The World’s Game of D&D, and why most people I like suck at it….
Originally published at shanefitzsimmons.com. You can comment here or there.
Sometimes I get in the mood for a good RPG. A good RPG to me constitutes something very character driven and story-heavy. I’m not big on hack ‘n slash.
It occurred to me today, however, that the world is. If the world were a D&D game, it would be less important to maximize adventure and the journey you take and the things you learn from your experiences and all that shit. It would be more about maxing out your stats and accumulating lots of gold and loot.
Maybe that’s why I feel incompatible with the world as it is. I’m not especially concerned with earning tons of money or accumulating lots of shit, with my +52 inch plasma TV or SUV of Low Gas Mileage, maxing out or Credit Score attribute. We are a culture of power gamers. To us, the enjoyment is in the stuff. It’s reducing everything to a set of hard statistics so we can compare cock size with each other to re-assure ourselves that we are better than everybody else. And we can’t put hard statistics on experiences and shit like that, so instead we put them on unimportant garbage like careers, cars, and fancy outfits.
It’s by those traditional standards that I am a failure. It’s also by those standards that most people I enjoy spending time with are failures (to varying degrees). It’s just about where you choose to put the emphasis on life though. Some people do it by quantifying and number crunching and comparison, while the people I like to be around do it through moment-to-moment experiences, which are much more difficult to turn into a hard figure, but wind up being more enjoyable/meaningful.