Gaming and Death and Meaning and Mom-Pride

Wolfling and I spent Friday evening and all day Saturday playing in _storyteller_'s one-shot D&D game. I'm not a particular fan of D&D, but as his username suggests, _storyteller_ is an excellent game master (and 4th edition D&D is a significant improvement over previous versions). We players were presented with a meaningful, challenging scenario that was fun to work through.

The highlight for me was doing something I've never done in an RPG before: taking an act which I fully expected would lead to my character's death, and not minding.

( Meaning and Death in Gaming )

And I was really, really proud of Wolfling.

She had been part of another campaign _storyteller_ ran a year or so ago, and had acquitted herself well, but that was in a setting where most of the players were people she knew. The past two days she spent well over 15 hours with a group of strangers, all of whom were at least twice her age, and she held her own with distinction. She understood the rules, she understood her character, she played well, and she handled herself with both maturity and humor. If we all had been behind screens, no one would have been able to tell that she was significantly younger than everyone else.

When I first played with her I had been very worried that it would spoil my "not-mom" time -- but although the mother-daughter dynamic is still present, it doesn't ever come into the game itself.

I'm looking forward to further campaigns once _storyteller_ is back for good from his deployment.

Still Recovering

I haven't gamed much in recent years, and it's been at least a decade since I spent more than five or six hours in a single session -- much less than twelve hours we did yesterday and the five or six hours the day before. I finally was able to sleep in this morning, but my body is utterly confused by the marathon drives, unusual energy work, marathon gaming sessions, very late nights and early mornings, and then sleeping in.

I need a long shower, my daily energy/spiritual practice cycle, a moderate-length gentle walk in the sunshine and fresh air, and a healthy meal, followed by a regular night's sleep.