Day Six: 1650 words

In the winter of that year, Jordan’s depression became so bad he could barely function. His inability to function made him even more depressed, this negative feedback loop of despair and self-loathing that resulted in a lot of negative emotion, and virtually nothing done to stop it.

Oddly enough, it was Kinsey who offered Jordan an out. One afternoon, after a session concluded (piss-poor, in Jordan’s mind; he was now officially ready to go on a gaming hiatus), Kinsey, as usual, lingered longer than Jordan wanted him to.

“So, I was thinking,” said Kinsey. “If you ever, you know, want a break or whatever, I’d be willing to run The Strange, sometime.”

“Really?” said Jordan. He didn’t think Kinsey had it in him. He figured Kinsey was far too neurotic to ever be able to get over himself enough to run an adventure of any kind.

“Well, yeah,” said Kinsey. “The Strange is a pretty bad-ass game, and I’ve read this big adventure for it, and I think I could pull it off! I think it’d be fun. But, you know, I don’t want to like, step on your toes or what-not…”

“Actually,” said Jordan. He let his guard down around Kinsey, something he rarely did. “That sounds really, really good. I am getting a little burned out, and could use some time off-stage, as it were. When do you think you can start?”

Kinsey lit up. He was not expecting Jordan to be receptive. “Oh I could start right away! Next weekend, if you wanted!”

Jordan didn’t want to be impulsive, so he said “Well, let me sleep on it, and I’ll hit you up in chat tomorrow, okay? But I do think it would be a great idea to have a little change up in the schedule.”

Jordan slept on it, and woke up feeling relieved and happy about the idea of not carrying the group on his back for the next few weeks. He entered a chat with Kinsey and told him the floor was his next Sunday, if he was still in. Kinsey was. So Jordan then sent an email to the rest of the group, letting them know he was going on a short hiatus, and in the meantime Kinsey was going to take over with a different game, The Strange.

“You alright?” said Steve in chat later that day. “Everything okay man?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” said Jordan. “No problems or anything. Kinsey’s just really pumped about his Strange game, and I could use a little break to recharge the ol’ creative batteries, you know?”

Kinsey followed up with a massive email about The Strange. It was made by the same people who made Numenera, Kinsey explained, and had the same system, so learning it was simply a matter of adapting to the new setting and some new terminology. The Strange was a contemporary, urban fantasy/sci-fi setting where the players were members of a clandestine agency known as the Estate. The Estate were sort of an existential Men in Black: they traveled to alternate realities called recursions and kept tabs on different movers and shakers, making sure earth remained safe from planetovores, massive entities that traveled the ether between realities (called the Strange, for which the game gets its name), and devoured worlds.

The glaive, nano, and jack from Numenera existed in The Strange, but they were rebranded as the Vector, the Paradox, and the Spinner, respectively.

That Sunday, the whole group met at Kinsey’s place, minus Jordan, who “stayed home sick.” That left Kinsey running a game for Steve, Samantha, and Heather. With three players and three roles, the group decided to make one of each, but they wanted to change up their schtick from Numenera. So Steve, who played the muscle in Numenera, went for the cerebral Paradox. Samantha decided to make a Spinner, leaving Heather to make a Vector.

After fully going through the character creation process with the Descriptor and Focus the same way they did in Numenera, Steve ended up making an Appealing Paradox who Works Undercover; Samantha went with a Lucky Spinner who Looks for Trouble, and Heather made a Strange Vector who Is Licensed to Carry.

The first session went swimmingly. The players greatly enjoyed their fantasy vacation from Numenera. Heather, in particular, enjoyed the session. Though she’d never admit it to Jordan for fear of hurting his feelings, she actually enjoyed Kinsey’s Strange session even more. Heather was able to get in on the ground level of a new game with Kinsey, whereas she’s felt like she’s spent weeks playing catch up with the rest of the group in Numenera. She also liked her character a lot more. Numenera being her first game, she didn’t know what to expect and thus stuck closely to her first instinct, leading her to make a fairly-straightforward sneaky Jack. This time around, she was bold and experimented a little more, creating a loud and wild, physical vector. It was a role she relished.

Steve felt similarly. Being new himself, he also stuck close to first intent with Numenera, but got a little more creative in The Strange, breaking out of his own typecast as the strong, silent type and being a smooth, suave spy-like character, instead. It was great fun for him; however, his loyalty to Jordan prevented him from truly making himself at home in Kinsey’s game. Steve never understood what Jordan found so unlikable about Kinsey. Yes, he could be a bit eccentric, even a little rude or thoughtly, but beneath the surface Steve found him to be very nice, and even pretty funny.

Samantha was a little more reserved in her opinion. She did not appreciate Kinsey’s thoughtlessness at all. She understood and accepted him for it, but she would never consider him a good friend. Nevertheless, she too had a good time at Kinsey’s game.

Meanwhile, back at home, Jordan had a great afternoon. His initial concern was that the day would be long, lonely, and boring, without his usual group, and he was afraid his depression would crush him. However, his instinct was to stay home today, and so he followed it. And it turned out to be a relaxing afternoon for him. Jordan played videogames, watched a few movies, caught up on some TV shows, did some reading, did his laundry. It was a little lonely, but the lack of pressure was a great relief to him.

That evening, as he sat on his computer, he read all the posts on Facebook that his friends were making about how much fun they had at Kinsey’s game. Normally such a thing would make Jordan a little competitive, eager to out-do a competitor to his role as the group facilitator; but today, he was happy everyone had fun and the world moved on without him.

“So it sounds like it went really well!” said Jordan.

“It did! I think it went pretty smoothly,” said Kinsey. He went on with a massive, uninterrupted string of chat messages about the particulars of the adventure, the strengths and weaknesses of the system, and his plans for potential future sessions. Jordan idly read these lines of chat as he browsed the internet.

“So how long are you going to be out?” said Kinsey.

Jordan wanted to give an absolute time, to be fair to the others, but he wasn’t sure how much time he was going to need. “Well, definitely next week,” said Jordan, “and probably the week after that, too. Actually, let’s just call it an even month, okay? So the next three sessions, all yours.”

“Great!” Kinsey said. “I’ll definitely get to finish this adventure then,” and he continued on for several lines about possible side stories he might be able to bring into the main plot, and some other plans he had for the other players.

The following weekend, Jordan joined them. Before the game started, Jordan made himself a Brash Spinner who Adapts to Any Environment. Not having paid much attention to Kinsey’s rants about the game, he was going in fairly fresh.

Jordan had a good time, but was overall a little bored. He found it tough to go back to merely controlling one character when he was used to running an entire world. Also, with the spotlight clearly and consistently on Kinsey, his little quirks were really getting on Jordan’s nerves. The constant attempts at jokes that weren’t at all funny. The obsessing over trivial details. The non-sequitur rants that would seemingly happen randomly and last far longer than they should. His incessant need to place his opinion on a topic first and foremost at the front of any line of conversation. It drove Jordan nuts.

He did enjoy the less-pressure environment to hang out with his friends, though. It was good to be able to joke with Steve and Samantha, and to have an opportunity to get to know Heather a little better, now that he wasn’t so busy juggling so many other things in the air to keep the game running. Best of all, Jordan believed his crush on Samantha was beginning to fade. He still found her very intelligent and great to talk to, but in talking to her realized there wasn’t much chemistry to be found in her interaction. Perhaps he could manage hanging out with her and Steve and not feeling like the losing contestant on a game show, afterall.

The weeks carried on like this, and Kinsey’s game continued. The game finally ended in January, to rousing applause for Kinsey, who actually blushed. It was then Jordan realized that even though Kinsey did a lot of talking, he wasn’t terribly confident, and that putting himself out there for this game was probably a real challenge for him. This created some new respect for Kinsey, and Jordan found himself more tolerant of “his bullshit” in the weeks to follow.