DexCon - Spiritual Bits & Pieces

Most people who know me know that I dislike long drives. If I'm driving for more than an hour, I really want to or have to be there, and I'm not very happy when I arrive. The trip to DexCon is about two hours travel time for me, so you know I really want to go. I tried something a bit different this time and made a very conscious effort to physically relax as much as possible for the entire trip, even down to my grip on the steering wheel, and I felt a lot better than usual when I arrived at DexCon this time. This is something to keep in mind for future travel.

This was my first trip away from home since I've been practicing yoga daily, so I had to change my morning routine from previous trips. I had to give myself more time to get ready, giving up precious sleep, but it did give me a noticable lift before running the Sunday morning game, so I will continue to do this on future trips.

Getting away from home is a real challenge for my spiritual practice. It's relatively easy to maintain spiritual balance at home, where I have much more control over my environment. It's very different to try to maintain that balance during the excitement of a convention, in a place I only visit once a year and in the company of a friends I see only occasionally and many people I've never met before. The number of social interactions is high and the nature of those interactions can be intense because of the enthusiasm everybody has for the hobby. Whether things go well or go badly, it's easy to fall into bad old habits and let my ego get in the way, and I find it happens too often. I'd been trying to think of some reminder I could use to bring myself back to a mindful and undistracted state. I'd read that some spiritual retreats have a bell that is rung periodically, the purpose of which is to make everyone there stop what they're doing and center themselves again, and I was trying to come up with something that could serve that same purpose for me on a trip, but couldn't come up with anything workable. The best idea I had was to use the realization itself as the reminder. It's a matter of becoming aware of the loss of focus and correcting it when that happens. With practice, the focus is likely to be lost less frequently.

The way my games went at this convention has me thinking again about why and how I participate in roleplaying games. The details of working out a roleplaying philosophy are more appropriate for a separate blog entry, but the immediate point is that I find myself questioning why I do this at all. The short answer is that I enjoy creating a story, playing the non-player characters, and entertaining the players. For me, the rules are only important to the degree that they assist in allowing the players to create a good story with me. Writing prose would scratch the story itch, but not the performance itch, which I find is definitely a significant element for me. Playing music scratches the performance itch, but not the story itch, because you can only put so much story into a song. Is all of this just about my ego, trying to show off how clever I can be in terms of crafting an interesting story and presenting intriguing characters, or is it something more genuine?

I did a fair amount of writing well before I had any audience for it, locking it away in drawers because I wasn't sure anyone else would think it was good, so I can be sure that's truly part of me. The spontaniety of a roleplaying performance is also very exciting to me. I can prepare material for a roleplaying game, giving me a large measure of control over the story, but the players have plenty of room to utterly surprise me with their interpretations of the characters and the choices they make. In a convention game, I get to choose what sort of story I want to see and what characters will be involved, while the players make the choices for the characters and decide what the conclusion of the story will be. This mix is why I prefer being a GM to being a player. Others have pointed out that roleplaying games have the unique property that the performers and the audience are the same people, which probably narrows the number of people to which it has appeal.

Having an audience is certainly encouraging me to continue with this form instead of, say, writing and performing plays or short films on a local scale. Writing RPGs is also a lot easier than putting together something like that, and my favored choice of subject matter is usually more appropriate to a roleplaying game than a play or small scale film.

If I had a larger ego I might be more ambitious and want a bigger audience, so I don't think this is about ego at the core. It's about coming up with characters and stories that interest me (and hopefully others) rather than being about getting compliments from others. I enjoy compliments when I get them, and I have to admit that my ego has gotten pumped up at times when I've gotten a lot of positive response in a short time, but I'm consciously working against that sort of thing happening now and can honestly say it's not the reason I do this.