Those of you who have read this post, may better understand this one.
Part of the reason this blog exists, is my insane level of optimism in the hope that is helps a few people improve themselves and perhaps stave off the total annihilation of thinking humans in the ongoing zombie apocalypse that we are currently in. Some argue the Zombie Apocalypse is 4 years old, but I have known it was essentially a Cold War ongoing pretty much since I was alive.
In fact, in the hopes of showing a few Zoomers or Ten Alphas the way, I even put out an actual RPG with a module, just in case the few of them that can still read instead of watch videos, might teach a few friends how to meet in real life and play a game together that provides fun, entertainment, and develops the imagination and your ability to solve real life problems, thanks to having to use your head to solve imaginary, or thought experiment ones.
But the general point is that my intent, insofar as I may have one, is to try to uplift whatever shrinking percentage of the population still exists that has understood we are the last stand of actual humans with a soul, and the brainwashed masses of idiots around us, led by evil pedophiles, are really quite likely to overwhelm us if we do not get organised, band together, and build fortress cities from which to stave them off.
There are so many facets of life that one needs to become aware of, from the evils of government and government-ran education, the sell-outs who aim to become the leaders, the corruption of everything from the basic morals of humanity to the lowest employee, and so on.
How to present a coherent whole easy to digest? And then it was clear:
No analogy of modern existence is as useful in terms of representing in a secular fashion the times we live in, than the parallel with pen and paper Role-Playing Games of old, like Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Top Secret, Car Wars, and so on.
Why? Well, allow me to explain, especially for those of you that never played them, which I expect is the sad, depressed, and depressing, majority of readers here.
In a game like Dungeons and Dragons, it was understood, that even a lowly first level, brand new adventurer, was a unique and rare individual. Most people in the D&D worlds, were simple shop-keepers, farmers, town soldiers, traders, merchants, and so on. Only the mildly insane, the idiotically brave, the wildly and untamed foolishly adventurous would wander about a world that is filled with marauding hordes of Goblins, Orcs, and Gnolls. Where werewolves, and Vampires, and Ghouls, and Zombies actually exist. Where magic is real and so are curses and spells that can channel in literal demons from other planes of existence.
And yet… every player made up a character and played that character. Those were the “people” who made the stories happen. Those were the only “people” that really made it worthwhile to be in such a world.
Life is not dissimilar.
When I was 16 I went to study in England for my A-Levels (which is not what you porn addicts thing it is, it was the last 3 years of school or so before you can go to university, after )-Levels, which is ALSO, not some perverse sex thing). I found the people there, in the supposed civilised West, to be far more retarded, limited and dumb than they had any excuse to be. While it is true I went to school in Africa where my parents paid fees, this was pretty much the case for almost all expatriates. And we did 7 to 9 exams for various subjects, like history, mathematics, geography and so on. In England the school I went to, had students that on average did 3. Things like English (their own language, Geography, and maybe History). One of the girls who did take Geography on my first few days there, asked me where I was from. I explained I was Italian but had spent most of my life in Africa. Her question:
“Africa? Oh… What’s the Capital of Africa?”
To which, astonished, I responded sarcastically:
“I don’t know, what’s the capital of Europe?”
Her: “The capital of Europe? I’m not sure… London… isn’t it London?”
One of the other girls came to her rescue, explaining Africa was a continent, not a country.
Nor was this experience unique. The level of education was poor, to be kind about it, but the level of inactive grey matter inside their thick skulls was far worse.
I recall trying to spark some reaction, a thought, an imagination, something, in one of the other students, who was asking me about my life and I asked him about his dreams and aspirations in turn. His reply?
“Oh, well, I’d like to probably get married some day, have a couple of kids, would be nice to have two cars…”
Again, I was aghast. I responded saying:
“Man, that is what happens if you do absolutely nothing. I mean, don’t you want to drive a Ferrari? or sail the world on a seventy-foot trimaran with an all female crew?”
His response?
“Oh that stuff only happens in the movies.”
To which I could not help but tell him:
“Well, yes, with your attitude, that is absolutely true for you.”
Now, I didn’t particularly ever care about driving a Ferrari, although I did briefly think a seventy foot trimaran would be awesome to own and I even tried to buy one once, not having sailed a day in my life and not having the money for it either. And I figured if I ever got one, I’d have got the all female crew along the way without too much trouble.
Now that I am older, I know I was right about getting the all-female crew, but the ship would have sunk at sea on its first outing with no survivors.
Again, my point is not that I was ever obsessed by making a lot of money, or achieving any particular thing, other than perhaps a proficiency in martial arts and the general ability to be able to adapt and survive pretty much regardless of circumstances.
Mostly I went after things that interested me, read about stuff that I found fascinating, like astronomy, and physics, and chemistry. Tried to see the weird and strange. understand the natural world around me, and when I could find one, tried to interact with people that I deemed at least somewhat interesting. In short, if you had to reduce me to a character class from Advanced D&D, I would probably have fit the description of a Ranger. Maybe Chaotic Good or Neutral Good. In Basic D&D I might have been a Mystic. Obsessed with achieving martial perfection in hand to hand and following a sense of the mystic in life, while able to do a lot of what some other classes could achieve only by over-specialisation (thieves) or magic (healing hands of Paladins).
As a result, like a typical PC, my life has been anything but boring. I have had tragic life events and astonishingly beautiful ones. I have seen and done things most men will not do or see, and both great pain and great joy comes with that, but above all, my most certain strength has been my absolutely thorough knowledge of myself.
The oracle at Delphi (which I visited, and saw myself) did say:
Man, know yourself.
And truly, that is the most important thing in life. But most men have very little idea of who they really are. Because unless you are actually faced with the prospect of death, bankruptcy, having your heart emotionally ripped out of your chest and stomped on, being lied about, and worse, as well as having had the experience of a woman that loves you to beyond what is healthy or sane, the friendship of another man that will stand next to you when you are both facing the very real prospect of being killed, and you doing the same for him, having money and being generous with it, and having none, not becoming a miser either, holding the hand of the woman you love being utterly powerless to prevent her miscarrying, and also seeing the first smile of your own son or daughter, as they look at you with the eyes of a newborn, unless you know and feel and go through all these things and remove all doubt from any corner of your psyche as to who and what you are, you do not really know. You can guess. You can hope. But you don’t know.
Twice in my life before the age of 10 I found a side of me I wanted to remove ferociously. I froze in fear once, and did not try to react another time, when it looked as if my brother would be dragged off a cliff by our dog he held by a leash, and would not let go of it as the dog hurtled towards the cliff face. I was too far to make it, so was my father, who was an adult, but at least he ran as hard as he could and shouted to “let go of the dog”. My knees went weak and I just knelt in the grass, feeling my heart sink as I thought I’d see my own brother die in a few seconds. The dog finally stopped short and so did my brother, but I never forgot the feeling of failure at not even having tried.
I had achieved some measure of success in removing this part of me by age 10, because by then, when an adult reached in the car and stole my mother’s purse from her bag and ran off with it (she had left it on the car seat next to me as she had gone out of the car briefly), I tried to chase him as hard as I could. He was an African that could probably have given Usain Bolt a decent run and in his late 20s.
When my mother returned I was in tears that I had not caught him. And when my father arrived on the scene too, I told him (because it was important to me that he knew I had not just stood by) that I really had tried to catch him, and run as hard as I could but I just couldn’t keep up with him at all.
My dad, looked at me calmly and said: “You’re ten years old. What do you think you could have done even if you had caught him?”
The thought had never even entered my mind. My only fear had been that he would get away, which he did. The concept of what might have happened to me if I had caught him was never even a thing. And I know I would have fought, utterly ineffective, and possibly suicidal as it would have been.
Later in life I had several occasions to realise that right down to the level of my DNA, I would not respond in a cowardly fashion even to a life and death situation where I thought I was sure to die, especially if the protection of people I cared about was on the line. In fact, I even had occasion to discover that I might jump in front of danger even for perfect strangers, which frankly, today, is a worry, because I think that is likely my actual response at an instinctive level now.
But this is not about me. it’s about you. I am using myself as exhibit #1 only because it is irrefutable and real because I lived through those things, so I know with certainty that it is possible (not easy or likely, but possible) to change even really deep-seated aspects of yourself.
And the key to becoming a PC in life instead of an NPC lies there. In your ability to see a path, a way of being, something you want to achieve, or become, and then throwing yourself into that until you do or die.
Nor is it necessary for you to be a wild Ranger, or a weird Mystic. Go and be whatever it is you want to be, but keep in mind that generally, character traits like perseverance, courage, honesty, integrity, and so on, are hard-won, and not often innate.
Perhaps the one aspect that differentiates PCs from NPCs is curiosity.
I went for a short hike through the forest on our land with my 5 year old son recently. He followed instructions, spoke softly so as not to scare any animals we might get to see, and did not complain about me having forgotten to take any water or the occasional thorn poking him when we went past brambles. At every turn I asked him which path he wanted to take. The one that looked easier, safer and a little more boring (though I never expressed any of these descriptors to him) or the one that looked harder, more difficult and that may get us stuck in a place surrounded by brambles and have to head back. He invariably chose the harder path.
So much so that at one point we had to cross some brambles by walking on a log that had fallen over a sort of crevasse, while I had to cut some brambles out of the way with a little pen knife I had, while trying to not slip off the slimy log into a void of brambles below us. He took it in stride, waited as I cleared the way, and trusted me not to drop him when I picked him up and dropped him on the other side as I made my way slower once he was safe.
He is five but he’s not scared even though he sees the dangers. He thinks and acts to get around the dangers while still going where he wants, not where the forest or a more prudent father might wish to take him.
Perhaps Player Characters are born, not made, I am sure to some extent that is true. But I also think some Player Characters can definitely be made or at least improved by conscious effort.
Non-Player Characters on the other hand, will always be with us. Even if they will never count for much except as background foliage.
So, reader… What will you be? A zero-level human villager, or will you roll the dice and become a first level player character who will dare to go where only fools, the insane, and those with the explorer gene dare to tread?
