Casting Shadows

Here we are at the final prompt of #RPGaDAY2024. For those of you who wrote, recorded, or expressed yourself across the Internet for some or all of this month in support of sharing our positive experiences, recommendations, and ideas we give you our thanks. David and I both suffered deaths in the family, and ongoing obligations and effects from that. His family has been hit with multiple deaths over the course of all of that it takes to do RPGaDAY, and mine was hit with a cancer scare, surgery, and all that goes along with aggressive treatment.

This was the closest we have ever really come to not launching the event and the outpouring of support and participation has been fantastic to see. Short form blogging, long-form blogging, video shorts, standard videos, compilation videos, daily podcasts, weekly or compilation podcasts, plus images, cross-stitch, and pretty much everything but the interpretive dance which is more elusive than the grail of Jon Peterson’s quest for when roleplaying took root in our collective identity as roleplaying gamers. Maybe next time~

So for me, this question hits pretty hard. It has appeared more than once over the years because out there on the Internet we can encounter strangers and friends losing their best friends and fellow gamers all the time and it is not an easy thing to talk about. It can be hard to move from the loss to the memories and ability to celebrate them for who they were. An event like this cannot change that, but as there are so many of us, and there is the certainty of similarity in human experience coupled with its bizarrely unique expression in all of its otherwise identical repetition, maybe it can be an extended hand which makes the steps in that direction easier. Again… maybe next year.

For those who know the roots of this blog it started with the loss of my genius friend Tom. That was in 2010 and each time I post here, and each time I don’t post here, and each time I roll the dice, start a new campaign, learn a new game, lend a hand, wish I had extended a hand, or come face to face with the person I am, I think of him.

I miss him. I miss his effect on the people around him. I miss his humor and his charitable nature. I miss his imagination. I miss how he sought and succeeded in bringing people together.

Most of all I miss all the conversations that were left unfinished and those that never had a chance to start.