It’s a warm summer evening, or maybe a hot weekend afternoon, and the Story People gather in the shade of the porch. We’re a couple steps up from the driveway, and just outside the double glass doors of the South Living Room. The door stands open; a gentle breeze blows in, and the sounds of Firefly episodes sometimes blow out. Our laughter rises and falls like a tide, and the wooden boards creak under the weight of our merriment.
Sometimes I’m in a chair, notebook open, dice at the ready. Sometimes I’m sprawled on the roof of the bike shed, peering down like a cat, just listening and listening. I lean into the warm light of the tale, and before I know it, I’m worlds away, in another life.
***
That, in a nutshell, is how I fell in love with roleplaying games. The Porch is a channel dedicated to that love, and to all Story People who share it.
Roleplaying has been a lot of things to me: an excuse to socialize; a way around the pesky notion that I might someday have to grow up and stop playing pretend; an intense thought exercise; an engaging math problem; a co-creative wonderland. Between about 2002 and 2016, I kept a record of playing no fewer than 98 different characters. I run comparatively few games, and the vast majority of those are for a single player (who happens to be my spouse).
I love RPGs in my own way. The system of the game — the die rolls, the XP, the character sheets, the number crunching — is sometimes a huge part of that, and other times not. The feeling of co-creating those stories, on the other hand, is something I will never forget.
So pull up a chair, and let’s tell a tale or two.