We Aren't Alone

A recent post in A Paladin in the Citadel, a blog I regularly follow, dealt with gamers and bloggers in the place you live in. Speaking for myself, I was under the impression that gamers are a rare breed in my city and most of them do not maintain blogs. Now, I not altogether sure if I was correct in believing so.

I crave your collective pardon if this post takes on a self-serving aspect but I could not help but say something about what recently appeared on The Armchair Gamer. Until recently, I didn't even know my friend Alex actually had a gaming-related blog of his own. This changed when I received an email containing a series of questions posed by my friend, the results of which, were expected to form the basis of a series depicting various experiences and backgrounds of game masters known to him. I have Alex to thank for introducing me to Fading Suns back in 1998. We had a lot of wild, wacky and fun games with a relatively large gaming group that called itself The Herd. A large balance of the players from the Herd never played rpgs before but they took to gaming with a vengeance. They were fun times indeed!

In case you are wondering, Alex was referring to yours truly when he posted the responses of a certain GM Bobby in the above-mentioned post. My apologies go out to him as I fear that my responses were less-than-coherent as I was in the midst of shifting mental gears at the time I sent those out, right at the end of a toxic workday.

Most significantly, the responses gathered by Alex from his fellow game masters here in Manila brought home to me the fact that there are more people who engage in and endeavor to promote role playing games than I originally led myself to believe. This is a very good thing, and I am glad to be proven wrong in my belief that I seemed to be the only one who was doing this in our third world paradise.

I'm also very glad to see that my friend Adrian, whom I've lost touch with for the longest time is still running games in the grand style.

Although we local gamers don't necessarily have the same styles, experiences and preferences in gaming, I firmly believe that Metropolitan Manila can always use another good gamer, or a hundred, anytime. Speaking from experience, things have progressed considerably from the old days when we all had to share one tattered, sacred copy of the AD&D Player's Handbook and cobble up our own polyhedral dice cobbled up from cardboard filled with wax (!) after the soft plastic ones from our basic D&D boxed set died in action. And I look forward to even better gaming days ahead for our gaming community out here knowing that we are not alone.

Looking at things from a truly world-wide perspective, I've come to realize that the same thing is true as to the community of gamers existing all over right now. If there is good thing I picked up from the experience of trying my hand at maintaining my own gaming blog is that I met a lot of decent, intelligent and interesting people who all share a passion for this gaming hobby of ours. It is a realization that constantly provides me a lot of joy, comfort and considerable satisfaction. It makes me proud to have met them and to have learned so much from them.