Friday, March 2, 2012

The Little Things

http://evilbekka.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/dice.jpg

Psychology fascinates me. I'm not totally objective, but I have my moments where I can really step outside myself and observe certain influences on myself. I found a bunch of my dice a couple of days ago. It brought out some interesting feelings.

I live in Huntsville, AL. As many of you may know, Alabama was hit hard this past April with tornadoes. My family and I were fine, some past fairly close to us, but no one was hurt and our home was safe. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us, a nearby lightning strike had damaged the wiring in our house. Three weeks later our house burned. Although we lost almost everything, there were some areas of the house less damaged, and we managed to salvage some things from those areas. It was a hasty salvage job, and we are still finding things we didn't even realize we had saved. Enter my dice.

This blog has been great for me. Just being able to give form to my thoughts has really helped me. The comments, feedback, and general level of interest have been a real boon, more than I could have hoped for.

Here's the weird part, and I didn't even realize this until I found the dice: No matter how many posts, comments, or page views, I've been sort of detached. I was missing a vital accoutrement, that true badge of the gamer: Dice. Like the wizard's staff or the fighter's trusty sword, dice are an essential, defining, piece of gear. I wasn't even aware of the void until it was filled. Strange.

Many of you may have noticed my sometimes obsessive retooling of things to rely solely on the d6. That's because I didn't think there would be anyway, financially, to replace my dice horde. I was trying to be pragmatic about the whole thing. Sure, I could order a "pound of dice" but I felt guilty even thinking about something like that at this point in my family's life.

It's just weird. Maybe this post doesn't make much sense. Maybe it's just me needing to give form to thought, in order to better understand. All I know for sure is I have my dice back and I feel like a gamer again. I feel like the endless horizons of gaming are mine to explore again. If my imagination is the wind, my dice are my sails. My ship is whole, my course charted for the distant shores.

3 comments:

  1. Any good carpenter, mason, artist, or other craftsman relies on his tools to make greatness. However humble our tools are, paper, pencil, and dice, you need a complete tool box in order to aspire to greatness. Glad your tool box is full once again, now make something great! :)

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    1. Thanks for the encouraging words. As for my toolbox, I plan to hit up that GM Sale at RPGNow. Those Sandbox Toys (I think that's what he called them) that Eric reviews regularly in his blog are something like 56 cents on sale. They should be fun, especially at (almost) 2 for a dollar!

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  2. Your post makes perfect sense. I'm glad that you found your dice, and I hope that it's just the first in a long series of happy reversals of your luck!

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