Rituals. And Dice.
Yesterday, I lost my membership to the Nerd Club.
I won’t go into all the gory details but suffice it to say that I really needed to listen to Ke$ha right that second (which was, in itself, a bad idea) and what should have resulted in an epic one-woman dance party instead came to the following scenario:
Fun.
So Cortana got handed off to my dad to fix, since his idea of repair isn’t just pounding angrily on the keyboard to a chorus of assorted grunts and expletives, and I’ve been on the laptop since sometime last night. Which is really interesting becuase… for some reason, I just get far less work done on the laptop than I do my desktop computer.
While I’m working on the Vault, or anything else for that matter, I usually have to start with a clean slate: first the desk gets cleaned, then scrubbed, then the keyboard cleaned out, then everything put in neat little I-might-have-obsessive-compulsive-disorder rows and if I’m feeling really daring, I somehow end up cleaning my entire room. I’m not exactly sure how this ritual started, but it definitely is like a must before I focus on…well, anything. At work, the hostess stand has to be completely tidy before I can start my shift. During games, my section of the table has to be absolutely spotless, dice lined up in neat little rows. Anyway, without my computer working, I have no reason to clean off the desk – since, I mean, the double-black-screen just looks so eerie and silent. So the room never gets tidy, the work never gets done. Oops.
In other nerdy ritual-related news, my constant hashtag-stalking of GenCon this past weekend led me to finding out that Wil Wheaton himself was going to be blessing dice. I wish I had found this out earlier so that Nick could track him down to work his mojo on my new set, but alas. At least someone managed to post this cool video of some RPG greats performing rituals of their own on what will probably amount to be the luckiest-set-of-dice-ever:
I just… seriously, no words.
So here’s my question of the day for you, dear reader – do you have any rituals you follow? For gaming, work, or otherwise? Share ‘em in the comments…I wanna know what wacky stuff you guys do to keep things awesome.
Sorry I didn’t get Wil Wheaton to bless your new dice. I have a backup plan. I can’t say too much, but it involves a nickel, some tacky glue, and a lens flare. I’ll get him this time!
As for rituals: back when I was playing a Priest of Sigmar in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Edition), I used to make a symbol of Sigmar before rolling my dice. Considering the fact that I managed to roll a 01 (a good roll in this case) on a prayer that resulted in my character receiving a magic warhammer just in time for the big battle against some Chaos cultists and their summoned Daemonettes, I think there might be something to it.