Its nearly time again for my bi-yearly pilgrimage to the lands of youth, my old stomping grounds; Tha Nooga. I’m leaving Friday after work, heading to AdventureCon that weekend, seeing my Dad for Father’s Day, maybe seeing The Hulk.. and then… lots of videogames, eating out and making witty, snarky comments and pop-culture references.
There’s nothing quite like being around old friends… especially ones that knew you when you were a kid. I still contend that i met Collin and Russ in 5th grade, but they’re somewhat unconvinced and place it more around 6th or 7th Grade before we started really hanging out. Then, of course, the Banana Pirates formed and that little piece of history was etched forever into our personal and shared mythologies.
As i have aged, i’ve come to realize how profound an affect just being around my old friends has on me. I think of the things that i enjoy, the things that center me and the things that ‘recharge’, but, in actuality, none of them beat just simply hanging out with them. I remember what its like to not be alone; what its like to be around my peers. I get to be around people who make jokes and comments of such subtlety that they make me THINK. I feel challenged and yet accepted, because, i think, my challenges are appreciated in turn.
I go throughout my day, feeling like i live in a world made of cardboard… as if i don’t pull every punch, temper every word and filter every thought that i will break something or someone. With old friends who have seen you at your worst and your best, there are no surprises. no shocks. No damage in just being yourself. Its already been done, scabbed, healed, scarred and long forgotten. In its place is a just a familiarity of sensation that I, personally, find extremely comforting. It reconnects me to the world outside my head in ways that i’m just now starting to understand enough to explore and appreciate.
I mean, these are people that actually WANT my presence. In a world full of “what can you do for me”s, just being who i am seems to be enough. The rarity of that sentiment in my life is a deep wound and any salve for it is most welcome and cherished. On most of my travels, i am, at some point, ready to come home to the familiar and the routine. However, my trips to Tha Nooga are always ended reticently. I think because what i am leaving there is far more familiar to me than what i am returning to. A part of me will always be 17, full of meta-humor, philosophical trail-blazing and contests of wit. I always want to retain the imagination, the feeling of ‘life is long; there is time to kill today’ and pausing for a moment to soak it all in, lest it sneak by inside the cracks between moments.
For thats all i really need… just a moment in time to stop and see how much time as passed. I need a point of reference. I need to stop, breathe, forget what i know.. and see the world from the POV that i once saw it, so i can tell the difference.
They’re both basically married… houses, careers, yard-work. the whole bit. But they’re still Collin and Russ. and maybe… just maybe, i can still be just Scott. and maybe, just maybe, that is actually okay.
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Last night, i was reacquainted with an old friend. The Alternity sci-fi game was one of the last products produced by the doomed gaming company (and parent of D&D) TSR. I remember very clearly when i first saw the books, in a comic book shop in Chattanooga. My gamer girlfriend (at the time, which was about ‘97-’98) and i eagerly tore into the books and were totally mystified by the dice mechanic we found there. It seemed so alien and yet so tantalizing.
Lo and behold that two of the very best campaign settings i have ever encountered came from that game… the X-Files-ish ‘Dark@Matter’ and the space opera ‘Star*Drive’. Both worlds were lush and rich with history, cohesion and countless plot hooks and conflicts that melded perfectly within the idiom of their worlds. There was even a well crafted and subtle verisimilitude between the two… and that is something that gets my authors heart a-flutter.
Over the next few years, when Dragon-slaying and sword-swinging become something of a bore, my gaming group and i went to the stars… to the very edge of known human space, to the edge of the Orion Arm of the Galaxy: the Verge.
There, for the first time, they saw the fragility of life. Alternity is a very realistic system. No “80 HPs, get hit by a ballista bolt, fall into a spike pit, get incinerated by dragon fire, get hit with 12 poison arrows and walk away” nonsense. On the molten prison planet ‘Red Sector A’, their guide to this new game (and part of the galaxy) was felled by a sniper. There was no healing potions. none of them were surgeons, not that it would’ve done any good on the surface of an airless, lava planet. Dash Whiplock died and there was nothing they could do. and that death imprinted on my players, for the first time, an emotional and dramatic connection to the game and story. From then on, it was personal. To this day, the adventure “Red Sector A” goes down in my personal history as one of the best adventures i have ever run. To this day, the people who were there, talk about it reverent tones.
So, here it is… a decade later and i am revisiting the system, the game and the setting.
The realism, the air-tight political and contextual clues and the overall open-ended style of Star*Drive appeals to me as a very mature, dramatic game. This was proven, once again, on the very first night of my new game. Three people’s lives became intertwined in a life-or-death plot of intrigue that has already changed them forever. A spunky StarMech engineer, a savvy Mnemonic courier and a cold blooded (heh) T’sa spy have just arrived in the Verge and already they’re embroiled in its complex, contentious society. What will Imri, John Spencer and Quill do next?
Read their thoughts here or here.
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