Everybody Vang Chung tonight

My ride to my role-playing game’s bi-weekly session is an opportunity for me, as Game Master, to prepare for it. RPGs, for the unititiated, are tabletop games where rules for combat and other activities provide a framework for some interactive storytelling. Boiled down even further, we use dice, books and miniature figurines to sort through an interactive story.

Anyway, I spend much of the travel time to that game session listening to familiar rock music.

It’s not hard or aggressive music. Instead, it’s music that I’m well acquainted. Some people may think it’s old and hokey stuff, but it’s just what I need before the game.

Duties of a Game Master

You see, as the Game Master, I’m responsible for a million characters that interact with the other players at the session. With that in mind,  I spend that travel time singing … with my in-character voices.

Sometimes it’s a girly voice, sometimes it’s with a Scottish brogue, or just mimicking Vincent Price. But I sing. I sing with those voices as loud as I can during that short 20-minute trip across town.

It’s practice. It’s a dress rehearsal. And, in truth, it’s quite a bit of fun too.

And then when I sit at the game table, I’m ready to be every one of them — from the lowliest barmaid to the most sinister villain.

After all, if I can sing “Everybody Wang Chung Tonight” sounding like the Siegfried & Roy, then I can take anything my players hurl against me.