I am currently sitting in a beautiful, one-room cabin up on top of the Blue Mountains in northeast Oregon. This is a favorite vacation location for My Lovely Bride™ and I, as it is roughly thirty miles from any sort of fireworks displays for Independence Day. My dogs don’t “do” fireworks, you see.
But that’s only tangentially connected to the topic at hand, being what I’m not doing right now, and absolutely should be: Roleplaying.
You see, aside from the occasional hike through the woods, taking naps and listening to audiobooks, there’s not a lot going on out here, quite literally in the middle of nowhere. So this is really a great location where My Lovely Bride™ and I could – and should – be doing a bit of solo and/or cooperative tabletop roleplaying. All I had to do was throw a game in a backpack, with some pencils, character sheets and notepaper, and of course many dice, and just… get to it.
I did consider bringing a simple game like “Vagabonds of Dyfed”, or maybe something with a bit more meat to it, like “Dungeon World”. The point being to stuff the absolute minimum into a bag and have at it, but alas, it was not to be.
I just wish I had made the room in one of my bags, because as I write this, I am so incredibly bored that I’d even play something like “Dangerous Journeys”, “Fireborn”, or even “Giantlands”! But at least I know now that I will have to make that room for future vacations, because both My Lovely Bride™ and I love to roleplay, and I am now a bit of an old hand at GM-Less Tabletop Roleplaying.
Okay, before I hear about it in the comments, yes – I know I don’t need rules and other accoutrements to actually roleplay. They just make things easier and more focused. Hell, when my brother first taught my friend and I to play TTRPGs back in the 1970’s, we didn’t have any game rules. We just made it up as we went along, which was fine then, and certainly could work now. But my sweetie would much rather have a few dice to roll, and a book to refer to, if she’s going to play something. That’s just how she roleplays, and I can’t really blame her for it.
So rather than doing something fun, like playing a roleplaying game, here I sit – writing something resembling a blog post. Luckily, I do happen to have another vacation coming up later this year. That will be in a yurt on the Oregon coast, in the depths of Autumn, so it will be too rainy to do any hiking. Generally, we just go on this trip to get away from the house for a few days, listen to audiobooks, and sleep a lot.
… and maybe do some roleplaying?
