Telling Tall Tales

Being a geek, part or full time, there's an expectation that one spends their days huddled in Mom and Dad's basement, pouring over tomes of Dungeons and Dragons lore. Growing up in Florida, I didn't have a basement. Otherwise, hell yea. I was such a DnD junkie, in fact, that I'd carry game books in my backpack at school instead of text books (that would partially explain y embarrassingly low GPA, despite an almost embarrassingly high IQ at the time (I've been hit repeatedly in the head since then, so well....)).

While I was enlisted in the Army, I came across a game back in 1992 that would eventually change how I viewed role playing. That game, White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade, had just published its second edition book, and it was recommended to me by a comic book store clerk who knew I liked vampires (before this, I was devouring the DnD Ravenloft materials). After reading through the book, my mind was blown.

I'd tried running one or two games with some of the guys in my unit, but at the time I was still too imbeded n the DnD mindset of power gaming and min/maxing. Additionally, I hadn't yet learned how to focus a game on the players, so the sessions I ran were lackluster "baddie of the week" affairs. Yea, not great.

In '93, we had some new recruits join our unit. One of the guys was a fellow named James, and he, his wife, and I would soon become very good friends. As James and I talked, we discovered a shared interest in gaming Once his wife moved to the area and they'd gotten off-post housing, they began hosting small gaming sessions for the few of us who played. Eventually, I'd broached the topic of Vtm, and they were interested in the idea, so we gave it a shot.

We were 19, 20 years old. We were all speed readers. We were all fairly smart. Needless to say, we skimmed the rules and didn't learn them all that well. Our core group was just the three of us, with an occassional friend joining in. But we had fun. So much fun. James and his wife Tabby started having me stay over on the weekends so that we could engage in all-night sessions. This led to me moving in with them so that we could play during the week. Additonally, we'd often times just sit around and discuss the nature of the game, what we wanted to see happen in the games, and general strategies for the games. We delved into other White Wolf games, and we took turns on Storyteller duties. In truth, the time I spent playing with them is probably what helped me get through my enlistment.

I eventually left the service, and James, Tabby, and I went out seperate ways. A few months after moving here to Tennessee, I met members of the group I currently play with. Several of us have been friends for over twenty years now. Over those two decades, I've learned more about the "art of storytelling," I've picked up tricks, read up on the art, learned about story structure and improvisation, how to make characters more believable. In every way, I've become better at what I do.

But.... if it hadn't been for those couple of years where I was so intensely engrossed in the games, so inundated with the concept of trying to help my friends have FUN (that's the idea of a game after all, right?), then who's to say how I would have turned out as a Storyteller. Sure, we didn't have a full grasp on the rules. Yea, we had some really dumb, overpowered character (I had a Bubasti Mage at one point... heh?). But we had fun, we enjoyed ourselves, we learned the basic, golden rule of  gaming. Have fun (there might be a point I'm trying to make, hmm?). Everything else, rules, structure, timing... they can all be learned. But if you can't let go and laugh from the get-go, then that will carry over into how you game. Think about that.

Now go out and tell some tales.