Creation has a particular energy. It can be catalyzed by outside influence, it can be channeled any which way, but there is no denying that the energy comes from within the creator. Inspiration of any stripe, whether the head-spinning altitudes of love or the blood-soaked sorrows of despair, serve merely as the trigger ready to unleash the whole thing upon the canvas of the creator's choosing--paint, dance, pencil, garden, auto, sex, game, poem, song, research, what have you.
My current canvases are pencil and paper, the word processor, and the game. Drawing and writing are sort of self-evident, and the day will soon come when I can explore other canvases, but tabletop gaming is something that may need elaboration.
Role-playing at the table with a group of friends is a collaborative work of art. It is a sort of cooperative storytelling, which has been a fixture of human history that has largely been lost in America. We joke and talk about the rest of our lives as we sit at the table, but we also tell a story, of characters we grow to know and love and hate, facing a world that is even more uncertain than our own while allowing more decisive actions than we can usually take in the world of electronics and red tape. We grow legends in these game sessions, vicariously living in a world that, for many, can become as familiar or even moreso than our own.
They are legends because they do not simply cease to exist when we leave the table. Their stories live on, in our imaginations during quiet moments, during conversations of remembrance, and when telling others of the daunting tasks faced and overcome by (or occasionally, which overcame) our heroes. Each player becomes tied to the others through this ancient rite, and it grows our hobby and grows us as creators of this amazing experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment