A blogger called Mr. Truth ("Mr. Truth’s love for the truth began at the age of three upon uncovering the Santa Conspiracy") read Just A Geek and was inspired to create a list called 10 Unknown Facts about Wil Wheaton. I think it’s really awesome and really hilarious, mostly because the geekier you are, the funnier it is. Here’s two of them:
5. Wil Wheaton started a real AADA, but had to disband it after simultaneously defeating all five other co-founders with nothing but a Radio Flyer wagon and a single flaming oil jet. To be fair to his competitors, I must point out that it was an HD flaming oil jet.
6. Accurately depicted in GURPS, Wil Wheaton as a character would cost 413 points.
Allow me to annotate, because nothing makes a joke funnier than over-explaining it: The AADA is the American Autoduel Association, publishers of Autoduel Quarterly from Steve Jackson’s Car Wars. It is one of my favorite hobby games ever, and is exactly what it sounds like: vehicular combat straight out of The Road Warrior. You can play on highways, in cities or towns, or in specially built arenas, because in the future we’ve taken the demolition derby to its natural conclusion.
You can play the game with pre-generated vehicles, or you can design
your own, using a money-based system that’s divided into divisions like
$5K, $10K, etc. When you build your own car, you can do sneaky tricks like putting 1 point of armor on your wheels, so it looks like you’ve spent a lot of money to protect them, when you’ve really invested most of your cash into buying HD ammo – that costs and weighs twice as much as regular ammo but does +1 damage. It’s especially fun to do this when you play with the same people for years and nobody ever thinks to target your tires to see if you put more than one point of armor over them.
In Car Wars, the flaming oil jet does some cool stuff, like eventually turning into a smokescreen, and acting as an oil slick that deals fire damage, but it doesn’t stack up well against a guy who has linked his turret-mounted missile launcher to dual front-mounted heavy machine guns. It’s a dropped weapon, so it only really works if you’re ahead of another car that’s close enough to you that the other driver can’t easily maneuver out of the way when you deploy it. Of course, that other driver has probably linked his turret-mounted missile launcher to dual front-mounted heavy machine guns, and is chewing up your rear armor like Galactus in a protoplanetary disk, so relying on the HFOJ to extract furious flaming justice on your enemies rarely ends well for you. And by you, I mean me. And by me, I mean, goddammit I really want to play this game.
If you’re interested in checking it out, I recommend going old school and picking up Car Wars Deluxe Edition. It’s out of print, but worth the effort.
GURPS is the Generic Universal Roleplaying System, so it was marketed in the 80s as a system that could be learned once and then applied to any setting, like fantasy, space, horror, and the always-popular Humanx. We didn’t care about its genericness, though. We played it because it didn’t have stupid fucking THAC0, or a million tables you had to memorize or constantly refer to while you were playing. (Seriously, kids, if you think grappling in 3.0 and 3.5 is lame and overly-complex, you should grab a 2nd edition AD&D book someday and ask yourselves how we ever did it.) Those of you 10th level geeks who are now trying to reconcile my disdain for complex charts with my slobbering love of Car Wars are welcome to join me in the back room for several games of Nuclear War and Nuclear Proliferation after lunch. Bring Dr. Pepper.
Anyway, one of the things we loved the most about GURPS was its character creation rules. GURPS gives you a pool of points to be spent on a character, and you build that character by spending them on stats, skills and advantages. You can go over your starting points by taking disadvantages, so if you take a 15 point Rapid Healing advantage, you can offset it by taking a 5 point Klutz and a 10 point Code of Honor disadvantage. (Note: the biggest criticism of GURPS is that this system leads to something geeks call "min/maxing", where gamers max out their points by taking unrealistic disadvantages to build overpowered characters. My response to this has been the same since I started playing in 1988: a good GM won’t allow min/maxing to happen, and a good GM will always force his players to actually roleplay the disadvantages, which should discourage someone from taking 20 points of Manic Depressive, if they know what’s good for them.)
Most GURPS characters in 4th edition start out costing 250 points, which is considerably higher than the 100 point characters we used to make, so if I cost 413 points, I would truly be a super-awesome fishbulb of extraordinary magnitude.
If you want to see what GURPS is all about, Steve Jackson has a free .pdf called GURPS Lite that serves as a nifty introduction to the system. It’s playable, even!
So this list that I mentioned before I got sidetracked into that massive nostalgic geek tangent was Farked yesterday, and Farkers started adding their own facts to the list. Some of them are really, really funny. I don’t feel right pulling a c-n-p on all of them, so here’s a few that cracked me up:
15. Wil wrote the original version of WORLD OF WARCRAFT over a weekend. On a yellow legal pad, while at the beach.
16. Wil called Chuck Norris a pussy, but apologized when he started to cry.
17. Wanting realism, Wil demanded the use of live ammunition during his death scene in "Toy Soldiers." The ricochets injured several crew members.
18. Wil has never had a dead hooker in his trunk. Once they know it’s him, they dispose of themselves.
19. Wil once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but then brought him back to life.
27. Kirk beat the No Win Scenario by cheating, Wil beat it by sneezing.
29. Wil was offered the part of Young Captain Kirk in Trek XI. He turned it down because he was still busy consoling Chuck Norris (see #16).
I was reluctant to post this, because I don’t want this to be mistaken for me thinking that I wander around believing that I’m really fucking great or anything ridiculous like that. I know that I’m just a dude, trying real hard to abide in a world without the guy who says, "In a world . . ." but I thought this stuff was funny, and after decades of people who don’t know me hating on me (hate the character all you want, man, but why me, personally? And still? I’m 36, Sport, don’t you think it’s time to live in the now?) it’s pretty awesome that people who don’t know me are amusing themselves (and me) with stuff like this. So I thought I’d share, and finish the list with one of my own:
36. Every day, Wil Wheaton is afraid that he can’t live up to his reputation.
Discover more from WIL WHEATON dot NET
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– Wil Wheaton knows the Ultimate Question but will never ask it.
– Wil Wheaton knows if Decker’s a replicant
[help! I can’t stop!]
– When Wil plays, the Cake is the Truth.
– Cancer Man is Wil’s REAL father
– When Wil punches you, both your grandmothers spontaneously abort, removing you from the time stream.
– Wil knows who the fu*k Alice is.
Q: Who is number 1?
A: Wil Wheaton
Now you’ve got me jonesing to bust out my old gaming manuals. Maybe I’ll dig out ‘The Breakfast Club’ soundtrack–on cassette!–to fully embrace my teen nerd years.
Wil Wheaton has DR 5/epic, and is immune to all energy types.
Yeah, things like the HDFOJ was hard to deploy in arenas, although deadly when going down narrow passages.
To cope with situations like that, have a mine flinger in a retractable turret. All the benefits of a bad-ass dropped weapon and the ability to target someone at any position behind you.
I did see the original list–I thought “security clearance ultravoilet” was the best.
RE: #36.
Wil, the only time that you wouldn’t live up to your reputation (or at least my expectations) is by dying. And that is something I don’t want to contemplate.
I read your blog for pure, unadulterated, unreconstituted, undiluted Wil Wheaton
* With the aid of his vast network of co-conspirators, Wil Wheaton was able to remove all memory and references to himself from the game Illuminati a scant three years after it was originally published.
* Wil Wheaton is Tyler Durden’s Tyler Durden.
I loved Car Wars. I was also a bit of a dick. I would buy a new expansion book and then call my friend and brag about how my new car was going to have all this cool and powerful stuff that he didn’t have access to.
Along similar lines I remember an ADQ question where someone had a friend who had a ‘character’ with a +6 to rolls who always won because he had +6 to rolls. Steve Jackson’s advice was to quit playing the the ‘friend’. That started the wheels turning.
I helped start an AADA chapter in college. I retired from autodueling after I spend a good part of a week designing a pimp car. I lost the game when a dropped trailer full of exposives was detonated by radio as I drove by. A few minutes later someone pointed out that something about the trailer was illegal but the action had happened and the other players all agreed it couldn’t be undone.
Maybe it is time for my comeback.
Link your HDFOJ with a minedropper – or with a spikedropper, but use the explosive caltrops from Uncle Albert’s 2036 catalog! Then the guy behind you drives right through the flame/smoke cloud, confident his front armor can handle a little heat, until…
Okay, so, I’m on the phone with my girlfriend when I start reading this entry, and I have to stop and relate #5 up there.
Then, I have to inform her of the AADA, HFOJ’s, yadda yadda yadda.
GawdDAMN but this all makes me want to play CW!
None of that GURPS Autoduel stuff, tho’. Nope, my old RPG version was combining CW (with Deluxe Car Wars, the 1st edition Car Wars Compendium, Dueltrack, and the Tanks supplement, along with whatever else in the way of ADQ’s and other sundry supplements I had lying about) with 1st edition CYBERPUNK. The cybernetics and such in that game meshed so well, especially as so many of the freelancers who worked on CW also worked on CYBERPUNK. Heck, both SOLO OF FORTUNE and MAXIMUM METAL read like the CW supplements that never happened.
I don’t like to think how many years it has been since I last ran that game. It’s all been WOD, COC, and AD&D (1st edition, at that!) over the past decade or so, despite the size of my gaming collection.
Wil, seriously, you ever make it to one of the Manitoba Comic Cons, I will set up a Car Wars game (along with a game or two of ‘Lunch Money’ for good measure).
Got my laughs for the day. Awesome. 🙂
* The “www” prefixing many website stands for “Wil Wheaton’s Web”. “Wil Wheaton’s World-Wide Web” was considered redundant.
* The correct answer to “WWJD?” is “WWWWD.” (What Wil Wheaton Would Do.)
So I was watching the second half of Encounter at Farpoint today (sorry I’m not much of a TNG fan, and I don’t think I’ve ever really seen the whole thing from beginning to end) while I did some editing, and what I want to know is this:
Why haven’t the people who put poor little Wil in that sweater been tried for crimes against humanity?
41. Wil once beat Corwin of Amber in arm wrestling while giving Sid Meir the idea for Civilization.
42. Wil’s childhood adventures are chronicled in inspirational books, though the author used the pseudonym “Encyclopedia Brown” in respect Wil’s privacy
41. 01010111 01101001 01101100 00100000 01010111 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101111 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110010 01101001 01100111 01101001 01101110 01100001 01101100 00100000 01000010 01000001 01010011 01001001 01000011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101001 01101100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101100 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100001 01100100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100101 01111000 00101101 01101000 01100001 01110010 01110110 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011 00101110 00100000 01010111 01101001 01101100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100111 01110101 01111001 00101110
Never got into Car Wars/GURPS myself, I just felt they were too ‘math-heavy’.I do however have a stack of GURPS supplements on a myriad of topics. They’re like the gamer equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
43. Wil Wheaton is Rorschach.
Wil Wheaton is fully functional and is programmed in every technique.
The Dude abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.
But 3.5 better than AD&D2e, fucking what?!?
Avast! Wil may be lily livered o’ his own reputation, but we all know he`s a legend of a Geek, an’ a gent who best be taken seriously. No mistake!
‘ave an excellent Talk Like A Pirate Day, me hearties.
Don’t worry about living up to your reputation. Some of your reputation on here is that you’re human, you’re just a regular person who has had great opportunities and has marvelous skills. So if you ever think you mess up, it just makes you more human.
It’s like you run a support group for us geeks here. Thank you!
Wil Wheaton is the 11th Doctor
@netbob: THAT WAS AWESOME MAN…
And I feel bad for the Ex-Harvard geek too!!
awesome comment.
I love #36, and from where I’m standing you’re doing fine.
When Captain Hammer threw a car at Dr. Horrible’s head, Wil reached out and batted it away.
Wil doesn’t walk anywhere. Wil takes 2d6+3 steps at a time. Thats how Wil rolls. (partially stolen from Wils fark post.)
Wil’s tears dont just cure cancer, they cure amputation as well. Just ask Luke Skywalker.
When God said “Let there be light”, Wil personally gave God permission to do so.
Chuck Norris is actually Wil Wheaton in disguise.
Wil doesnt need a bootloader on his computer, he just looks at it a certain way.
Wil’s hand is the only hand that can beat five aces.
Bitches de-reference Wil’s pointer for free.
Richard Stallman wears Wil Wheaton pajamas to bed. (A clown sweater, no doubt.)
When you run wget, Wil runs of to fetch the file. Wget = Wil Get.
Wil doesnt take showers. Wil runs ‘make clean’.
Wil doesnt just see the Matrix. He _is_ the Matrix.
you might have nightmare’s about Freddy Krueger, but Freddy Krueger has nightmare’s about Wil.
The Loch Ness Monster once thought he saw Wil Wheaton.
The Boogeyman checks under his bed for Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris checks under his bed for Wil Wheaton.
There are no endangered species. Only a list of delicacies Wil enjoys.
Wil knows where Cheney’s ‘secure location’ is.
Scotty may not ‘have the power’, but Wil does.
Thats not a beard on Wil’s face, thats follicles trying to run away.
A study showed the leading causes of death in the United States are: 1. Heart disease, 2. Chuck Norris, 3. Cancer – the leading cause of life? Wil Wheaton.
The original title of ‘Freddy vs Jason’ was ‘Wil vs Chuck’. It was canceled when Chuck was discovered hiding in his trailer, curled up in a ball and crying.
Original draft – “Thou shalt not take Wil’s name in vein.” It was changed when Wil abdicated the throne.
Wil is the cause of lesbianism – when women hear he is married, they give up on men.
Wil can call ‘malloc’ without calling ‘free’ with no problems.
I saw this on Fark too. I love that you’re a normal accessible guy, and that just is awesome.
42. The answer is really Wil Wheaton.
While I’m not a big fan of tables and charts, for some reason I loved HackMaster. I DM’ed it for a while. Utterly hilarious.
Can I join the carnage and nuclear destruction anyway? I have a nice set of Nuclear War, Nuclear Proliferation, AND Nuclear Escalation … plus some expansion cards. After all, nuclear obliteration makes for good neighbors.
Did you really get cake at the end of Portal?
Man, I was seriously miffed by not getting cake. For weeks… In fact I still am. There’s cake across the hall though. I might have to go get some.
Seriously though, my opinion of you and your geek cred went up several levels with your encyclopedic knowledge of Car Wars.
LOL, I think I like Mr Truth…
My husband, looking at what I was reading, sees the photo and asks who that is, I say Wil Wheaton
(OK, he knows I loved Wil Wheaton as a teen and have found a new love of his writing)
My husband then asks if he is going for a commander Rike look or something…it’s ok if he is as long as he doesn’t get the belly
So, I comment on the fact of the age difference between us (Wil, myself, my husband) and Jonathan Frakes…to which my husband replies, “yes, but I have the belly”
OK, true enough he does…
Then as I laugh about something Wil has written I get further comments from the peanut gallery about how my “boyfriend” is now a published author, something my husband has dreamt of since childhood, and I’m just rubbing it in…
hmmmm…
Wil…you have every right to be sure of yourself 😉
(also…just so everyone knows…as certain things do not come across writen/being read…my husband is joking about most of it…sort of…)
40. Some time in the future, Wil Weaton will invent time travel. Only to go back in time and “invent” AD&D.