Category Archives: Games

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Update on A Study of The Limits To The Acquisition of Polyhedral Gaming Dice By a Single Individual Over Time.

For as long as I can remember, I and my fellow tabletop gamers have argued that it is not possible to have too many dice. It is known. This is The Way. It is only logical. Yabba dabba doo. And so on.

What I think we may have meant is, it is not possible to acquire more dice than any one of us would be happy to own. Obviously, if you can’t open your front door, you have too many dice. But how many dice tips it over from “this is cool” into “dude, you are a hoarder, but for dice” is unknown.

So about 10 years ago, I began a project to find out if it is possible for me to reach a point where I thought, “No, I don’t need that. I have enough dice.” Over the decade, people have given me various amounts of dice at conventions and personal appearances to support my research. (It’s been awesome to receive dice that come with stories of heroic battles, Wheatonesque probability breaking, dice that are almost as old as I am, dice from special events, OG color-them-in dice, and so many others.)

In addition to accepting these contributions, I pick up sets of dice the way I always have. The annual GenCon dice set, for instance, or the occasional “OH WOW THAT IS SHINY I MUST HAVE IT AND THREE OTHERS JUST LIKE IT BECAUSE OF REASONS” purchase from a game shop or random vendor.

Since the project began, I estimate I have collected a few thousand dice. Maybe around five thousand? I haven’t looked too closely because this is one of those very scientific studies that are about vibes, not numbers. These studies are very popular among think tanks.

The study remains ongoing. I did a vibe check this morning, and again just now. After measuring the vibes, I do not yet have too many dice. Looking to the future of the study, I suspect I could have two or three times this many dice, and still feel like there was room for more. If I acquire dice for the rest of my life at the rate I have acquired them the last decade, I will likely approach some value of “okay, maybe this has gotten out of hand” around 2060.

But now that I have all these dice, what do I actually do with them? Mostly, I just look at them and think about all the games they represent, all the hours of collaborative storytelling and strategizing, all the time spent around tables making memories with friends. I feel good about my game room being the place these dice live, now. I mean, from one point of view, it’s all just hunks of resin or metal, right? From another, though … I don’t have to tell you. You get it. For me, it’s humbling, and it’s an honor, to sort of keep watch over these polyhedral symbols of time well spent and remembered.

Okay, that’s nice, Wil, but what do you do with them? Looking at them isn’t doing anything.

Sometimes, I pull out a couple fistfuls and see how badly I roll random dice when there is nothing at stake (quite badly, as it turns out). If someone needs dice for some reason, I pull out what they need and let them keep it. It’s a version of paying (rolling) it forward.

Last week, though, I found something new (and obvious) to actually, physically, deliberately do with them. I was playing Galaxian in my arcade, and I had this idea to sort some dice into shapes and colors, and then use them to lay out a simple 8-bit sprite. (I had this fun idea about stop motion animation that keeps pitching itself to me. It’s getting a lot of support in the room, but I’m not sure it can pass a full vote.)

Because it’s what I’d been playing, and because it’s incredibly simple, I assembled a Galaxian guy, and I gotta tell you that I really, really like how it turned out.

My next attempt will be a slightly more complex sprite. It’s bigger, with four colors, and if it works … well, maybe I’m gonna make a lot of these things. I guess we’ll see.

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so you want to try an rpg, but don’t know where to start

This came from my Ask Me thing on my Tumblr thing.

Q: You seem like a pretty good dude, Wil. Thanks for taking time to chat with your fans, and thanks for standing up for what is right. I love following you on social media. You’ve talked about D&D before, and I’ve been kind of curious about trying it out. I would be nervous though as I have no idea what to do. Any tips for 40-year-old beginners???

A: Thank you for your kind comments.

D&D! I love it. I love all RPG games (even the ones I don’t like to play. I’m just glad they exist).

I’ve been playing since the early 80s, and I can confidently direct you to the 5e Starter Set. It is the best introduction to the hobby, to the system, to the experience of collaborative storytelling that makes RPGs so much fun and so special, that I have ever read or played. It gently introduces you to the concepts behind the system and hobby, eases you into the rules, and is filled with sidebars and further reading if you need that as you get deeper into the adventure. By the time you’re finished with it (there’s several sessions in there, probably a few months of gaming if you meet once a week), you will have enough experience to know what questions to ask at the Friendly Local Game Shop about where to go next. It’s a small investment, and a really easy way to find out if D&D is for you.

If you want to make an even smaller investment, this page has TONS of information and resources. You could start here and spend hours without noticing the time pass. Or, at least, I can. YMMV.

I want to share a few warnings with you.

  1. Everyone has their definition of the “right” way to play D&D. You will find yours as you play. Don’t let someone else’s definition of “right” limit what yours may eventually be. Maybe you like minis. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you like homebrew rules. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just want to roll dice and imagine you’re a fantasy hero. Someone is going to tell you you are doing it wrong. We’ve worked real hard to kick out the gatekeepers, but they just keep spawning. Ignore them. Send them to me if you need to and I’ll handle them.
  2. The D&D rules system is not the only RPG, or even the only popular one. Pathfinder is beloved by millions of people. FATE Core and GURPS have enormous player bases. Monte Cook’s Cypher System is filled with gorgeous lore and character inspirations (but I’ve never played it, full disclosure). I chose the AGE system for our series Titansgrave, and used a lot of what I learned from running D&D for decades to customize the experience for me and the players. What I’m saying is, RPGs do not begin and end with D&D. It’s as good a place as any to start, but it is only one of many systems.
  3. You are going to hear hardcores make impassioned arguments that continue long after you have lost interest about all sort of rules and setting and system crap. Trust me: tune them out. Eventually, you’ll know what you care to listen to/
  4. All those non-D&D systems support and encourage playing in different settings, from Science Fiction to Horror to modern warfare combat. The thing that I believe makes D&D VERY special is its singular focus on high fantasy and everything that means in our culture. All those other systems do fantasy very well, but D&D is kind of the canonical “storm the dungeon, kill the monsters, take their stuff” experience. It’s also the only one that is D&D, if that matters to you.

That’s a lot more information than I intended to deliver. I just get excited about this stuff because I love it so much. Whatever you choose, I hope you have fun!

And when it counts, may you roll high.

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A typical day on the set at Tabletop

This is from my Tumblr Thingy. I thought it would be relevant to some of your interests.

QUESTION: Hello, I have a question about Tabletop (don’t worry, it’s not “when will you make more 😋). When you would film an episode, when would the interstitial commentary from the players be filmed? Because it seems like they should be like, during breaks in the game, so that people can give their thoughts as they come up, but during extended episodes I can’t see where that would cut and film them and rejoin, so maybe it was after? I can no longer sleep at night, this question haunts me. Ok bye now 😊

ANSWER: Good question, and you have it mostly correct.

What we’d do on a given day went like this:

  • I arrive and we run through the day’s schedule.
  • I shoot the introductions for the two episodes we are filming that day.
  • The players for the first game arrive, go to makeup and wardrobe, then spend about an hour with the game publisher’s rep and Ivan Van Norman, our games expert, to make sure they understand the game and its basic strategy.
  • While they do that, I shoot the rules explanation for each game.
  • Players are seated at the table with me, and we begin. Each game has a rough halfway point, usually determined by the points scored, and we’ll break at that halfway point. For a narrative episode like an RPG, we’d break around the end of the second act.
  • The players and I are interviewed about what we did in the first half of the game. We call these OTF interviews. I believe that’s a documentary term of art which means “On the fly.”
  • We play the second half of the game, until there is a winner.
  • We shoot the loser’s couch segment.
  • We shoot the trophy segment.
  • Now we shoot the OTF interviews for the second half of the game.
  • The players are finished, and we break for lunch. They can stay and eat lunch with us if they want, but most players choose to get on with their day.
  • The players for game 2 show up right as lunch ends. They’re always welcome to come before lunch, if they want to eat with us. I’d say about half of the players did that.
  • We sit down, and play the first half of the second game.
  • We break and shoot OTF.
  • We finish the game.
  • We shoot the loser’s couch.
  • We shoot the winner’s wall.
  • We shoot my OTF for the second half of the second game, so I can be finished and sent home as soon as possible. My union rules guarantee me 12 hours between when I leave set and when I come back, so we always try to get me wrapped (finished) early, so we don’t have to start later the following day.
  • We shoot the remaining OTFs.
  • Everyone goes home! That’s a wrap.

I’m glad you asked this question, because I got to revisit some of the joy that I felt when we were making Tabletop, Geek & Sundry was the greatest place in the world to be making awesome content, and I got to play games for my job.

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Gamers vs. COVID-19

My upcoming eSports competition show, Gamemaster, has been delayed like everything else, but the people involved wanted to use the resources they had already mustered for production to do some good at a moment in time when it’s so desperately needed.

So we’re organizing to 3D print what we can for our frontline healthcare workers!

“As the spread of COVID-19 continues to impact us all, GAMEMASTER takes solace in friends, family and the indomitable spirit of our players, cast, crew and brand partners. When Reagan Stewart, web developer and an overall tech guru for GAMEMASTER, brought the idea of our team helping to make, distribute and organize PPE for medical professionals as they experience shortages, we immediately saw a way that we could help. Thanks to our amazing and generous brand partners, we have not only been able to set up a 3D print operation in Atlanta, but, we have also developed a network for healthcare providers and first responders across the country to connect with makers in their community to get the specific PPE that they need, quickly and without cost. Thank you all!:”

I’m so proud, and so honored, to be part of this show. I’m so excited to share our first effort to join the fight against COVID-19. If you’d like to get into the fight with us, and add your resources to ours, we have a sign-up page, here.

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walked upon the edge of no escape

My friend, Will Hindmarch, is a brilliant writer and game designer. He’s one of the smartest people I know, and his weekly newsletter always challenges and inspires me.

In this week’s newsletter, he talks about playing a videogame called CONTROL, which by coincidence, I began playing over the weekend.

I wanted to share some thoughts here that I shared with Will privately, because I’m interested to hear your thoughts on my thoughts.

Will said:

> As of this week, I’m also playing Control again, and glad to be doing so.

Here’s my reply to him:

This game is beguiling me. I have only faced three boss battles, and I’ve nearly quit during each one. I love the story, I love the visual and audio design, and I love the puzzles. But boy do I hate it when it becomes a video game with a boss battle, especially when it takes two dozen or so runs at it to get the shape of the level, and you have to sit through 30 second loading screens every time you die.

It’s like I’m intrigued by the story, but my skills as a FPS gamer just aren’t where they need to be for me to get through those video game bits without ragequitting at least once a day.

I had a thought about Control: I’ve been playing RDR2 since it came out. It’s literally the only game I’ve played, I’ve even replayed it, with a replay of RDR1 in between. I have been able to adjust the difficulty setting so the game really holds my hand and makes the video game portions of the story simple and satisfying to get through. In a way, I’m getting to live inside competence porn, right? And I’m a middle-aged white dude in that game, which is significant when I compare it to Control, which is REALLY FUCKING HARD … and the protagonist is a woman.

So I’m thinking about how REALLY easy life is for middle-aged white dudes, especially when we compare our lives to the lives of young women. My current experience has become a metaphor, which has been intellectually stimulating and challenging (in a really good way).

In RDR2, I have (effectively) unlimited ammo, (effectively) unlimited health items, and because I only cared about the story and exploring the world (sidebar: riding my horse all the way across the map, stopping only to engage photo mode, like I’m a tourist in the old world, is really satisfying and fun), I adjusted the difficulty to reflect my personal difficulty level in the real world, which is to say I put it on the easiest setting.

When I started CONTROL, I immediately noticed that I have to manage my ammo, and health is WAY more vulnerable than it is in RDR2. There’s no computer assist in aiming; I have to do it all myself (and I am NOT good at it). Mechanically, I have to work really hard to kite around the bosses without dying, and the game is just totally unforgiving when I fuck up.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I feel like the experience I’ve had with these two games is a really strong metaphor for the different experiences men and women have in the world, online and off.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense outside of my head, but now that I’m thinking about the hours I spent playing Control yesterday, and thinking about how, even though it can be REALLY hard and REALLY frustrating, it’s also compelling. I’m not entirely sure it’s worth the effort, with my limited free time (when I ragequit last night, I said, out loud in an empty room: “This is such a waste of my time. I am not having fun and I don’t know why I’m even giving this goddamn game my time,” and yet here I am, thinking about trying it again today.

This is a new experience for me, to be seriously challenged in a game and not know if I’ll be able to overcome the challenges that exist between me and the resolution of the story. After nearly three years of something that’s less gaming and more competency porn, I’m finding out if I can actually rise up to meet a challenge (and if it’s worth the effort) that I can’t skip or have help overcoming.

I feel like it’s a powerful and meaningful metaphor, and it’s caused me to examine and reflect upon my privilege, and I appreciate that. At the same time, I feel like the point of games is to be fun, and this game isn’t really “fun” the way RDR2 has been “fun” for me.

But I don’t think that’s the game’s fault. My son is 30 and he loves games like this that are REALLY hard (he loves something called Dark Souls that reduced me to tears in about thirty seconds). Most of the games I looked at when I was trying to decide what to play instead of RDR2 seem to fit into this difficulty curve, which I suspect may just be the state of games today, and I’m an old man who is outside the demo.

There’s another metaphor for ya.

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