Totally on topic, but dangerously bloggy

Whenever you feel the need to talk to the ex just say NEXT! You'll get over it, you will be fine, the world will be fine. If it is not, MAKE it fine. Too often people seem to think that they are just bystanders in a play they have no effect on. If it worthy of action, commit and conquer otherwise it's not worth your time. From my experience the talking to the ex is usually an attempt to repair the rift, and nine times out of ten it is not worth the effort and accomplishes only one thing, which is to make you appear pathetic. So stick to your guns and do what is fun. Worthless letter or good times with friends, I know what I would pick.

Sorry about the directness, been there, done that, and never doing it again.

I feel your pain. Gaming has been the source of many starts and stops of my relationships.

It is at these times in my personal life when I think about the following quote.

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by Charles Swindoll

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.

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Gaming can get very addicting. Finding the right balance between how much to game, is a deeply personal thing. One of my friends had to quit due to the fact that he just can't maintain a job or relationship while gaming.

But tabletop is not something you do solo... (well some special people probably can) and I have found that it times of distress, it is best to be surrounded by friends.

Amen to that

Its balance and its about moderation. To be successful in life, at least with other people, you have to moderate your activities. If you go to one extreme or another, you likely are going to lose people/activities that are not a part of that particular extreme.

Relationships are no different...if you want to have 30% of a relationship, you can't only put forth 10% effort...

In my experience, I have enough time to tabletop RP once every two weeks...a gaming session of 4 hours after work on Monday. I used to play every weekend and many weeknight in high school. Played weekly in college. And I used to play every Sunday not too long ago...but that didn't leave me with balance in other parts of my life.

My current game schedule allows me to tabletop RP every other week, enjoy my married life and have plenty of time for my infant son. Would I play more if I could? Yes. But, not at the risk of other things in my life that are meaningful.

Tabletop gaming, console gaming or computer gaming, its all a hobby. Its no different than if you were in a band, enjoyed working on your car, were into perfecting your yard or woodworking. Its something you do with your time that you enjoy and brings you joy. Similar to going out with "the guys" to watch a game, have a beer or tailgating... Any of these things, if done all the time, will put a big dent in your relationships...

I actually have just as much fun gaming every other week, as I did gaming every single week. Plus, I don't have problems when I go home and don't have to hear complaints about spending too much time playing a game...its about balance and moderation!

I'd agree with that. I don't take crap when I go home for spending too much time gaming, but that's because there's nobody in my life to give me crap like that. I game 3 times a week. That's a crapload for a 26 year old with a real-life job and what-not. But for me, Shadowrun IS the apocalypse. I moved to a new city, bonded with some new people by playing RPGs, and before you know it, we're playing them all the time. Now I don't know any more people than I did when I moved here, except for a couple that I met at a convention that I'm about to start role-playing with. No, this does not leave me with enough time to do things like get a girlfriend, develop new skills, etc. Right now I'm kind of ok with that. Eventually, it will get to the point where I can't role-play effectively because I won't be a real person anymore, in the sense that I don't do anything that adds to "life experience" or whatever. I don't know what I'll do when I get to that point. But right now, things seem to be working ok. I'm pissed off about women not talking to me, but as long as they're not talking to me because I'm too busy playing SR, that's ok. If I were to stop playing SR, and did whatever it is most guys do to get the opposite sex to talk to them, I'd probably get similar results (i.e., crippling lonliness) and just feel less in control of it.

There are so bloody many gloom and doomers about. Societies change. It's the way things work. Sure, we are in the process of larger than normal change, but there simply isn't any need for the gloom and doom. I t really MAY be that we are living on borrowed time...or maybe we are getting ready for the next big leap.

Change is scary and paradoxically, mainly to the young, at least in a society, like this one, that IS relatively (since ALL things are relative) stable. When you have a higher standard of living, change becomes more threatening, but it is the nature of the young to feel disaffected and the two don't combine happily.

Maybe we all blow up tomorrow, or maybe we are on the edge of amazing advances. Doom saying about it won't help, neither will pie in the skying, true, but at least your more fun at parties...and are having more fun at the same time. So, use gaming as you will, of course, but don't despise using it as a means of wowing either, not just to blow off stress.


Isshia

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, but you should leave marital and extramarital affairs to be solved by marriage counselors, and not message board members. Not discrediting any body's argument, but I doubt that many people here are professionals in this field.

... I must have done a horrible job of communicating my intent. There is no real ex. I'm in a the best relationship I've ever been in. There is behavior pattern of witting to an ex you can't talk to. It's thing that is done. I was expressing a similarity I noticed between that form of fiction creation and my chosen one RPing, in as much as it is a creating fiction that let's you relate to something you feel a need to but can't in real life. Then I go on to wonder if this insight offers me any insight into why I keep coming back to cyber-punk, because I know it's a deeper appeal than mere cool

Oh, it's probably just me, not you. I think that I just needed to reread.

As for your insight question, I guess it is because you found something that you love doing, and that is cyber-punk gaming.

This is more of a response to the first paragraph rather than the e/n thread posted in the second:


Historically speaking, we are not a unique age group. Perhaps you should look up the Nostalgia philosophy of history, which argues that as people get older and learn more about the world they like it less and less and look upon earlier times with positive feelings. While they may view past events in their lives with a bit more positive perspective, they were also younger and certainly did not know as much about the world. A close examination of history will show that people in the 15-30 age group tend to be a little disenchanted with the direction of things. Please don't interpret this as me calling you naive in any way, I'm just trying to help.

In a slightly askew direction: I don't know about you guys, but Shadowrun and cyberpunk in general excites me about the possibilities of the future. When I see cyberpunk I don't see all gloom and doom, father-knows-best states run by giant corporations, or any of the other things that are part and parcel with the genre; I instead see the new technology and the emergence (no pun, I swear) of it within our own culture. I see cybersamurais, chrome cowboys, deck jockeys, BTLs, and I get so excited I want to burst. It makes me want to go out there and be an innovator, to push forward the research in technologies that will bring these ideas that much closer to reality. I feel like a would-be cellphone manufacturer from thirty years ago watching Star Trek and thinking "Man, I'd LOVE to have one of those... why can't we make one, again?"

Shadowrun makes me want to believe in reincarnation just so if I don't get to experience cyberarms and commlinks and P2.0 today, I'll still be able to experience it, albeit through another consciousness.

No that is good stuff. I am aware of that phenomena, and actually the fact that millennialism refers to something over a 1000 years old, is the main reason that I don't think the we are all doomed. History does have this quirky way of unfolding in both the most wonderful and most horrific way at the same time while remaining remarkable mundane from a day to day perspective.

So the typical darkening of outlook is a direct an natural result of the gradual loss of innocence? I never knew you were so gloomy.

To go back to the original text, and to sort of riff of of that... I'll quote a few things:


Is this a god allegory? With the 'letters to your Ex' being prayer? I've actually heard/read that same comparison a few times... kinda interesting when you add in:


Hah! So, like I said, to riff on that... Gaming is your religion, and the gaming table is your temple. If that's the euphemism that you intended, I got it right off the bat... nice.

Anyway, on to normal conversation...

First paragraph... SR (and other Dark Future games) is certainly an outlet to 'work through' the doom and gloom of the dystopian future that seems just on the horizon... I think SR, with it's detailed history of how it got from here (1990) to there (2070) is especially good. I know that me and a few of the other lore heads in my town have had many a night sitting back and just speculating on how far away it is...

Reading the last paragraph, I totally understand the whole 'I only create by regurgitating' feeling. I'm assuming you're a GM, and GM's have a tendency to create new stories from the entertainment they've consumed. I think it's a natural thing, and kind of an art form in it's own right. RPG gaming is really collaborative storytelling. By using a 'boilerplate' framework... a premise that is familiar to all (a ruleset, a setting, a story) it allows a more seamless collective narrative... Especially when dealing with a table full of gamers of varying degrees of creativity... by re-hashing a familiar theme, it allows even the guy who just shows up to drink a few beers and roll a few dice to get in on the action.

Anyway... not sure if this is the sort of response/rant you were looking for, but you did say it was blogish...

I can really see where you are coming from with that. I'd have never called what I do religion, but now that you point it out I can see how they deconstruct into similar activities. Can you have religion without faith? If not what is the super-set of activity that includes religion and "faithless" religion?

Organized religion.

NOT my point of view, just a certain interpretation on the events of history. If it makes you feel any better, it is considered an academically unsound way of viewing history.