as a player, a non-player (and hence the GM) or another player.

If your entire group is made up of members of the same sex this could be awkward. However it's not inconceivable that a determined group could grit their teeth and try to rise above it.

Enter problem the second. It is nigh on impossible to role play a romance in a room with three or four other people sitting around like lemons. Part of the joy of role playing is that it's immersive and nothing un-immerses you like trying to ignore the mercenary, the thief and the hacker waiting for their turn in the spotlight whilst you exchange sweet nothings with your imaginary partner.

So I don't think No Dice will be the game to buck this trend. Given the circumstances this might not be such a bad thing.