April 26, 2000
Wild at Heart
Oy. This week's obsession has been all about my Changeling game. After finishing my first storyline, I came up with a second one almost right away... the trick was to get all my ideas in coherent order in a form that made sense. Finally this past weekend I sat down and managed to do that, with a lot of help and encouragement from Brand. (Okay, I'll be honest. I fired up MS-Word while we were on the phone and we pulled together the beginnings of my notes.) He's probably the best sounding board for story ideas I have. Needless to say, once the basic storyline started falling into place, I got extremely psyched. I still am. So. Basic story arc in place. I know what's going on behind the scenes, and I know where I'm going. What's left? All the organization for the game I'm running this weekend, the first story in the chronicle. So I started working on that Monday. I've been writing and planning until my head hurt.
Normally planning a game doesn't cause this much blood, sweat and tears. But this is a big story, and I want to do it justice. Most veteran game masters/Storytellers say they don't plan much for a game. I can't do that yet. I need to know exactly where I'm going, or I don't go anywhere. So I give myself plenty of material to work with, and let it go from there. If we stray from the material I have planned, no biggie. But at least I have something to toss at the characters if things slow down. Writing game notes is sort of like writing a story... except that I have no control over the main characters (the players). So, I write everything else that's going on, and leave the rest of them. It takes some getting used to, and I'm not quite there yet.
As far as the rest of the week goes... it's been mostly good, but interesting. I got my emotional knees a little skinned earlier in the week. Me and my innate desire to have drama in my life. I think sometimes that means I create it or exaggerate it out of small things. Essentially, I had a small crush on a friend of mine, and it came out that he's interested in someone else, and that I'm his best friend. This should sound familiar to anyone who knows me. I realized fairly quickly that it wasn't so much the incident itself that upset me, but the pattern it represents. Once again, Brand came to the rescue, with some words that helped, at least: "You've got a wild heart, and you tend to lead with it. That means you sometimes get hurt more than others." I whimpered something about wishing I could build more walls, and he said, "Then you wouldn't be you. Sooner or later, living the way you do will pay off though, and you'll find the right person." Something about having a 'wild heart' made me feel better. And what he said made me think of the two quotes on the sidebar.
I'm highly adolescent in some ways. While I'm perfectly capable of having an adult relationship, when I'm not in such a relationship, I tend to get silly, like recently. I don't know. It's a complex part of me that I'd planned to break down and analyze tonight... but the self-analysis is going to have to wait... again.
This is why I adore Michigan in the spring time:
