Northward Midget

Tag: role-playing

  • Pun-Pun

    Image of a small dog-like humanoid creature wielding a shield and sword with the caption "PUN PUN: The game is over. I am the DM now."
    Unknown artist’s rendering of Pun-Pun.

     

    Cleverly twisted manipulation of D&D 3.5E rules to create the godlike kobold “Pun-Pun”.

    Source: Pun-Pun (3.5e Optimized Character Build) – D&D Wiki

  • Dusk Of Defiance

    The narrative catalyst that brought about the ultimate physical separation of my wife from myself — when she texted me from Rochester threatening to never bring the children back unless I vacated our rental home — was a story I wrote about a character in a Star Wars role-playing game I’d started playing on the advice of my therapist.  To start doing some of my “own” things.

    Apparently, to her,  it resembled too closely our real family, and she took offense, or was frightened, or merely offended or annoyed, but, in any case– we are not “we” any longer, nor ever shall be again.

    I admit I was a bit of a mess becoming messier when this bomb was dropped, but in the past half-year, I’ve cleaned up.  I’m with a good woman.  I’m not as impulsive and reckless as some might say I had been.  Not as many entertaining stories, but then, I don’t live to amuse “you”, eh?

    In the course of becoming a better person who is always a worse person when tomorrow’s version glances back at him, my “free” time has diminished, and I’ve left that group of role-players.  That group of fellow Star Wars geeks are closer friends to me than nearly any of the others in my orbit who hold that title.   When my wif– when I was involuntarily placed into a mental hospital, all but one of the non-family callers were part of that group.

    As such, they deserved more than an unexplained cessation of my semi-monthly visits.   Here it is, reposted from its permanent location within our campaign files at Obsidian Portal.

    My character is (was) Kelyn Langolier.   When we meet him, he’s a smuggler.  A scoundrel.   His father killed himself when Kelyn was on the cusp of adolescence, willing him The Spelljammer — a modified starship with a weird and ancient engine that was stolen by a group of  Trandoshan slavers.

    As an adult, while Kelyn was off-world working as a legitimate “Space Trucker”, his wife turned up the gas and went to bed with their two daughters.  None of them woke up.

    Or so he thought.

    Due to some dark pedigree of Force-sensitivity unbeknownst to Kelyn, the Imperial Inquisitors orchestrated the murder of Kelyn’s wife, but left clones in place of his abducted daughters, making it appear to be a murder-suicide resulting from the depression of a wife left behind once too often by a trucker trying to make ends meet.

    Kelyn’s daughters — Adria and Bella — were tutored by Grand Inquisitor Draco as Sith “witches”.  Kelyn turned to smuggling, then stumbled upon the “Dawn of Defiance” — the period between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope” wherein Senator Bail Organa is funding the nascent rebellion against the growing Empire.  Eventually, he recovered his birthright starship, and his companions redeemed and returned his daughters to him.

    If you’re a fellow Star Wars geek, you’ll love it.  I hope.  If you’re not, you might still like it.  If you’re my please-soon-to-be-ex-wife, you’ll probably think it’s more about real life than it is.

    In any case, here it be: a future-long-time-ago shock that will shit you up.  Enjoy.

    Well, I say “Enjoy.”

     

    (more…)

  • Gonna Wash That Grey Right Outta My Head

    No. Not really. It ain’t going anywhere, is it? It’s part of me. To “cure” myself would be to kill my self, and I don’t want that now, do I?

    MAOI is done. See the log up top for the final entry. Next up is “Viibryd.” As noted there, WTF? That’s one hell of a random-number-generated space-name. Sounds like something my character would be smuggling in my Star Wars campaign.

    I haven’t bothered to look it up. What’s the point? Probably the same as the others.

    Over Thanksgiving, I went to West Virginia. Although I’d brought the girls down before, that was the first time without any of my real self-produced family coming along. I felt profoundly sad and out of place. Lay on the couch after the turkey.

    Christmas went surprisingly fantastic with regards to the girls. They didn’t seem to miss a beat, or me. I was afraid there’d be some great trauma when they woke up on Christmas morning and I wasn’t there with mommy to open the presents, but apparently not.

    They came over on Christmas Eve morning and opened my gifts to them. Highlights were Ani’s playable guitar shirt from ThinkGeek, and Celyn’s decorate-able treasure chest. Only three or four hours with them, and then I was off to West Virginia again.

    The day after Christmas, a friend of the family visited.

    A sexy friend of the family.

    I felt old.

    I left soon after they did. Mom cried. She always cries. I had to get away. Had to leave there. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t want the unconditional love of family. I wanted to get back to my man-cave apartment and drink myself into oblivion. So, I drove.

    On the way back, I emailed an old PlentyOfFish.com contact on a whim. We made a date. We’ve been seeing each other exclusively since then. She’s nice, smart, sexy, and 38, so I don’t need to bother with determining whether or not I should feel guilty about dating twenty-somethings.

    The role-playing has been going well. Still every first and third Saturday. Just did a write up on the previous session. My character, Kelyn, has become a full-blown sociopath. The end scene had him ready to blow a couple of his fellow party members and a few other “innocents” out the airlock.

    Speaking of sociopathy…

    I had my first appointment with he who would become my new therapist. A real psychologist, not a licensed clinical social worker. That sounds snarky. Sincerely, I did appreciate what the previous therapist had to offer, but I didn’t need it. I don’t need someone to talk to, and I certainly don’t need someone to affirm my questionable life choices. As I’ve told my friends and others: I’d have to rape someone to get criticism from her. Not just anyone, either. A baby. With Downs.

    So, this new fellow. At first, Donald Sutherland. Then, Ian McKellan. I even cajoled him into saying, “You shall not pass!”

    His initial diagnosis is “depersonalization disorder.” That’s a new one, huh? It’s close to sociopathy, but more a learned or trauma-induced behaviour. He mentioned he’d watched “Mad Men” and recognized the lead character as having it.

    And me.

    I tried to find the book he mentioned at Barnes and Noble. Not in stock. “Finding Unreality” or somesuch. 1996, co-authored by a doctor and her patient.

    I got more out of my hour-ish with him than I did from my full run with the prior therapist.

    I’m looking forward to seeing him again. He has the spark. He knows things, sees things. He speaks on my level. He appreciates my wit. Not quite as a consumer, but perhaps as a peer.

    So, I am in the Washout til Friday. Off the MAOI. As I mentioned in the MAOI log, it’s not nearly as bad as it was with the SSRI/SNRI. However, lately, particularly today, I’ve felt low — low dipping precariously close to the dark Empty.

    The gin and tonic and Sprite and sour mix seem to have held it at bay for the time being.

    Just a few days left.

    I’m doing alright.

    I still wonder why the wife did what she did — why she sacrificed the family for some vain pursuit of “happiness”. I want to know the timeline, the sequence of events, as related by her, that led to the demise of our marriage and our family. I still don’t know.

    I guess that was the problem.

    I never knew.

    Never saw it coming.

    Until it was gone.