Author: Catherine Heath

I can’t really remember what I was doing when I walked into the living room to see my husband going through my dice bag, but I do remember asking him what the hell he was doing going through my dice. It was the second time that week, and it was starting to get bizarre – not to mention annoying. His Vampire the Masquerade dice had gone missing and so naturally he’d been turning the place upside down looking for them all. As a fellow gamer, my dice bag had naturally come under suspicion, twice. The first time, I’d let him get it out of his system, yeah sure, knock yourself out and look in my dice bag. But the second time, it irritated me because it was like he thought I was secretly squirreling away his VtM dice for some nefarious purpose.

I wasn’t, but all of that is pretty much beside the point. No, the point today, dear friends, is that living with another gamer – especially the Storyteller of a game you’re playing in – comes with its own set of shenanigans.

I’m a curious sort, and as much as people say that curiosity kills cats, I’ve always found enough satisfaction in pursuing my curiosity to keep me coming back. Over the years, this curiosity has led me to geek out over the most
obscure things (and even learn some weird dead languages in order to do so). It was what made me move to a bunch of different countries when I was younger, and has led to some of my most cherished adventures.  When that curiosity met gaming though, it sort of morphed into a kind of ‘arms race’ in our home. It’s really not my fault that I’m something of a natural detective, and well, if my husband leaves the various gaming books outside the bathroom that he’s using for research for the various games he’s running (that I happen to be playing in), it’s totally not my fault if I take note of that and do a bit of reading, right?

 
Not that I’d use that knowledge in-game though, it’s just that curiosity thing again.

It’s like when I’m at a store and find a game book we don’t already own that I suspect *might* be relevant to the story. Our local gaming place has a “no smelly person’s” rule, it’s nice…you know, to just stay and read a while.

And it’s not like I remember everything I read anyway; or much of anything I don’t write down; or read a few times.

Even so, my husband has gotten wise to me and has started putting his research books away again. From a housekeeping perspective, I’m considering this a score (even if it is a setback for curiosity).

Then there are the conversations about games in a more general sense. These conversations are so frequent at our table that I wouldn’t be surprised if our 2 year old daughter thinks that Nephandi are a bunch of assholes she might one day come across in the world. I love these conversations, they help me to learn the game and remember what I learn. I also really like discussing in-game possibilities and bouncing ideas off my husband for future games; which brings me to my next point…

Sometimes in these conversations, I obviously stumble across something plot-related to one of the games we’re currently playing. I say “obviously”, because it’s really not that common that my husband starts laughing maniacally and tenting his fingers like Montgomery Burns. He gets this look of utter glee on his face, and that cackle – well, that lets me know I’ve hit pay dirt. I don’t even think he has control over this reaction, to be honest, it just kind of comes out; bubbling up out of his mouth like some kind of geyser of megalomaniacal delight.

 
If there’s one thing my husband loves, it’s building his stories and being (mostly) in charge of the chronicle he creates. And while it might seem like I’m some kind of planet X-type wrecking ball in all of this, I’m really not, because if anything, I think we’re getting to know each other even better through gaming (both in and out of game). Given how many friendships (and relationships) are forged around gaming tables, this is hardly surprising. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the short time I’ve been gaming (at least on a regular basis), it’s that it’s not just about dungeon-crawling tomfoolery or exploring new worlds and paradigms, more than that, it’s about the gamers as people themselves.

We live in a weird era. We all inhabit Facebook as though it were a village and think we know people well for them posting photos of dinner or their most random of random thoughts. But we don’t, and if we don’t take care, it’s all too easy for our online friends to become little more than self-generating content for a website that keeps us all hooked for hours on end. We’re missing the human, and it just so happens that a good way to get it back is found in pretending to be something (often) inhuman with a bunch of friends and a shitload of dice.

Cat Heath is a newbie gamer who is developing a love of all things White Wolf (Classic WOD). Although a long-time student of folklore, mythology, and the occult, Cat resisted getting involved in gaming in any major way despite the best efforts of her husband – Josh Heath of Reach-Out Roleplaying Games. However, more recently the laughter and pieces of story floating from the gaming table drew her in and she’s found herself getting sucked in. Naturally her husband is rubbing his hands together with glee. Cat can be found online at http://seohelrune.net where she writes about those more occult topics, and is currently working on putting the final touches to a couple of books.

So, I’m kind of a newbie gamer but I already know that I like it. I love the imagination, the collective story building, and getting to know both mine, and the characters of my co-players. Gaming has become a feature of our household schedule now – we play every week – and I’m more than fine with that because it’s fun. I look forward to it.

The only problem for me though, is trying to play with memory issues.

RPGs are games with homework in that you have to learn the world in which the game is set as well as how the game is played, and for a new player, it can be kind of overwhelming. For a new player with memory issues though, it’s especially daunting.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by ‘memory problems’. We started a Mage game, and I read most of the core-book within a couple of days of us deciding to start the game. Within another day, I already had a character fleshed out and had written a backstory. In other words, I did what the newbie gamer is supposed to do – I read and I got invested. However, two days after that, I couldn’t tell you anything about what I’d read in spite of having multiple conversations with my husband and a co-player about the game. Had I not written the weird fan-fiction thing about my character, I probably would have forgotten her backstory and why I wanted my character to be who she is.

When a lot of us think of memory problems, we tend to think about full on amnesia, or the senility of old age. What we don’t often think about is that, like most things, memory problems are better visualized as being on a scale of mildness vs severity, and they can be the result of multiple medical issues – not just senility.

I have Hashimotos Thyroiditis, which means my body attacks my thyroid. It’s degenerative, and eventually I ended up with an underactive thyroid. No, scratch that, a very underactive thyroid. I gained weight, I was exhausted all the time, felt cold all the time, and even grew this super sexy goiter (it wasn’t, but I’m being sarcastic here). Those are the things I kind of expected though, what I didn’t expect was how that shit would affect my brain. I mean, who would think that hypothyroidism was associated with some degree of memory loss?

I certainly didn’t, but it’s something I’m living with now, and it’s something I’m having to learn to work around when it comes to gaming.

So, how do I do that?

First of all, I take notes about everything. My character sheets are just full of notes about things like what however many dots in whatever sphere means in terms of what I can do with it, or important game mechanics that I keep forgetting. I’ve had to move into notepads now because it’s faster to reference than pulling out the books and more courteous to other players in-game.

  Secondly, I’ve found that I tend to retain information a little bit better when I take the time to discuss things I don’t remember so well with my husband or friends. This sounds like a no-brainer, after all, everyone remembers reviewing information for school exams, right? Same principle, it’s just most people don’t need to do it to the same extent as me before games. I don’t think most people are like, “Fuck, what’s the fucking Tellurian again?” as other players are filing in through the door because their brain has just gone straight up blank. Or maybe they are, at least the crew I play with don’t seem to be.

But as simple as these tips sound, they wouldn’t be possible without the kindness of my co-players and their understanding of my issues. They get that I often forget clan/tradition names, that I often can’t remember ‘the story so far’ at the beginning of a session, and that I’m going to be doing a lot of writing. They also put up with my discussions – well, I think they enjoy that bit really though. I’m very much aware that their understanding and tolerance is what enables me to play, and like I said before, gaming is something I enjoy.

Friday night gaming has become something I look forward to during the week, and although I may sound like the weakest player ever, with a few adjustments and the help of other players outside of game, I’m actually getting pretty good at holding my own.

 

Like any newbie player really.

 

Cat Heath is a newbie gamer who is developing a love of all things White Wolf (Classic WOD). Although a long-time student of folklore, mythology, and the occult, Cat resisted getting involved in gaming in any major way despite the best efforts of her husband – Josh Heath of Reach-Out Roleplaying Games. However, more recently the laughter and pieces of story floating from the gaming table drew her in and she’s found herself getting sucked in. Naturally her husband is rubbing his hands together with glee. Cat can be found online at http://seohelrune.net where she writes about those more occult topics, and is currently working on putting the final touches to a couple of books.