I'm reading and playing tabletop roleplaying game books.
Sci-Fi ones from Mongoose Publishing, the Traveller RPG. It's been around nearly 50 years when the war games nerds playing out alternative WW2 and historical encounters, and battles, decided to go for Fantasy
and Sci-Fi
settings with a bit more creativity to them. It's me going back to my youth of hanging out in a pal's house, people sitting all over the shop, music playing, coffee until 3am, snacks everywhere, Mams and Dads away but not having too many worries about us (mistakenly
) because we were a bunch of smelly nerds playing make believe with dice.
Did a little solo gaming sesh over the weekend, posted a few times about it, too. Much better than playing video games. Completely offline.
Only involvement of computers was the PDFs up on the screen, although I'd love to own all the physical books. A total hobby in its own right. It's mostly creative writing but because you're rolling dice to have some randomness with key events, and have to think/write your way out of bad results, there's a lot of logic, creativity and imagination involved.
A great way to get off the interwebs and engage the brain. Not as hard or as much of a struggle as writing fiction as it's only for yourself. And, like I said, much better than video games as the boundaries are your own imagination, not what some knobhead nerd in America or Canada programmed into a shitey computer program that takes a €3k PC to run at full graphics that no cunt can afford, certainly not a working parent, or me, a struggling pisshead. And things are only going to get more expensive with all the computer components going to AI data centres instead of to end users, now. Never mind all the exploitative gambling mechanics they're burying in games to get the childer addicted. 'twould ruin ye!
If you've any nerdy teens in your life addicted to the internets get them into Sandbox on Olly Plunkett St. There's plenty of offline nerd activities to be found there. We all need these ways to disconnect and get into the real world, and can do with some creativity and community, but when brains are developing it's needed even more! I had a blast with this. Gonna do more again today if I'm not shagged come 9pm. I should transcribe and pull quotes from stuff I did before Christmas, today, because I live in the real world. After dinner, though, I'll be on an oppressive space station that's constantly monitoring its inhabitants trying to get my character her own space ship so she can escape!
Special shout out to the various pubs in Cork City that tolerated and even supported the nerds and their nerds games throughout the years. Especially special shout out to Cissie Young's from 20 years ago who were very good to me and my buddies. There was a fella there who'd always make sure there was a table for us, beneath some decent lights, and he'd put them on for us. And there was always aul lads in Cissie's observing who said they wished these types of activities were around when they were young. It's never too late, though!
