Fever...Not good... :(

Today is suppose to be RPG Saturdays for me. Every Saturday, I go out and meet some friends of mine in Makati and play RPG...not the computer games but the "Dungeons and Dragons" kind. For those who doesn't know what I'm talking about, RPG or Role Playing Game is not the computer game that kids today know. It's a kind of role playing game where you and your friends sit down with a rule book, some d10 (ten sided dice), a character sheet, pencils and erasers and a game master (or story tellers) calling the shots of a particular adventure you will be having for that day. It's really a game where you play a character, might like your real self or you play a different personality and act it by means of description. Sometimes you get to act it out too. The best thing about RPGs is that you get to go places no one can go. You get to experience meeting the strangest people while in reality you're just sitting down with friends. You get to do things you won't naturally be doing in real life. You get to experience love, hate, pain, anger, happy, sad and excited in a span of four hours (that's how long our game usually takes). It's a game where people with no imagination whatsoever would never understand...I tried explaining this to some old friends of mine and I swear I could see questionmarks above their heads. I think they were thinking that I'm an alien or something. :D

Anyway, that's what I love about RPG. I tried playing those computer RPGs but it's really different. Computer RPGs tend to give you only two choices, sometimes three, sometimes none at all. But with the real RPG, you get to choose most of the time. You get to describe it and you get to act it and it's your head that's going to suffer if you made the wrong choice.

I was reminded about a game last week that was really funny. We were playing Mage:Sorceror's Cruisade, and Jay, our GM (game master) was suppose to give us a serious game...unfortunately it turned out to be one of those funny moments. I guess it was because it was in the renaissance era and we're just trying to feel our way in the game. Anyway, one of the players was a sailor who can talk to sea creatures. But that's not the funny part. But to give you the gist, our group entered a sailing competition. We made some changes in the boat like adding fins that resembles the legs of a tortoise (imagine how the tortoise move underwater and imagine cargo boat doing the same movement) and a canon that was attached to the back of the ship in case we need an extra boost but we will use it only during emergencies. Needless to say, we tried the tortoise fins but we have yet to test the canon.

Anyway, moving on. The player who was the sailor who can talk to sea creatures in the game had a misunderstanding with our GM. We were made to get ready within the week and everyone who joined the contest (imaginary competitors of course) will sail on the same day. Our friend didn't understand it I guess because he planned on sabotaging the other boat (the military boat).

Needless to say, he got himself in trouble by killing innocent people because of the sabotage and ended up getting killed himself in the process. Good thing our GM was kind enough that he gave that player a second chance and that player ended up dreaming that he died because he was planning on sabotaging the other boats.

Anyway, my point here is you can't do that on a computer RPG. It's all fixed for you. You know what will happened to you already if you did this thing or that. In RPG, you have more than one choice and if you GM is that good like my friend Jay or my older brother for that matter, you are always at your feet because you don't know what you're up against.

Clearly, the human mind is still superior to the computers. You're always have to double guess what would happened next.

It's ashame I have a fever today. I would really love to have played today. I really look forward to RPG Saturdays. Being sick isn't a good thing. You always get to stay at home, mope, read a book, mope, watch TV, mope, eat, mope, sleep, mope...

Getting sick really sucks. I have been a sickly child since way back and it really bugs me that among me and my siblings, I get to be the sick one. I have healthy brothers and sister and it's really hard to catch up with them. You see all of them into sports while you have to watch in the background cheering them on. Hence the reason I love RPG. I get to be a healthy person in RPGs. I get to jump, run, kick ass without breaking a sweat with my clothes still on the right places and a dashing debonaire smile after a finish the stunt. :D

I hope I get better soon. I want to go back to my world of "healthiness". Not this headache-cold-and-fever-with-a-minor-heart-attack-on-the-side kind of world that I am right now...And I would really like to find out what will happened to our tortoise moving boat. Maybe we could even get to use the canon when we're nearing the finish line.