D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge (a little bit late and without the hop)

The folks over at D20 Dark Ages issued a blogging challenge for the month of February to commemorate the 40th anniversary of that most venerable of Role Playing Games, Dungeons & Dragons.  Well, I failed that challenge because it’s now March 9 and I’m just now getting around to tackling the list of 28 questions that were supposed to be answered one per day during the month of February and I’m also not linking my blog to the random hop to other blogs since it’s well past the end. I hate that I missed out on the challenge, but figured I’d still answer the questions - albeit in one chunk instead of one per day.

Day 1: First person who introduced you to D&D? Which edition? Your first Character?

I don’t know that I can say that there was one single person who introduced me to D&D. I kind of introduced myself when I found the “red box” basic edition at a local discount department store next to the board games. From there, I found out that a friend of mine already played, and so I guess I could say that he “introduced” me to it, but only because I had already discovered it on my own.

I honestly don’t remember my very first character. The first character I remember is Uhnk, a half-orc fighter who was one of my first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1^st edition) characters. To this day, I use the name “Uhnk” for my main character in World of Warcraft^® and as an online handle for Twitter (Uhnk13).

Day 2: First person YOU introduced to D&D? Which edition? THEIR first character?

I’m not sure, but I think it may have been either my friend James from school, or the next door neighbor Chris (who was a few years younger than me). Again, no idea what their characters’ names were because that was 30-ish years ago.

Day 3: First dungeon you explored as a PC or ran as a DM.

The first dungeon I explored was the introductory adventure that came as part of the basic set; the printing of it that I had came with a thin, sort of “choose your own adventure” story booklet to help introduce new players to the game. That same basic set came with another introductory adventure that I used to try to DM the people mentioned in the answer for Day 2.

Day 4: First dragon you slew (or some other powerful monster).

Funny as it may seem, I don’t recall every slaying a dragon while playing Dungeons & Dragons. I recall slaying a basilisk in one of my first adventures, and Uhnk befriended a baby gold dragon once, but I don’t think any of my characters ever slew a dragon.

Day 5: First character to go from 1st level to 20th level (or highest possible level in a given edition).

Actually, I’ve never had a character make it to level 20. Uhnk made it as far as level 11 or 12 I think, but that’s the highest level character I ever had in D&D.

Day 6: First character death. How did you handle it?

Believe it or not, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a character die in D&D. I guess I’ve just been lucky.

Day 7: First D&D Product you ever bought. Do you still have it?

The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (aka, the “red box); no, I do not still have it. In fact, due to going through a couple of ultra-religious phases in my late teens and again in my mid-twenties, there are quite a few RPG materials that I no longer own from back when I first started playing.

Day 8: First set of polyhedral dice you owned. Do you still use them?

My first set of polyhedral dice were the ones that came in the basic set; no, I don’t still have them.

Day 9: First campaign setting (homebrew or published) you played in.

The first campaign setting I played in was, I guess, more or less, homebrew, but it was based on the setting from the basic D&D set, “The Grand Duchy of Karameikos”.

Day 10: First gaming magazine you ever bought (Dragon, Dungeon, White Dwarf, etc.).

Undoubtedly, the first gaming magazine I ever bought was Dragon Magazine.

Day 11: First splatbook you begged your DM to approve.

I’m not 100% sure what a “splatbook” is, but if this means a supplement to the core rules, we usually used elements taken from Dragon articles.

Day 12: First store where you bought your gaming supplies. Does it still exist?

The first store where I bought D&D was a discount department store called Rose’s. They are still in business, but I think they only exist in North Carolina and, frankly, they’ve pretty much become a junk store of sorts. There were also a couple of hobby stores that I frequented in Fayetteville, NC; one was called Hayes Hobby House, which still exists but they were never a gaming store per se – the primarily deal in model trains I think. The other was called The Hobbit Hobby Shop and it does still exist and was one of, if not the, first hobby stores to carry Dungeons & Dragons when it first launched in 1974.

Day 13: First miniature(s) you used for D&D.

The first miniatures I used in D&D were purchased from Hayes Hobby House. It was  a three pack of pewter miniatures that featured were, I think, generic fighter/knight types of models.

Day 14: Did you meet your significant other while playing D&D? Does he or she still play? (Or just post a randomly generated monster in protest of Valentine's Day).

No, my fiancée and I met while working at a book store a little over 11 years ago. I’ve tried a few times to get her to join me in role playing games, but it’s not really her thing. She has, on occasion, enjoyed watching my gaming group play – for her it’s like watching “living room theater”.

Day 15: What was the first edition you didn't enjoy. Why?

I wasn’t a terribly big fan of AD&D 2^nd Edition. I felt like too much of the original flavor was taken away. I’m also not excited about 4^th edition as I feel that the new combat rules cause the game to become more of a board game instead of a role playing game (then again, while I did like the streamlining of the rules in edition 3/3.5, it also had a tendency to become a board game whenever there were combat scenarios).

Day 16: Do you remember your first edition war? Did you win? ;)

I’ve never really “warred” with anyone over which edition was better. I’ve had discussions with friends about the different editions, but they were never particularly heated.

Day 17: First time you heard D&D was somehow "evil."

I started playing D&D in the mid to late 1980’s, which is when a good deal of the “D&D is evil” arguments were floating around. I remember being made to watch a 60 Minutes interview with one of the game’s inventers, Gary Gygax, during the height of those controversial days of being a player of D&D.

Day 18: First gaming convention you ever attended.

I’ve never had the pleasure of attending one.

Day 19: First gamer who just annoyed the hell out of you.

His name was Chad. He had uncanny luck with dice roles, tended to overact when he roleplayed and was “that guy” that always played, essentially, the same character over and over and over.

Day 20: First non-D&D RPG you played.

Star Frontiers; this was actually the first RPG I ever bought. I don’t think it exists anymore, at least not officially, although it does still live on via a fan site. It was published by the same company that originally made D&D, TSR, Inc.

Day 21: First time you sold some of your D&D books--for whatever reason.

Sometime around 1989 when I started attending a church youth group I actually allowed myself to start believing the “D&D is evil” bullshit and sold all of D&D books and materials to a local used bookstore. I was actually admonished by one of my youth leaders for selling them instead of burning them.

Day 22: First D&D-based novel you ever read (Dragonlance Trilogy, Realms novels, etc.)

The first, and so far only, D&D based novels I’ve read were the original Dragonlance Chronicles back in the 80s.

Day 23: First song that comes to mind that you associate with D&D. Why?

Yeah; I got nuthin’. Sorry.

Day 24: First movie that comes to mind that you associate with D&D. Why?

Believe it or not, the first movie that comes to mind is Mazes & Monsters, which was actually and anti-D&D film. I recently found a copy of the novel of the same name that the film was based upon at my local library, but I didn’t make it past the first third of the book just because it wasn’t that well written, in my opinion.

Day 25: Longest running campaign/gaming group you've been in.

Probably my first one, back when I was 13 or 14 years old. We played as a group through, for me anyway, around 7^th grade through 10^th grade.

Day 26: Do you still game with the people who introduced you to the hobby?

No, I can’t say that I do. I’ve not even been in contact with any of them in decades.             

Day 27: If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything different when you first started gaming?

It has been said that hind sight is 20/20; if I had anything to do over again it would be to not have gotten rid of any of the books and materials I had from back when I started gaming.

Day 28: What is the single most important lesson you've learned from playing Dungeons & Dragons?

The biggest take away I have from gaming is an appreciation for reading and for art. Prior to playing D&D, I wasn’t much of a reader (like most teenagers, I suppose). Even though my early reading interests were so I could get ideas for the game, the end result is that I developed a love of reading and of books, and not just fantasy and science-fiction stories – I also found that I liked reading about history and other topics as well.

~ JC

Doing Battle on the Net

It’s no secret that I play World of Warcraft®. I’ve blogged about it fairly often. As much as I enjoy it as a fun distraction from real life and having to be a “responsible adult”, there are days when I don’t log in to the game. In fact, there are sometimes stretches of several days that I don’t play either because I’m too busy, too tired, or just feel like I need a break from it. One of the minor annoyances is the need for two-factor authentication to log on. It’s a necessary thing due to the fact that WoW accounts have been known to be hacked (which is kind of sad, but that’s a topic for another day). Along with two-factor authentication, there is also the occasional (usually on Tuesdays) software update that can take awhile to download causing me to have to wait to login.

A couple of months ago, Blizzard Entertainment released the beta version of what the call the Battle.net App. I decided to download it and it’s proved useful for being able to login faster and also for getting updates for WoW. It also has another nifty feature; it allows management of all Blizzard games that are part of Battle.net. The thing is, I only played WoW, so that part wasn’t that useful to me - until about a week or or two ago.

As you can see in the screenshot, I have access to WoW, Diablo III, Starcraft II, and the newest edition to the Blizzard catalog, Hearthstone. Of that list, I currently only have purchased and subscribed to WoW; D3 and SC2 are, for me, the Starter Editions and Hearthstone is free to play and currently still in open beta.

I’ve set the Battle.net App to save my login credentials, including my Battle.net Authenticator, for quick access. Since it’s only installed on my PC, I’m not worried about security; if I log in from anywhere else, I still have two-factor authentication. I can launch any of the listed games directly from the app and also go directly to my account management page to add game time for WoW. It’s very convenient.

This, however, is not just a review of the Battle.net App; it’s also a about how Blizzard is very slick in getting their hooks in me for more money.  As I mentioned earlier, sometimes I just don’t feel like playing WoW. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t also get bored and feel like playing a game of some kind. This is where the Battle.net App got me. Since, directly from the launcher, I could download the Starter Editions of Diablo and Starcraft, I did just that. The first of the two I installed was Starcraft II; as a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game, it’s OK. It is really no different than other games I’ve played, including the original Warcraft: Orcs & Humans from back in the early 1990s. As such, I doubt I’ll be paying the $39.99 for the full version; RTS just doesn’t appeal to me that much. Diablo III, on the other hand, has intrigued me.

There is one small problem with playing Starter Editions of games - you can only go so far. After only about a week I’ve already taken the one character I created in D3 as far as he can go without buying the full version. That being said, I’m now faced with the following options: a) re-play the game with a different class, b) pay $39.99 for the full version so I can continue leveling and questing with the Barbarian I already have, or c) some combination of a and b such as trying out the other classes using the Starter Edition before actually buying the full version. I guess we’ll see, but option c is the most likely scenario.

As for Hearthstone, Blizzard’s new digital collectible card game - I’ll have to get back to you on that. I’ve only logged in once and got disconnected in the middle of a game, so I’ve not had a chance to really form an opinion on that just yet. In the meantime, if you’re interested you can read this review of Hearthstone beta on ArsTecnica.

Just remember this; games are great, but don’t get so caught up in playing them that you forget that there are other things in life besides gaming; go do other stuff sometimes.

~ JC

Return to Azeroth

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I’m all outta bubblegum.”

Two weeks ago I began playing the (in)famous game World of Warcraft again. Despite my list of pros and cons having the cons slightly ahead, I ended up heading back into Azeroth for another round of adventuring and questing. The last time I actively played was during the expansion Wrath of the Lich King, specifically, patch 3.2 “Call of the Crusade”. Since I said my goodbyes to my Guild back in January 2010,  two expansions have come out - Cataclysm (October 2010) and Mists of Pandaria (September 2012), with “MoP” putting the game patch version at 5.0.x. Cataclysm made some pretty major changes to the game, especially in the layout of some of the zones and the ability to use flying mounts in Azeroth proper.1 So much has changed, that I almost don’t know where to begin. For example, it’s rather embarrassing, being that I play an Orc, to say that I now get lost in the Orcs’ capital city of Orgrimmar because it’s changed so dramatically since last I played. Not only have classic zones been revamped, but the game system itself has changed quite a bit as well.

Class and Race Combinations:

To briefly summarize, for those that may not be familiar with the game, classic, “vanilla”, WoW included eight playable races. For the Alliance - Human, Night Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome; For the Horde - Orc, Troll, Tauren, and Undead . There were also nine classes - Warrior, Mage, Druid, Priest, Shaman, Hunter, Rogue, Paladin, and Warlock. Burning Crusade (patch 2.0) added two races; Dranei for the Alliance and Blood Elves for the Horde. Adding Blood Elves to the Horde also gave that faction a race that could play the Paladin class for the first time.  Wrath of the Lich King (patch 3.0) added a new class; the Death Knight.

Cataclysm (patch 4.0) added two new races to the game - for the Alliance, the Worgen and for the Horde, Goblins. These races, most notably Goblins, had always been present, just not as a playable race. This expansion also added several new options for Race-Class combinations, such as Paladin as an option for the Taurens, giving the Horde two races who could play that class instead of just one, and compared the the three races within the Alliance that could be Paladins. There are several other new combinations as well with classes being added as options for races that previously were not possible.

(http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft:_Cataclysm#Race_and_class_changes)

Mists of Pandaria (patch 5.0), which I have not purchased a license for yet,3 adds a new playable race, Pandaren, as well as a new class, Monk. Yeah, I know - apparently the folks at Blizzard watched a lot of “Kung Fu Panda” while working on ideas for the fourth expansion.

New Zones, Rearranged Zones, and Flying Around in All of It:

A few months after Cataclysm had come out, and roughly a year after I had quit playing, I was offered ten days of free game time as an enticement. I took the ten free days because I wanted to see what had changed about the zones. Ten days wasn’t nearly enough time to explore all of it, though. But the new ability to use flying mounts almost everywhere certainly makes it a bit easier.

First of all, flying mounts were previously only usable in Outland, which was introduced in patch 2.0 Burning Crusade (which also introduced flying mounts to begin with) and Northrend (patch 3.0 Wrath of the Lich King) once the Cold Weather Flying skill was purchased. Now, though, flying is available anywhere, even in the classic zones, once the character has purchased the skill called Flight Master’s License (a mere 250 gold).4  Getting the Flight Master’s License is, without a doubt, a necessity to be able to quest and explore for higher level characters.

There are, frankly, too many changes here for me to try to go into all of them, especially since I have had the time to explore it all yet. Some of the more notable (to me) changes are Orgrimmar, the capital city of the Orcs and the Barrens. Orgrimmar looks completely different now and is multi-tiered with lifts to get to the upper tier. There’s been new construction under the new Warchief as well. The city is actually larger now, and I mentioned before, I get lost in it, but I’m learning my way around. The Barrens has been split into two zones, Northern Barrens and Southern Barrens, instead of just one huge zone. I’m pretty sure that prior to the Cataclysm, it was the largest zone in the game. I hated questing in the Barrens, just because of the sheer size of it, and at levels that were too low to be able to get the riding skill and a mount. Now that it’s been split in two, with the Northern Barrens being a lower level zone and Southern Barrens being a mid-level zone, it’s not quite as bad and questing in that zone from levels 10-20 gets completed a lot faster. For more information, check out the WoWWiki Cataclysm page.

Other Stuff of Note:

There are lots of other things that have changed that I am continuing to discover, but to be honest, this blog post would begin getting out of hand (or turn into a two or three part blog over the next few weeks) if I started trying to detail every little thing. There are new guild recruiting and search tools, certain things, like mounts, etc. that were previously “soulbound” to a character are now account bound and useable by any character. Flight points, which previously had to be discovered, are now automatically added as a character levels up so they know them for the zones that are level appropriate to them. Patch 5.04 added something called “Pet Battles” wherein companion, non-combat, pets that were obtained more to get an achievement for collecting them, can now be trained for do battle (albeit, only with other battle pets). Gathering professions such as skinning and herbalism no grant experience points. Speaking of experience points, the experience gains from from quests and combat seem to have been dramatically increased (at least at lower levels). Drop rates have improved - I refer here most notably to the previously mentioned zone, the Barrens, where you’d have to kill four or five beasts to get the one hoof or horn or whatever the fuck the quest called for. Now it’s more like kill two to get one (much much better than before). Archeology was added as another secondary skill - the previous list of secondary skills was First Aid, Cooking and Fishing.

I’ve only been back in the game for a couple of weeks, and I haven’t even bought the most recent expansion yet, so I’m sure I’ll uncover more fun new stuff that wasn’t there before. But for now, I’m just enjoying the adventure.

~ JC

Footnotes:

1. By “Azeroth proper” I mean the original zones located on the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Flying mounts were introduced in the first expansion, Burning Crusade, and were only usable in the area known as “Outland”. They were also allowed in the area “Northrend” which was introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Cataclysm allowed Blizzard to completely revamp and rewrite the code for the original areas making flying mounts possible there.

2. Previously the only Horde race that could choose Paladin were Blood Elves (compared to Human, Dwarf and Dranei for the Alliance).

3. In other words, while I have access to most of the new content, purchasing a license for the most recent expansion would allow me full access to play a Pandaren or a Monk as well as new dungeon and raid content.

4. I could go into a whole rant about how certain things in the game are obviously designed to be a huge gold sink while other things have been extremely reduced in price since I first started playing, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that I really wish Blizzard would make up their mind about how much the riding skills will cost in terms of in-game currency because it still seems unbalanced to me. I mean, really - 5,000 gold to learn fast flying and another 5,000 for very fast flying - Why?

The Last (?) Temptation of Uhnk

A few weeks ago Blizzard Entertainment released its most recent expansion to World of Warcraft titled Mists of Pandaria. When last I played WoW, Cataclysm was in the works and about a year away from release. The last time I actually logged into my WoW account via the game client was right after Cataclysm was released, and that was only because Blizzard gave me a free 10-day trial and I decided to check out all of the heralded zone changes in that expansion. Ok, and so I could try my hand at playing a Goblin since that was one of the two new races (would’ve tried Worgen too, but I don’t like to play Alliance toons).

Now that Blizzard has released another expansion, one featuring the first ever neutral, playable race (Pandaren) and a new class (Monk), I’ll admit it; I am a bit intrigued, and even a bit tempted to take Uhnk1 out of digital mothballs (otherwise known as archive) and start playing again. And so now, I have to go into the pros and cons and convince myself, once again, why this could be a bad idea.

Pros

1. It was fun - hell, it’s a game; games are fun. It was something to do in the evenings and on weekends and I enjoyed it.
2. Guildmates - I developed several online friendships playing WoW, some of which I still maintain via Facebook.
3. Being able to take out frustrations - we all have crappy days and seeing as how actually choking or stabbing someone would land you in prison, playing a game like WoW and engaging in virtual combat was a way to let off steam and reduce stress.
4. Boredom - let’s be honest here. I really don’t watch that much television anymore. Except for a couple of nights out of the week, there’s not that much on that interests me. The other nights, I end up mindlessly surfing the internet with the TV being really nothing but background noise. I have, frankly, considered starting up WoW again (or some other game) just to have something to do in the evenings.

Cons

1. Cost - there’s the monthly fee for starters ($14.99/month), which I was able to save a little bit on by buying six month’s worth of game time for $77.94 (which breaks down to $12.99/month) when I actively played. Then there’s the fact that I am now two expansions behind, so if I want to actually level up my toon(s) past level 80 I would have to buy both at $39.99 each (maybe not at the same time, but still - that’s an $80 layout of funds that are needed for things like, you know, bills and groceries). Then there’s the fact that I still have an old character on a different server than what had become my primary server. While it appears that Blizzard no longer charges to move a toon, they do charge for a faction change, and I would need to do that since my first toon was Alliance and Uhnk is Horde.
2. Time - I lost so much free time to playing this game that at one point it took me a year to read a book by my (at the time) favorite author. Now that I don’t play games like this anymore, I actually get through a book in a week or two (or four plus if it’s written by George R.R. Martin). Then there’s also the fact that I now live in Atlanta, where there’s almost always something to do (plays, festivals, sporting events, etc.).
3. “The Grind” - all MMORPGs share this problem. Quest, level up, rinse, repeat. And then, once you reach the maximum level, all that’s left is “daily quests” for reputation, tokens, gold, gear, or whatever. If you’re lucky enough to be in a good Guild, there are raids, but sometimes getting a group of 10-20 together to raid is like trying to herd kittens. After awhile, it just becomes repetitive and almost starts to feel like it’s your second job instead of a hobby or pastime.
4. The In-Game Economy - this could be considered part of “The Grind”. As you gain levels, you gain the chance to learn new abilities, but these aren’t free. You have to pay your trainer in virtual gold. This leads to another kind of grind for currency in addition to levels. You have to get your gear repaired, buy a mount, etc. So, you end up selling stuff in the Auction House - but of course you have to go grind for the materials to sell in the auction house. See how this becomes a cycle and what I meant by the game becoming more like a second job?
5. The Guild - I know I already listed Guildmates as a pro, and the friendships I had with them were awesome. But, the problem with being in a guild is the constant feeling of letting down a bunch of people if you’re not logged on. That’s not to say that my ego made me think that the guild couldn’t function without me, but I know what it was like to try to fill raid spots when someone wasn’t logged on. The fact that my rogue was typically in the top 5 for DPS2 during raids and instances certainly made me feel needed and made me even feel a little guilty if I wasn’t online, especially on raid nights.
6. The Game has Changed... a lot - I’ve been reviewing the way talents are now calculated in version 5.x.x, and at this point, it appears that I would essentially have to completely re-learn how to play my characters, not to mention retrain and redo their specializations (aka “respec”). For that matter, the Cataclysm expansion changed the zones around so much, that I’d probably get lost pretty quickly.

What about the freebies or just another MMORPG instead? There are free to play MMORPGs out there. In fact, I recently discovered that even WoW has a free-to-play version now (limited to level 20) and it seems as though all of the subscription ones I knew of have all gone to some kind of free version which allow you to pay for extras if you want. I’ve played a couple of the free ones when I was weaning myself off of WoW3; the idea being that I could get my gaming fix while not feeling quite as obligated to play since I didn’t feel like I was losing money by not playing and I didn’t have a bunch of guildmates waiting on me to log on. They were ok, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. The free-to-play games and/or versions of game tend to be very limited, which leads to either it becoming really boring really fast, or being enticed into going ahead and subscribing or buying things from the game’s online store.

So, there you go. There are days that I wish I still played WoW, or at least something like it (like rainy weekend days or nights when there’s nothing on TV of interest to me, for example). But, there are plenty of other things to do (reading, building and painting models, movies, and most importantly, spending time with my fiancée) that it makes the thought of journeying into Azeroth again questionable. Then again, the more I read about the changes, the more intrigued I become. ;-)

Oh, who the fuck am I trying to kid. Yesterday I downloaded and installed the game client4 and plan on trying to get at least 30 days of game time within the next week, possibly even today. As for the expansions - we’ll see if I still like it enough to actually go that far after I’ve spent a few days playing it again. Hell, somehow I even managed to have never deleted the folder that had all my saved addon data from the last time I played it, so I’m not even going to have to do all that much to get everything set up the way I remember it. Truth is, I’ve also already been checking online, including Ebay, for good pricing on the expansion packs.

~ JC

Footnotes:

1. The name “Uhnk” exists for multiple characters across the various WoW servers (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/search?f=wowcharacter&q=Uhnk). I would, however, like to go on record that I have used that name since I was 13 for one of my all time favorite D&D characters and two WoW characters; an Orc Warrior on Shadowsong (deleted) and an Orc Rogue on Blood Furnace (level 80 and archived). It’s also one of the online handles I have used for several years. Case in point, my twitter name is Uhnk13.

2. DPS = Damage Per Second - a measure of the damage dealt by a person or group over one second. DPS is a more practical measure of damage output than plain damage, as it allows characters of differing levels and classes to effectively compare their damage output. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Damage_per_second)

3. Most notably, I played D&D Online, briefly, and Runes of Magic. I recently tried to log into my RoM account, but it’s been so long it’s already been deleted. Interestingly, my DDO account is still active, my characters are just archived like my WoW characters. I wrote a couple of blogs about these two games if you’re interested:

“D&D Online - 1st Impressions” - Sunday, November 1, 2009

“WoW, I Really Like RoM” - Sunday, April 25, 2010

More recently, I tried a browser based game called Drakensang, but found it very very lacking (didn’t even play it enough to warrant a blog post about it). Thanks in part to some recent blog postings of my old college buddy, Sam, I’ve even considered Star Trek Online.

4. I will say this - it took close to 14 fucking hours to fully download the 20ish GB of content. That did not endear Blizzard to me at all. Then again, if I had not uninstalled the game from the last time I had free trial time, then I probably wouldn’t have had to go through that.

The Game Is Afoot

Most people I know play games of some sort or another, be they online, table top RPGs, console video games, board games, card games, miniature war games, etc. We all feel the need to be entertained, or at least occupy our free time in some way, shape, or form. We have games on our cellphones and I can’t go a week without someone hitting me up with a game invite on Facebook. Quotes from games become memes (until they take an arrow to the knee, that is).

I’m no different. I’m a recent convert to the addiction known as “Angry Birds”. I build and paint little plastic army men from the distant future so that I can use them to play Warhammer 40,000. I used to play role playing games on the weekends until my gaming group folded. As much time as I feel I lost to playing WoW, sometimes I do miss it. It was a nice pastime, especially on weekends. And my addiction to “Angry Birds” causes me to have to charge my smartphone a lot more often than usual. Still, there is always that nagging feeling to play a game. Maybe it’s because I refuse to “grow up”. Maybe it’s because my mind likes all the colors and sounds and the stimulation of having solve puzzles or figure out what my opponent will do next.

Whatever the reason people play games, just remember this. It’s just a game. Try not to take it too seriously.

~JC

The Art of Mastering the Game

I've been playing role playing games, in one form or another, for about 26+ years (I started playing Dungeons & Dragons ™ when I was 13; I'm now 39 – do the math). Which means, I've been playing these types of games for longer than some of the members of my current gaming group have even been alive (holy shit, I'm old!). There are a couple of things that make these games fun; for me anyway. There's the social interaction, for one, but mostly it's just fun to be able to vent frustrations by portraying a character that can do things that I can't – either because I don't have the skills, or because in the real world, I'd be in jail if I did many of things my characters have done in game. There's also the fact that by participating in a role playing game, I get the feeling that I'm one among a group of authors who are collaborating to “write” an open ended story. I've always wanted to write a novel, but anytime I get an idea and start writing, I realize that I'm just rehashing typical fantasy stories, or my idea is to much like some author's work, and I really don't want to get sued, so I stop writing. Playing an RPG helps to satiate my desire to write.

The balancing act of keeping the game fun and interesting falls squarely in the lap of the Game Master (aka, Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Weaver, referee, etc.). The GM, has the job of coming up with the setting and plot of this open ended story – sometimes using published works specifically written for the game, sometimes coming up with their own (or, in the case of games I have run as GM, a combination of both). The players, portraying various characters within the setting, collaborate with the GM to unfold a dynamic story.

The challenge any GM has is to not only come up with a story arc that is compelling and draws the players in, but to also keep a balance withing the mechanics of the game. Almost every RPG uses statistics and dice to help determine outcomes. It's all well and good for me to announce that my player performs a certain action, but, as in real life, success is not a foregone conclusion, so dice are rolled and compared to the character's abilities and skills versus how difficult the task is, or versus another character's ability to out maneuver or out smart the player's character. For example, a decide that my character wants to climb a wall and he has a climbing skill of, let's say +2. I roll a twenty sided die (d20), and add my +2 climbing skill to the die roll. The GM then has to decide just how difficult this particular wall is to climb; is it smooth, or does it have spots that jut out that could be used for hand and foot holds? He/she sets a target number that the character has to meet to succeed. So, for this example, we'll say that it's not a terribly high wall, and has places to grab, so the GM sets the target number at 10. I roll a 9 on the d20, adding my +2 for my climbing skill for a total of 11. My character succeeds in climbing the wall. The trick is, the GM has keep mechanics like this balanced – and by balanced I mean both fair and challenging. Sometimes, a task is very simple, sometimes it's challenging, and sometimes it's downright heroic or epic in scope. If the GM sets the target numbers to low, the games not challenging enough. If he sets them to high, then players get upset that there's no way to succeed (player characters, for the record, tend to be better than average in certain skills by design – that's kind of the point, the players are portraying characters intended to be heroes in the story). ⁽¹⁾

There are good GM's, there are great GM's, and unfortunately there are also bad GM's. Some people just can't tell a good story. Others have a GM vs the Players attitude. Some give the players to much, others don't give the players enough. As I said, it's a balancing act, and the truth is, not everyone who plays RPGs is capable of being a GM. And that's all I have to say about that.

~ JC

(1) this example happens to be from the d20 System – there are systems that utilize 10-sided dice or 6-sided dice. My example in no way is intended to, necessarily, advocate that the d20 system is any better or worse... blah, blah, blah... disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. :-P

Role Play vs Roll Play

For several weeks (or has it been months?) now I've been watching a web series called “I Hit It With My Axe.” It follows the adventures of a group of friends playing a hybrid-home brew style of D&D (I think they blend a bit of 1^st edition AD&D with some 2^nd edition and 3^rd edition elements). Oh, did I mention that this group of friends is made up mostly of porn stars and strippers? The whole concept began with a blog by their DM, Zak Smith (aka Zak Sabbath), called “Playing D&D With Porn Stars”. But I digress. What I love about watching this series is how the storyline of their D&D game keeps unfolding or going in different directions. Zak's pretty awesome at coming up with different personalities and voices for the various NPC characters. For the most part the girls do role play their characters, but like a lot of groups I've been involved with, the action gets more descriptive than actually acted out – e.g., “Umm, I tell the mayor about what we saw in the cave he asked us to check out” rather than “Mr. Mayor, we investigated the cave and, alas, found no signs of the goblins there, however we did manage to find evidence that they may have moved on to the east...” You get the idea. But again, lots of gaming groups get like that. Long session, it's going on 2 a.m., everyone's tired. Yeah, you get to a point where you just want to get to a good stopping point for that session and call it night. But even if you're just describing you actions, in some way you're still contributing to the narrative and the concept that a role playing game is about a group of people essentially group writing a story together and the social interaction than it is about winning or losing a game.

Now, here's the thing. It seems to me that some of the more modern RPGs have lost touch the concept of role playing. They've become more about moving miniatures around a grid and rolling dice (what I call Roll Playing). It started, frankly, with D&D 3.0/3.5. When I first started playing AD&D, miniatures were just a tool for helping show where everyone was standing, in case there were traps or when combat broke out. With the advent of the 3^rd and 4^th editions of Dungeons & Dragons, there are specific rules for using the miniatures that pretty much make it so you have to use them anytime combat happens, basically turning the game from role playing to just another board game. This is another part of why I love watching IHIWMA; although they use miniatures, there's no grid on their table. The mini's are just there for reference and visualization. My own group finally gave up on D&D and the “d20 System” and went back to using the Palladium system (Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game and Rifts) because we were getting weary of having to use minis all the time. And the dice? Well, saying “I hit with my axe” and actually hitting it with your axe are two different things now aren't they? There has to be some way of determining if a character's announced and intended action is successful or not, and dice are really the only way to accomplish that (along with other mechanics that determine what those dice rolls really mean, but I'm not going to get into all of that here). However, the main focus of a role playing game should be role playing and storytelling. When it becomes to much about the dice rolls, then really it's just become another table top wargame with miniatures and models.

Don't get me wrong. At some point all RPG systems have weaknesses and flaws, most notably in their combat and skills systems. I just feel that the developers of D&D have lost the vision of true role playing, and turned the game into a set of mechanics to mimic online games like World of Warcraft. And truthfully, I can't blame them. They had to do something to compete with all the big computer RPGs (which aren't really RPGs frankly, because nobody actually ever role plays in those games). But, in my not so humble opinion, if you're going to say your playing a role playing game, then freakin' role play. Yes, you will have to roll dice at some point, but when the game becomes more about the dice and the position of your miniatures than the characters being portrayed by the players, it's really ceased to be a role playing game, and become just a roll playing game.

~ JC

NOTE: There are dozens of role playing games and systems out there. I realize I only referenced D&D and briefly mentioned two of Palladium Books' games, but let's be honest – D&D is the most recognizable name out there when it comes to RPGs. So please, no snide or smart-assed commentary on how other games work, interact, etc. (honest, and polite discussion and sharing of ideas, however is OK). And yes, I do realize there are some RPG systems that don't use dice at all. Frankly, I think that concept is a bit ridiculous – how else are you to resolve random encounters/actions be it combat or simply whether or not you succeed or fail at a particular action if not by dice rolls? Simple narrative stacks the deck to much in favor of everything being a success with no consequence of failure. But, that's possibly another topic for another blog sometime.

Basic Gamer Glossary (in case you were confused by my abbreviations up top)

• DM – Dungeon Master: responsible for playing NPC characters, writing adventures the players act out their characters in, and also to be a referee/judge of the rules. The term Dungeon Master specifically refers to the referee in D&D. Other game systems simply refer to this person as the Game Master (GM) or Storyteller.
• NPC – Non-Player Character : basically, any character not controlled/played by a player, but rather by the DM that the players' characters interact with.
• D&D/AD&D – D&D has long since been the colloquialism used by players of Dungeons & Dragons in all its various forms and editions. In the earlier days of the game there was a basic version of the game simply called Dungeons & Dragons, and a more complex version called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. When the 3^rd edition was released, the “Advanced” part was dropped from the title. Sometimes you will see gamer blogs and chat boards distinguish older versions of the game as either AD&D 1e, or AD&D 2e from the 3^rd and 4^th editions, which may be referenced as D&D 3.0/3.5 (or D&D 3e) and D&D 4e.
• RPG – Role Playing Game. Some online games, such as Everquest, World of Warcraft, D&D Online, etc. are known as a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG. While some of these games feature what are known as “Role Playing Servers” for those that wish to act out their characters, most of the time the concept of actually role playing in these types of games is totally lost and so, in my opinion, calling them a RPG is a bit of a misnomer.