So I’m a little late in posting this. I’ve spent the entire day out. I didn’t get home until past midnight, so I simply haven’t gotten the chance.

Anyways, today I’m going to talk about escape. Specifically my means of escape. A lot of people “escape” their troubles by means of reading I’m told, but I personally only have echoes of that feeling through reading. I simply don’t get sucked into a novel the way other people do, unfortunately.

I don’t consider everything an escape, though. Playing video games is not an escape. I don’t really get sucked into those either. For me, that’s simple entertainment (by various means, as there are an innumerable amount of game genres). Playing video games could also mean playing and spending time with friends, even if we’re not in close proximity.

There are two ways I can guarantee myself escape from the world around me. The first is storytelling. When I talk about Nacre Then, I almost literally tell its tales from the inside looking out. In the time I’m telling somebody about the birth of the Preservers, or the horrors of the Rupture, I am there witnessing the event I created again. I know other people don’t get images that vivid, but one day maybe that will change.

The other means is by playing pretend. I like acting. But that isn’t the same as being an actor. I don’t like memorizing lines and playing a specific character. I like improvisation. In high school and some time after that, I had been a part of (and later a “captain”) of an improv comedy troupe. I liked playing the roles I made for myself.

But this is, in a way, a diluted form of escape for me. In many of those games you don’t even have a “character” you are playing, and even if you do you only play that role a short time. So my preferred means of this is Dungeons & Dragons.

Playing D&D, I can be who I want to be. Today, I literally cut the arm off a burning skeleton and backhanded his skull of with his own skeletal limb. I mean, how awesome is that? I’m playing a game where I make the rules. No video game would give me that much freedom of choice.

But the most fun I have playing D&D is the role-playing. I enjoy speaking as and playing the role of a half-orc paladin with a troubled past. I like interacting with other characters in this fictional universe and making an impact on the people around me. I am sharing an adventure with five other people, and we’re all sitting at a table making it all up on the spot. I may have an idea of where I want the story to go, because my character has personal goals he wants to achieve, but I know my Dungeon Master (DM) has an actual plot he wants us to follow at the same time. In the end its a compromise, and nobody, not even the DM knows what story will be told in the end. We’re making memories. Laughing about stupid things our characters did (or horribly failed at) and crying at the times our characters horrendously failed. Sometimes that brings laughter to.

All-in-all, I’m transported to a world I wish I was in. I’m one of those people that fantasizes about being the hero in a world of magic. Obviously, I’m aware that the medieval times were not quite as glamorous as we are fond of describing, but my passion is the fiction of sword and sorcery, and of might and magic. Sometimes I wonder if people don’t have the same enthusiasm simply because they haven’t been exposed to the same levels of awesome as I have, but I guess if everybody liked the same things, the world would be quite boring. Wait.

Also, quick story about our session today. We were planning a raid on a local gang’s hideout. Deciding between going in guns blazing and going in all sneaky-like, we chose to stealth in. Then our rogue rolled a two. So, after making different plans, we had to readjust and go in guns blazing anyway. Remember what I said about improv? We all almost died.