Thursday 22 February 2001

Pic of the day: In this case, the lights are candles on a new but very cheap candelaber, all of it bought on Upstairs in Kristiansand. (Very cheap place, lots and lots of candles.) The camera is as usual my "old" digital Olympus C-400 L.

Lights, camera, roleplay!

Waah! Delphina punted me though a dimensional gate into Anathus' hotel room! I just barely managed to jump out before Irving was sealed off. I just tried to show her a little attention. Geese. What a temper! Besides, you shouldn't be able to punt a porcupine without rolling against damage to your foot. Oh well, it's not like I'd want to hurt her anyway.

What's going on? Well, this all took place on the message board of the online comic Acid Reflux. Sometimes when people with an active imagination come together in a carefree environment, it's hard to separate crazy idea from roleplay from fan fiction. It's the inner child, I suppose, though it may have added a few new habits since then. Like a preference for the opposite sex - not that I didn't have that well before I started school.

***

Speaking of the opposite sex, I met Thin Girl at work today and helped her with some MS Outlook stuff, and she mentioned the Super family, her sister keeps some contact with them. Basically she couldn't understand why I was after SuperWoman when G.E.M was around. Hmf. I'm not after SW that way ... (not that I'm after G.E.M either, though perhaps I ought to be) and besides, the point is that SW is the only woman I know in the flesh who is massively more intelligent than I. When I said that, Thin Girl actually laughed at me. I think the idea that a man is looking for intelligence in a woman is extremely unfamiliar. Heh.

It's a well known fact that women often dumb down when they are with men they like, because men find dumb women more attractive. (Within reason ... basically, most men want to imagine themselves as smart, not the woman as dumb.) Of course, if they actually start to live together, the man will find out that the woman has her own opinions and defends them; she's being "bitchy" as the Americans call it. But during the time they establish relationship, women often roleplay a less intelligent and weaker willed character.

Yes, that's right. Roleplaying is not just something teen boys with pimples, thick glasses and dice do in the evenings instead of sharing beds and telling secrets like girls do. Roleplaying is an essential part of human nature, and I maintain that we all do it to some extent. We learn gender roles, class roles, and (where applicable) race roles from early childhood on. Any reasonably drunk person is able to roleplay the opposite sex or a minority group or someone from a different layer of society. But doesn't this also mean that we roleplay when we act like the person we believe we are?

Yes, I know this is a scary thought, and I don't want you to lie awake in the night wondering how many layers of onion you could peel off yourself without finding a core. So onward to lighter fare! Entertainment! Must have entertainment!

***

After downloading and reading the free GURPS lite booklet, I was impressed enough that I decided to buy the basic handbook. I originally considered buying it from sjgames directly, but remembered the bureaucracy and the tariff and fees when importing stuff directly. So I went to the local toy shop with a roleplaying section, but there was no trace of GURPS. So I eventually ordered it from Avalon, a shop mostly known for its comics. They also have a lot of RP stuff, though. There seems to be a certain overlap in clientel. :)

Of course, by the time the thick book arrives, I may have more or less forgotten it all. If you've read a little while, you must know my faddishness and my distended sense of time. Luckily, some of my fads are repeating, so I can use the same stuff over again. This may or may not apply to this roleplaying system.

I don't really have the time or the inclination for boys evenings. And besides I'm not a boy anymore, however much I'd like to. Even Superboy grows up these days. Only Peter Pan remains.

Be that as it may, I'm looking around for an opportunity to play by e-mail. This seems to be scarce, though, and I can certainly see why. Back in the old days before Internet really caught on, I tried to GM a roleplay on the Norwegian YouthNet BBS network. It flopped grandly. In part I guess this was due to me not imposing enough structure, but there was also the small point that people didn't show up or react. Luckily the whole thing dissolved fairly peacefully, but I did learn a bit. For instance that the GameMaster should have the option of playing the player characters as if they were non-playing characters, when they are not actually playing.

Well, no need to get technical. I'm still reading websites and the appropriate usenet group rec.games.frp.gurps, where frp almost certainly stands for "fantasy role playing" and not for the Norwegian political party with the same letters. (Though some might see a connection, no doubt.) It's still very much a learning experience to me.

And isn't this a suitable irony, that I learn more about being a human by playing a porcupine ...