Jonesing

The holiday season is usually a time when our regular roleplaying sessions start to fall apart. Half the time people are busy with holiday season stuff, or working extra. Plus it's flu season, plus it's the season when people's cars fail, plus we can get snowed in. The times that remain are often used up on the actual holidays.

But we've already been at a near complete standstill for several months due to people's schedules getting more complicated because of their jobs. So I guess ultimately I can blame AIG for the fact that I'm jonesing for roleplaying.

Carnage helped ease it, so I'm glad it happened to happen when it did. Early November is a good time to "camel up" on roleplaying just before entering the desert of the holiday season, but doubly so this year when the land has been dry for a while before. But even so, I find myself thinking "that might be a good campaign" or "that's an interesting character idea" far too often, which is a sure sign I'm suffering a deficiency.

Maybe in January or February when hopefully I have a T1 line I can use webcam, Skype, etc. to get more roleplaying opportunities. But it's already possible to roleplay in chat or by email, and I've made hundreds of tries at those things over the years, but most of them fail. So I don't know how likely it is that connectivity is going to help. If anything, it'll just connect me to a world of people who are sating their needs with MMORPGs.

From what I've seen, MMORPGs aren't likely to appeal that much to me. MUDs are usually a notch or two above them on the kind of roleplaying I'm most interested in, and those are, when they're at their best, only a poor substitute. And their best hasn't been its best for a long time and probably won't be for a while yet (which is no doubt contributing to the jones).