Some of my fondest memories of college were staying up ungodly hours on Fridays and Saturdays drinking pop, Kool-Aid, crunchy coffee (don’t ask), and adventuring through my friend, Drew’s, mythical world of Phase. In addition to earning my Bachelor’s degree in English, I inadvertently released a dark vampire god, fought the forces of the undead, killed enough monsters and people to populate a small nation, and stole more than my fair share of damsel’s hearts and gold.
If you find the right group of people to game with they become family, and that’s absolutely what happened during my undergrad days. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the college we went to—Alice Lloyd—was a small liberal arts college nestled so far into the valleys of Southeastern Kentucky that the sunlight had to be piped in and the nearest thing we had to civilization was a Dairy Queen ten miles away. In the words of Luke Skywalker, if there was a bright spot at the center of the universe, Alice Lloyd was the furthest point away from it.
What I’m trying to say in my overly-verbose way is that there was nothing to do there (other than study, I guess). The majority of people went home on the weekend, which left the dorms a veritable ghost town for those of us who had no particular inclination to go home, or whose home was too far away. I fit both categories, as did most of my friends.
So Friday and Saturday nights were game nights, and while some people came and went over the years the core group of players stayed strong and I was privileged to witness some of the most insane, counter-intuitive yet effective acts of role-playing ever. (When we went to Gen Con in 2008 we actually made the RPGA Gamemaster at our table speechless. There were tears, I swear.)
As I write this my gaming group has been together for ten years. Over time our weekly get-togethers became monthly sessions as we graduated, married, got jobs, and in general got on with our lives. Thankfully we didn’t live too far away and were lucky enough to marry very understanding women, so we were still able to traipse around Phase righting wrongs, making wrongs, and having a good time. Of course, by this point the reason for getting together wasn’t because of roleplaying (although it was a nice bonus), but to hang out with old friends.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to participate. When I was in my Master’s program there wasn’t any time to play except for one or two rare occasions. Once I graduated that changed, but now I find myself in a similar situation being in a Doctoral program.
Like during my Master’s degree, time is an issue, but now space has become a problem too as I had to move to Pennsylvania for this phase of my education. Now I don’t regret for a minute moving up here, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my friends and the opportunity to slay an Orc or two. Luckily, modern technology may be able to solve this.
About a month ago I bought a webcam and signed up for a Skype account. Drew already had a webcam built into his laptop, and another of our friends, Jon, happened to have a boom mike so I could hear everybody in the room. We weren’t sure just how well it would work, but figured that there was nothing lost by trying.
And I have to say that it worked pretty well. The picture quality wasn’t the best, but I could see my pals, and after a bit of fiddling with the laptop’s placing, the map and our minis. The sound quality was a little better than the picture, but there were times when everybody was talking at once where I couldn’t make out what anybody was saying.
Nothing will ever replace the experience of being there, but I have to say that playing by webcam is a good second. Other than getting used to the sound and video, I would have to say that the biggest thing I had to get used to was the sense of disconnection with what was going on. It’s an even stranger feeling when I start to consider that the game itself is about disconnection: you play a character who isn’t real, whose words, actions, deeds are determined by your words, the roll of the dice, and the imagination of those involved. When I’m playing I’m not Josh, I’m Arjhan, the Dragonborn Warlord, except now I’m not there physically so what my friends see is me playing a character. I’m two steps removed from the process.
And now I have a headache.
Stepping back from that dizzying thought, playing by webcam has been an interesting experience, but as I’ve only done it once I don’t want to make too many definitive statements. I’m certainly going to try it again this April (unless schoolwork gets in the way, that is), and I’ll be sure to take Game-Journal.com readers along with me for the experience. And if any of you have tried playing via webcam, drop me an email or leave a comment and let us know how it’s going for you.
Game well.
