A personal beginning

Truth be told, the first time is awkward, it always is. Even with friends, although I can be grateful that it was with friends. Luckily, one of our

friends, Jim, is an experienced D&D player. He immediately slips into character, a farmboy who’s looking for work, even feigning tipping his hat as

he describes his character doing so. My brother, who happened to join us, is playing a silent battle-torn juggernaut. We get along well, and I feel

Rayne does as well. Some mood music is put on in the background as we exchange our pseudo Wild West

pleasantries. I adopt a strange accent, mixing Texan drawl and stereotypical Chinese tourist.

The man across from me is dead drunk, supposedly a captain of a ship. A ship is good, ships mean space, ships mean moving. I’m pretty sure [That means I’m not] that he’s an easy way off this rock and into more money. Money is good, money means sugar, sugar is my new drug. He seems too hammered to

realize that he’s offered me a cushy salary, “Ah’ll take dahr jawb.” I tells the man, who seems to groan with acknowledgement. Whatever landed him here

evidently got him in the dumps.

Cowboys in space: A mixture of two genres that, when objectively approached, are remarkably similar. This is the basis of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, a

short-lived television series with a cult following. Something I’d been a fan of since it had aired. So when one of my friends approached me to play a

Roleplaying game based in the same universe, I was fairly willing to jump into it. Most people hear about Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), the original

tabletop roleplaying game. You make a character, and list up stats that indicate bonuses or number of sides the dice you’ll use should be. All in all,

a simple concept. So a number of us meet up and start charting up characters, abilities, stats, and most importantly, personality.

I’m the pilot. A character archetypally associated with somebody who’s light-hearted, but talented, and I took this to heart. I made sure to determine

how much of an Asian mutt, so to speak, my character was. In this future, Asian and western culture has fused together in mostly a singular identity,

most people speaking a form of Chinese as fluently as English, depending on how well they’re educated. Rayne, my character, is a bit odd, to say the

least. He’s an ex-drug addict, grew up in a Buddhist monastery, and trying to get out of the smuggling business. His thought process is decently

eloquent, his vocabulary not so much.

The next morning I’m greeted by a confused captain, who’s gone and hired two new hands for the boat. One’s pretty unremarkable, dirty hair, dirty face,

smells like manure. He tips his hat at me in greeting, dropping an unremarkable remark. I reply with a discerning remark, “Yewh smell rike shit.” He

shrugs without commitment in response. The one next to him concerns me, two heads taller, silent, scarred up worse than an old saloon. I make sure to

speak to him, inquiring upon his position, “Ahhhy, whay yoo gawt haired anyhoo?” The man does not speak, merely making eye contact and giving off a

slight growl. The captain interrupts, “Who are you, again?” I explain to him, “Ai’m the pilot, cap’n.”

“Roll for piloting.” My GM, GameMaster, informs me. I roll a twelve sided dice, the highest skill one can have in this tabletop system. I roll,

excited to finally be using my skills.

[3]

My GM winces slightly, “Er… Try again, I don’t want us stuck here next session.”

[7]

My GM checks her notebook and nods, “Okay, good enough.”

A few minutes in, and we’re beginning to relax. My bizarre accent mixed with other tidbits of roleplay seem to have relaxed us into the environment of

collectively imagining things around a table. There are there other people, or characters I should say, an engineer, ship medic, and ship companion. A

companion, in this setting, is something of a culturally glorified prostitute. In reference to Geishas, a companion is a vital asset for a travelling

ship, as they can get access to essentially any planet due to influence among powerful people, particularly men, but not always. Part of the upper

crust of society, it’s a rare event that such a lady be on such a ship. I decide it’s a good point to establish a relationship with her. Interestingly,

she, the character, is French. I think we get along well.

After the captain’s finished giving me orders, whatever they were, I see a small shuttle docking into the side of my brand new ship. I snap my

suspenders and stomp off to see who has the gall to dock themselves onto it. When the doors slide open, I’m bombarded with scents of perfume and

incense, and an array of vibrant and rich colours, deep red and gold in particular. An extravagant woman of strange descent steps out of the small

cockpit, out of view of the extravagant living quarters. She doesn’t look to be native, or even from around the system, most likely descended from the

core lot. She explains herself to be a companion, taking up the offer by my captain Sartre, who has entered the room positively beaming. I don’t

particularly approve of the companion system, and storm off, alerting the ship of, “Ruttin’ whores on our goddamn ship!”

After getting to know one another, some encounters being a bit more intense than others, it’s time to leave port. I fire up the engines, coordinate our

navigation systems with the main operating system, and begin takeoff.

The engine sputters initially, but then we blast off into the sky, sending dust into the desert wasteland below, locals bellowing at our blasting

engines for my disregard to their proximity.

I love my job.