So, I've filled the house and my hard drive with tons of roleplaying ephemera, but I'm still no closer to actually playing a role; unless of course you count "sad spendthrift recluse" as a character archetype.
Finding other people with a gaming inclination is still pretty hard. Although there's a bit of a renaissance in the world of boardgaming, announcing to your office buddies that you used to play D&D and fancy giving it another try is to take on the mantle of dangerous weirdo pariah. Even Harvey Weinstein would be more likely to get invited to the Christmas party.
It's not that I don't know other roleplayers, they just don't live anywhere near me (that may or may not be coincidence). But surely (I hear you scream with 2 points of SAN loss) that's what the internet is for.
"Howard, get out of the bloody 70's and join the online revolution".
It so nearly worked.
Tony, who owns more games than anyone else I know, including the Chinese warehouse of Hasbro, was the instigator and pitched the idea of getting some folks together to play Rocket Age on Google Hangouts. We got a pdf copy of the rules and some pre-gen characters and booked a slot 47 months into the future when everyone was free. What could possibly go wrong?
Tony - video feed looks like his face has been melted by a chip pan fire
Howard - can't be seen at all (a blessing in disguise)
David - moves like a 90's robot dancing video
Nick - sounds like the warbly bit in that unbelievably terrible Cher song
Ian - a flicker, a sound like someone's leg being sawn off then no sound, no vision, no nothing
Thirty minutes later .....
Tony delivers tension, excitement, drama and a great plot, but somehow I am increasingly distracted by the pile of washing up in Nick's kitchen that I can see over his left shoulder. Ian slowly moves further and further out of shot. Either his webcam is deliberately panning to take in a view of his picture rail, or he's being eaten alive by something under the table. At the end of two sessions, we all say how great the game had been, but you can tell there's a sincerity shortfall.
We plough on with two more sessions of Würm, which pits the 4 plucky adventures against the harsh reality of life in Ice Age Europe. Things appear to be getting better, although we nearly lose Ian to a bear and David to a hole in his broadband, but it still just doesn't quite gel. One of the team plays his character like a 21st century explorer/scientist and I'm ready to throw in the Palaeolithic towel. Tony brings the exercise to a close and declares online gaming a miserable failure.
The search goes on ......
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