Gaming

Exploring Worlds In My Head

I’ve been an explorer inside my mind since I was a second instar. It’s something for which I can thank my bullies at school.

A number of regular behaviours can be attributed to my being bullied over an extended period. The habit I have of eating alone; my habit of eating food like a bloody machine (I had to get as much food down me as possible before some (now long-dead) yahoo punched the back of my head or picked up the plate and shoved it into my face); and my deep love of books and reading.

I always loved reading. I lost myself in books. I found myself exploring worlds nobody else could even imagine. I learned about relationships, friendship, trust, and I never needed to mourn the fact that I lived in a toxic environment where no such things existed.

When I learned of the occult, I dug deep into it with a passion. My Dad used to take my occult books and quietly burn them. I’d buy more books, and replace the dust jackets with books on engineering, science, chemistry. He never knew. I put a Crowley book cover over one of his Bibles, once. Burn, fucker.

When I was old enough, I wandered. I roamed. I learned about chaos magic from people that Dad would have been terrified of. I learned about hypnosis.

Then, one day, my wandering stopped. I came home. I got my own place, and I could fill it with all the books I wanted. Beyond Dad’s reach, forever.

My first tabletop roleplaying game was Traveller. It still is, though - as with all RPGs - I never play the game with the rules as written. My rules were always a bit punk; d10s instead of d20s or d100s; a lot of improv; not everything required a bloody die roll. Sometimes, a routine task just got handwaved over, or there’d be a cut between scenes - “So, last time, you were setting off to the so-called Cursed Manor on the edge of town. We pick up with you all stepping out of your Psychedelic Passion Wagon and looking up the hill at said Manor, standing atop the little hill in its grounds, surrounded by withering trees. It’s noon. The best time for you to start walking up the path past all the brown clumps of dead grass …”

So I read. I dreamed. I imagined. I wrote. Nobody could come near me, in the places I explored.

You know that hypnosis thing? It’s an amazing thing to bring along to tabletop sessions. I’ve been using it to enhance the immersive process, to bring the players into the worlds I create, and meet with characters who inhabit my worlds in experiences which are almost like the explorations of my own mind.

And beyond that, I write. I chant. I seek to bring warmth, and pleasure, and a sense of worth to the outside world. The real world is hard enough on everyone I meet and work with. I see no reason to add to their woes, when I have the power to lighten their burdens.

Undoing what the world’s bullies are doing.

So, I continue to do what I did as a child. I live in my head; in my dreams; in my writings, both those on Archive of Our Own and elsewhere. The bullies of my childhood are in my past, but the rich inner life remains, realms of light.