let's roll some dice -- or, wait...

scissordice!
Originally uploaded by hummeline

So today was spent driving out to a game store for the intent to buy dice.  Not regular dice, but polyhedral dice.   As you can see, I am now the proud owner of a lovely little collection of dice, including 2 twenty-sided dice ("d20s") - and the middle one is purple, green, and blue: gorgeous!

At any rate, they're the first dice I've ever bought, as I no longer have access to Eric's bag of dice, which contains the sparkly-pink ones I have previously used (and loved).

It's strange, because I don't think of myself as a gamer, yet I've been involved with it for 8 years, and I bought these specifically for a game (and by that, I mean role-playing game) of Tyler's, called the Circle. 

This game in particular becomes an excuse to delve deep into character development & world-building, which provides an excuse to write and makes one think about fictional characters (for that is what they are) in new ways.  They take on minds of their own, which is a familiar feeling for those who write, but it is always strange to have a character react to things in ways that you don't expect -- or to hang on to feelings that you thought they would have long-abandoned.  

I like that.  Even if it never explicitly comes out in the game, there are bottled up emotions that I associate with my character that determine her every move, and in that way, it makes the game more real.  Not real in the sense that Infernal Gaslamp was, when my character was a thinly-veiled version of myself (crushes and all!), but real in the sense that those latent feelings makes the game a more life-like experience.

Of course, I will probably never be in disguise and a member of a ragtag band of mercenaries trying to convince a foreign government to give us an army to beat back mutated beasts, but if I were, I have a feeling it would be similar, because, in game, there are all the personalities, biases, hatreds, friendships, and reactions of real people.

In the meantime, I'm editing the wiki we've created so all the players can keep all the facts about the world straight.  It's currently 573 pages.  That's a lot of information, most of which will go un-mentioned, but the delicious detail is so fun to learn, especially for the historian in me.  

A month left until the next session -- and I cannot wait.  I will be connected through my computer, but at least I'll have fantastic dice.