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Romance and Roleplaying
By:
Published: 12 January 2008
Sam and I had one of our twice-weekly “date nights”
tonight. That means that from about 7pm ’til we go to
bed, we do nothing but have fun with each other. The girl
amuses herself otherwise, or goes out, and we do whatever
we like. Usually, that means we spend some time gaming.
Yes, it is exceptionally geeky that our favorite not-wholly-private
pastime is roleplaying. But back when we had three kids in
the house and a lot more stress, we found that we had fallen
into really bad pattern. There was always some “business”
to take care of or discuss, whether it was about the kids
or Sam’s job or money or the pets or the house, and somehow
those mundane things started sucking up all of our energy.
Even when we were alone, the kids, especially, were there
between us. We were parents and roommates and partners in
the business of life, but we weren’t having any fun together,
and that can kill romance deader than a fossil.
It’s very, very difficult to say, “We’re not
going to talk ‘business’ during this time,”
without having something else to fill up that space. We both
read books, we both wrote, we saw friends and so on, but I’m
not a big movie buff and I don’t play computer games
(two of his favorite things), and he’s not ever likely
to pick up a needle, and neither of us really likes to gossip.
We don’t watch TV to speak of. We agree on politics and
religion and the like so much that, well, there’s not
a lot to discuss. There’s only so much time you can spend
in bed together. Sam came up with the idea of playing an RPG,
one-on-one.
We started playing as a continuation of a game we’d
played with a group that had drifted apart after the campaign
was over. It was sort of D&D 3.5, in the world Sam has
been building since he was a kid. Over time, we found ourselves
moving away from ever rolling dice or looking at character
sheets. We were creating story together, and dice just seemed
irrelevant. After a while, though, the main characters in
that world became so powerful that finding any kind of new
challenge for them was nearly impossible. You can only threaten
the world, realistically, so many times before it becomes
old hat, right?
The game we’re playing now started as a campaign we
played with a couple we were dating, then got used as part
of a novel we were writing together. Some of the information
was recycled for yet another campaign with a group that just
didn’t “gel” for long. The story Sam had created
was too good for me to walk away from, though, just because
the other players were seldom available. So we started playing
whether or not anyone else was with us, and it turned into
a private campaign.
Over the years, my world has narrowed considerably, because
of my health. I’ve gone from “just suck it up”
to taking a lot of ibuprofen to living on narcotics and muscle
relaxants just to get through the day. There’s never
a time without pain, and the best way to not dwell on it is
to be completely absorbed in something. Honestly, there aren’t
that many things in the world that take absolutely all of
my concentration. Gaming with Sam is one of them, because
he creates such an incredibly detailed, engaging, world, fills
it with complex individuals, and then pulls me into plots
that seriously challenge me, intellectually and emotionally.
If the only kind of roleplaying you’ve ever done involved
a canned scenario, or hack-n-slash, I’m going to have
to ask you to toss everything you think you know about RPGs
out the window before imagining gaming with Sam. We are not
talking about “X strangers meet in a bar and decide to
go off on an adventure.” Think instead of stepping in
to the richest novel you’ve ever read, and taking it
into a completely different direction based on what you do
(or don’t do). Think about improvisation with really
good musicians or actors, on a night when everybody is on.
I’ve really only played with Sam, so I’m exceedingly
spoiled. I had been exposed to D&D and Traveller as a
teen, but hadn’t really played before I met him. We played
in a campaign with a different DM once, as an experiment,
but it died after two sessions or so. Oh! We also played Serenity
for the After Serenity podcast. No insult to any other DM/GM,
but I’ve yet to even hear of anybody like Sam. More experienced
gamers have told me they consider him “world class,”
so I feel fairly confident that my opinion of him isn’t
completely due to my bias.
We’ve played with just one or two other people, and
with groups of 12 or more. I’ve played in a couple of
the “one-off” games he’s written for conventions,
with very different groups of people each time. There are
definitely some things about playing with groups that I miss,
and I hope we have a group again soon. I love sitting back
to observe another player’s “on stage” time,
how they interact with whatever Sam throws at them, their
unique styles of playing. I adore the feel of a good group
of people who are in character, playing off each other, tossing
focus back and forth, working as an ensemble. But playing
one-on-one does have its unique joys, and I recommend it to
any couple who enjoy gaming at all (or, of course, playing
together as a triad or quad, for those who are part of those
kinds of relationships).
Sam plays all the characters but mine, complete with distinct
voices and their own body language. He comes up with the stories,
really—or the beginnings of them, and the plot twists.
He’s always the GM/DM/ST or whatever you want to call
it, the real “author,” the creative force.
I have no idea how he does it. He surprises me on a regular
basis, always in good ways. I consider it a major accomplishment
if I ever surprise him with anything I do or say (while staying
true to the character, of course). I know that he “reloads”
himself creatively, by watching good movies and well-written
shows like West Wing, and reading everything from Horatio
Hornblower to Penny Arcade. Water is important. Just about
every time he takes a shower, he has to leave time afterwards
to transcribe whatever his muses sang to him there. And he
does this while continuing to write a novel!
All couples have their little in-jokes, code words, and shared
anecdotes. We have not just one world, but two overlapping
ones, all to ourselves. We don’t spend all of our time
together in fantasy-land, but we don’t ever want for
distraction, either, thanks to Sam. The romance in our relationship
is still going strong, and it’s definitely well-grounded
in reality.
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