So, this summer a lot of my local friends have gotten into pen and paper RPGs .. a la Dungeons & Dragons (in fact, D&D specifically). While buttering my toast this morning (and by morning I mean 3:38pm), it occurred to me… roleplaying games are never complete — they leave out huge parts of life. Never has there been an RPG involving such mundane tasks as buttering toast, brushing your teeth, using the restroom, etc.
Why is this? Well, it’s presumably because these things exist for another take on things, for adventures and the like, not the daily grind.
There have been games that did showcase the daily grind though, incredibly popular ones, in fact. The Sims, for example, is the best selling video game in history1. Why is it that when so much of gaming/movies/television was founded on providing distraction, providing colorful imagery and exciting adventure, that somehow the mundane became so popular?
And this trend does not stop with the Sims, it includes such movements as reality television and, I would say, blogs.
All of these present others’ lives within a semblance of our own, there is familiarity and yet an aloofness and excitement. In The Sims, the exciting element was that you got to micromanage a whole family in every aspect, time compression let you simulate events that are ever unsure in our own lives. Reality TV introduces various distortions, be it forcing people of unlike minds into closer proximity, introducing absurd challenges, or even simply the elements that the extra scrutiny add to people’s already odd lives.
And then there are blogs.. blogs offer us windows into people’s lives, but only what they wish to report. They provide a filter and give us access to part of a person’s life, but not that which they either don’t want others to see or simply think others won’t care about. And it is this limited portrait which produces intrigue, which produces excitement…
Well, if the limitedness correlates with the excitement, clearly this is one of the most exciting blogs ever! ^_^ So, other than a critique on the nature of the medium and a joke at my own expense, what shall I do with this entry? Originally, I intended to explain my lack of prolific blogging is the result of lack of interesting (and also freely admissible) happenings in my life, but I have talked (written) myself out of this because its a lame excuse AND I realized that one man’s tedium may be another mans enthralling subject matter. The Sims proved that everyday life CAN be interesting.
Therefore I have decided to use this entry to introduce a series of miniposts on the routine things of my life that have been busying me of recent. I hope that they give you a window into my routine life, familiar enough for the appeal of a reality show, but aloof enough to be intriguing. These miniposts should follow in (relatively) quick succession after this one. I hope you enjoy them! ^_^
~Donald Guy
1 I am enough of a Wikipedian to provide citations to blog entries: Walker, Trey (2002-03-22). “The Sims overtakes Myst”. GameSpot. CNET Networks. Retrieved from http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/simslivinlarge/news_2857556.html .
3 comments ↓
tibia totally forces me to buy food and eat it when my health runs low, therefore tibia is less shameful than D&D.
p.s. toast is delicious
Yeah, the everyday aspects of others lives intrigue me a lot actually (*cough* stalking *cough*), so post away. I never really liked The Sims though.
*gasp* D&D, really? What edition? Are you sticking with 3.5, or moving up to 4E?
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