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Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 5:13 pm

Hello, forum. Here be my debut on wrong planet, and hopefully my outreach here will bear some fruit of some sort. My reasons for coming are purely pragmatic, that is, I’ve a reason for coming here and a very specific reason at that, and I’m certain that it’s a reason shared by most everyone here on this forum; whether or not one considers it a problem is ultimately subjective.

I’ve had a rough weekend and all. I’m a junior in highschool and had looked forward to the previous weekend on account of two things. Foremost, I was happily anticipating what the weekend would signify: the end to an unrelenting and terribly crammed workload and schedule that I’ve had the displeasure of enduring over the past couple of weeks. As if some 5 consecutive tests in AP classes weren’t enough of a load on my platter, I’d to partake in the SAT test… (albeit, the glimmering silver lining in it all is that I performed satisfactorily on all of my tests, but I digress). Primarily, however, I’d been looking forward to mustering a group of five of my friends together to hold a session of the pathfinder role playing game. I’d been playing it by myself for the past couple of weeks as a more analytical and paperwork-based alternative to Dark Souls, and the mention that my friend would be willing to play excited me beyond belief.

When I wasn’t working academically last week, I was preparing for the upcoming session. I contacted other friends at my high school who I figured would be interested, asking folks what their preference in character would be and rolling character sheets for all of them. Looking in retrospect, I realize that I had the biggest say in what people would end up becoming, pitching ideas and reducing my players’ free will to a binary gate. Eventually, the day of the game came, and despite the fact that everybody couldn’t come (one player was sick, one player had a family emergency, one player simply couldn’t come) I was satisfied to be able to DM 3 people. I had a plotline laid out in my mind and was eager to enact it with the player characters that I designed. I presumed it to be inexperience at the time and simply unfamiliar with Role Playing Games at the time, but my character party had different things in mind. I couldn’t tell at least, because I was too busy hardlining the characters’ actions and having them act within the parameters that I established quite rigidly.

The Session went much shorter than expected; everybody had been burnt out after a bit of roleplaying and we didn’t even bother finishing our first combat. What should have been a 7 hour session turned out to be 2 and a half hours. Even a transition to the Settlers of Catan proved to be lackluster and boredom inducing. I wasn’t dissapointed when the early time to leave came, because I was honestly quite tired and drowsy by the end.

About 2 hours after the game, I shot my friend (hereby to be referred to as L) a text message in question of what went wrong and what could have gone better. L replied solely that my failure was in taking the game too seriously. I asked him why. He replied that I was stopping character decisions and eschewing the dice often when determining occurrences, and I realized that L was correct.

And it was at that moment that It dawned on me that, despite all the time spent in my youth going to social skills classes and years of middle school droned away in crippling loneliness because of aspergers, I had fundamentally learned nothing. I’m just as inflexible and have just as great a propensity to be flustered now as I had when I was 4 years old.

Of course I realize that statement remains mildly hyperbolic (I’m nowhere nearly as inept socially as I was when I was 4...I don’t treat reality like Pokemon XD for the gamecube). But I feel that it holds true. I had made an attempt this weekend to try to prove to myself that I wasn’t as distant and alien from everybody else as an aspie would be, and only proved the contrary further. I didn’t want to have people over so that I could enjoy their personalities and socialize with the person that I had invited over; I wanted them to merely be players in a grand play that I wanted done my way according to my standards and my expectations. Any deviation from the big idea was minimal in all the players, and my endgame was that the end of the game would ultimately be the same, the only permutations would be in the delivery. I might as well have been playing with machines; they didn’t matter because they really didn’t have any say. It wasn’t about their banter and jokes and enjoyment that they had from socializing and being together, it was about my enjoyment of putting characters that I ultimately designed against monsters so that they could increase in level and be even stronger ad infinitum.

It’s terrifying for me to realize that despite how far I’ve come as a human being that my modus operandi hasn’t changed in the slightest. I’m as inflexible about the things that I really, really want now as I was when I was a 2 year old. I want to think of myself as a normal person but I’m scared that what I saw yesterday was a figment of the person that I fundamentally am: I might want to trick myself into thinking that I care about other people, and that I can care for other people as much as joe schmo, but what yesterday suggested is that I have a heart of ice. People are irrelevant to me so long as I can use them to make me feel good. The only thing that keeps me from acting on that bit of sociopathy is a tepid spirit that finds itself too often afraid to object to the status quo (I get that bit from my mother. She’s Always Right), and an ingrained tendency towards kindness that acts because it was put in there. I feel like half of a human being. I can do everything as well as the next guy, but I don’t experience pathos on the level that he does. I don’t get upset because people mean something to me, or because they give me any degree of existential fulfilment; they sustain me aesthetically. I’d get mad as hell if my mother were to get rid of my xbox, sure, but would I honestly mourn as hard as my siblings when my mother died? Its scary to think about. I think I’m seriously going on a tangent at this point, and the quality of my prose is decreasing, but I’ll leave my introduction at that, forum.

Regards.



the_phoenix
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03 Oct 2016, 5:27 pm

Having been involved in roleplaying for many years (like, before you were born, you young whippersnapper!)
* good-natured grin * :) ...

let me just say that when you as a Dungeon Master or Game Master
allow all your gamers, everyone in the party,
to be their best creative selves ...
it also allows you to be your best creative self ...
such that everybody, including you, enjoys gaming that much more ...
plus, you can then bond easier as friends.

Win-win!

By the way ... the next adventure I'll be running is a Game of Simon Says ...
the catch is, it will be aboard a Starfleet starship, and held in the Klingon language.
Winner gets a prize, losers get turned into Denebian Slime Devils.
If you haven't guessed,
my name is Q ...
Game Master Extraordinaire. 8)

And I do have a challenge ... some of the players are disabled.
One has Down's Syndrome, another is deaf.
And I believe in doing my best to ensure that everyone can participate and have fun.

As for you, better luck next time! :)

... and nice meeting you, Half Human though you may be ...

~~ the phoenix, aka Q



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 5:32 pm

You sound like a full person to me.



Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 5:33 pm

@kraftie kortie

How so?



the_phoenix
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03 Oct 2016, 5:43 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
You sound like a full person to me.


... so says our resident Wolf Man ... :P



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 5:46 pm

You sound like me when I was about your age---except you're much brighter.

And I NEVER thought I was anything less than a full person.

You're a teenager. Sometimes, you mess up. But you learn from it.

How much you want to bet that your friend feels about the same way you do?



Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 5:48 pm

well...I think whether or not I sound like a full person is sort of irrelevant here; what you think is incontingent from my own perceptions. All that I'm trying to say is that I'm fearful that I'm not on the emotional social par that everybody else at my school and in my family is. I don't think that I really care about people like they do. I'm scared that at my very core i think of people as means to an end. I don't want that.



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 5:52 pm

You're going through a philosophical conundrum. I went through it, too.

I thought about the way you thought.....when I was a bit older.

I wasn't too empathetic....until I actually lived life. And experienced the things that people experience.

The fact that you care about this...is indication that you are "human."

Don't believe me if you don't want to believe me. C'est la vie.



Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 5:53 pm

ah. Right. Honestly I feel like i needed this more as a vent than anything else. I'm just scared. I'm scared because I feel alone and cooped all the time and I have to go to the internet for help because nobody I know in real life can sufficiently aid me.



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 6:02 pm

I absolutely would think that this sucked, too.

I know the feeling. I couldn't go to anybody when I was sixteen, either. I was a lone wolf. An outcast amongst outcasts. I had to make my own way. How I did it: I just said "screw it."

Screw what people think....but always act with morality and tact, no matter what.



Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 6:03 pm

I do. I consider myself a person who is courteous enough, especially towards adults. I'm a very, very gentle soul.



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 6:05 pm

I believe this will get you far, personally.

But always try to be beware when somebody's trying to screw you.



Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 6:06 pm

Oh I know plenty well when they try to do that.

Plenty of folks take me for a fool. They think I'm some kind of funny man and that all I spew out are cheeky little comments. Its my own fault for giving them that impression though, i suppose.



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 6:12 pm

I'm pretty much the same way, to this day.

I'm considered a "court jester" on my job.

This exempts me from having to do all the social crap.



kraftiekortie
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03 Oct 2016, 6:30 pm

Aside from video games, what you are really interested in?



Titouain
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03 Oct 2016, 6:32 pm

Man the hell if I know.

I like philosophy I suppose.

I'm also partial to uh...cartoons?

I don't like too many things ><