Even though I haven’t played in ages, D&D has always been a pretty important part of my life.  I played online in mIRC chat rooms and on various messageboards while I was in college, but it never felt the same.  I liked it, but it was like a grocery store cupcake compared to homemade–edible, but not nearly as good.

I remember that first character far better than the online ones in between.  Having her on paper made her more real, I think.  Her name was Nixie.  She was half aquatic-elf, which made perfect sense if you knew that her mother was a former pirate-turned-bounty-hunter who had attracted a male aquatic-elf patron.  He would follow the ship around and bring them good fortune.  When Nixie’s mother was knocked overboard in a heated battle, he saved her by taking her to one of those handy Enchanted Underwater Grottos of Safe Breathing.  When she got back to land, she was knocked up.  Nixie was the result.  She joined her mother on ship as soon as she was old enough, and was raised in armor and with a sword in her hand.  Nixie had silver hair, with one green eye and one blue eye.  If she sounds like something a fourteen-year-old would come up with, you would be correct.

Nixie was a fighter.  She started out with six hit points, leather armor, a short sword and a longbow.  She nearly died in her first fight because she had six goddamn hit points.  (She got better.)  On another occasion, she managed to critically miss the target and accidentally shoot herself with a bow and arrow for half of her total health.  She got into a lot of trouble, but she always managed to survive.

Playing yesterday brought back many of those memories, and helped to create new ones.  My boyfriend, younger brother, and younger brother’s girlfriend all joined me.  It was the first time any of them had played D&D, and they all loved it.  I think 4th Edition is a really solid system for first-timers and old-timers alike.  It took them a couple of rounds to get the hang of the combat system and then we were off and running.  (Or rolling, if you like the pun.)  Arrows were shot, spells were slung, swords were slashed and a good time was had by all.

And yes, it turned out I could throw a rock at the kobold.  And I killed it with said rock, too.  Yeah!  Suck it, kobolds!

…

Ahem.  I’m playing Bioshock right now.  The first one.  Yes, I know the second one came out already.  Yes, I know I mentioned that I got it for Christmas and now it’s May.  Yes, I know I’m chronically behind on my game-playing.  Shush.

Anyway.

I’m quite enjoying it.  I’ve had some extremely creepy moments so far, which are quite excellent, really.  I don’t usually play scary games because I find them emotionally exhausting, but with Bioshock the creepy moments are well-balanced against the rest of the gameplay, which keeps me from getting too freaked out to continue playing.  The environments are amazing–looking a little bit dated at this point but that doesn’t make them any less beautiful.  Being able to light someone on fire or shoot goddamned bees at them out of my hand never gets old.  As far as I’m concerned, though, the crown jewel in this thing is the story and how it unfolds.  Listening to those tapes sends shivers down my spine.  What happened here?  How did everything go so wrong?  Andrew Ryan was clearly pretty batshit insane just to begin with, but when you listen to the voice of someone who just moved to Rapture to find a better life it’s pretty heartwrenching.

I’ve managed to almost completely avoid spoilers for this game, which is no mean feat, let me assure you.  Because of this, I honestly have no idea how far through the game I am.  I don’t know how many levels are left, or how many bosses I’ll still have to fight.  But I know one thing…  I’m going to find Andrew Ryan, and I am going to shoot that bastard in the face. And then cover him in bees!

On that note, here is some yarn I made!

YanYan approves this message.

One I am done with my somewhat massive amounts of holiday yarncrafting, I will be back to playing video games and posting about those.  Until then, you can probably expect more yarn.

At least it’s pretty yarn, eh?

Into this:

It’s about 22 yards of my very first handspun yarn, and I’m quite proud of my lumpy messed-up wool baby.  I’m finding spinning to be very relaxing, in a similar way to yoga.  You do some of the same movements over and over again, slowly and carefully, and just pay attention to what happens.  In yoga, what happens is you get some nice exercise and are hopefully a little closer to being able to touch your toes when you bend over.  In spinning, you end up with yarn!  I found it so enjoyable I felt the need to repeat the process with another pile of roving:

Mmm…   The colors.

PS:  If anyone has any questions they’d like to me answer about video games or whatever, please ask ‘em in the comments!  I’d like to make the Q&A a more regular part of the blog.

When this happens, hobbies are what will save your sanity.  I really recommend having a couple of hobbies outside of work that are as far removed from video games as possible.  If you make video games all day, and then come home and play video games all night, that’s a lot of time with a console or computer.  There’s nothing wrong with that if you enjoy it, but for me personally, sometimes the last thing I want to do after a day of playtesting is play another game, even one that isn’t broken.  There are also some serious health problems that can result from a sedentary lifestyle, as well as the repetitive stress injuries that come hand-in-hand with a lot of computer use.  (Ask me how I know.  Tennis elbow.  FROM MOUSING.)

Personally, the two hobbies outside of work that keep me sane are knitting and yoga.  Knitting because it’s a creative endeavor that at the same time requires none of the tools I use at work, and yoga because it is about as far from sitting in front of a screen as it is possible to be.

The things that I like about knitting are somewhat telling.  It’s creative and lets me use my art skills when it comes to designing a garment or settling on a color scheme.  It’s also something that I can control completely from start to finish.  Nothing randomly glitches and crashes when you’re knitting.  It’s impossible to have a corrupted save file with knitting.  It’s portable, so I can do it on the bus, at home, or at a tea shop.  I don’t have to play super-close attention to it, so I can do it while I’m watching TV or holding a conversation.  I don’t have to make a special time for knitting the way I have to for drawing.  I can pick up knitting and start right where I left off without wandering all over the map trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.  (Final Fantasy III on the DS, I’m looking at you.)  And when I’m done knitting something, I have a finished product that doesn’t need to be submitted to any companies or be approved by any publishers.  It’s mine, and I made it the way I wanted.

Yoga, on the other hand, requires me to actually pay attention to my body and nothing else for an hour.  It makes me move in hundreds of ways that I don’t at work.  There are poses and exercises that stretch the Perpetual Mouse Muscle Knot that lives in my right shoulder blade.  I do yoga because I know that what I do for a living can be extremely damaging to my body in a lot of ways, and yoga is a way to counteract that.  Also, it has brought me a lot closer to being able to touch my toes when I bend over, and that’s a serious accomplishment for someone with hamstrings like mine!

Whatever you do in the industry, remember to have a life outside of it.  It’s much healthier for everyone.