Enter the Dragon from Roshan Murthy on Vimeo.
This is a delightful, short documentary about people who play D&D and other RPGs. If you've ever wondered why we play, or if you've ever attempted to explain to someone why we play, I think you'll enjoy it.
A pair of twenty-something Bros, dressed and posed in a manner that was such a hilarious cliche, if I described them exactly as I saw them, my editor would have said, "no, that's too cliche," stood near the front of the store, communicating in some kind of Broglish that leaned heavily on the word "fuck" and its many derivatives.
I guess I'm Old Man Wheaton, because I looked around at all the 7 and 8 year-olds in the store and felt mildly offended that these two Bros couldn't be bothered to make an effort to tone it down just a little bit.
But such is the way of The Bro. If they had common sense and a WIS stat higher than d6+2, they probably wouldn't be Bros.
I walked around them, went to the DS games, and felt like a teenager buying his first box of condoms. I felt my face get warm, I caught myself looking around to ensure I wasn't being watched, and I reached for the nearest copy of Pokémon Black Version.
I turned it over in my hand and read the back. "I can't believe I'm actually going to do this," I thought. "I'm 38 years-old, and I'm buying Pokémon for the first time in my life."
The Bros left the store, trailing expletives behind them. Something was, apparently, a lot of fucking bullshit. The precious children I was so concerned about moments earlier didn't seem to notice. Maybe they play a lot of Call of Duty online. Or maybe I'm just an a dad nearing forty.
I nervously drummed my fingers on the game as I replayed the conversation I had with my friend Jerry about two months ago, where he assured me that Pokémon on the DS is a fun RPG that starts anew with each release, and is incredibly fun when you play it with your friends. The last game Jerry recommended to me, Might and Magic Clash of Heroes remains one of the greatest games I've ever played on the DS, so I trust him.
I trust him enough to find myself standing in GameStop*, feeling like I was renting porn, and wanting to ensure that I was getting Big Wet Asses 4, instead of Wet Big Asses 4. I approached the counter.
"Can I help you with anything?" The guy asked me.
"Yes, but you have to promise that you're not going to make fun of me."
The other guy smirked, and the first guy told me that he would not make fun of me.
"Okay," I exhaled and realized that my shoulders were tense. I relaxed them. "Do you have … Pokémon White Version?"
He sort of chuckled. The other guy failed to cover a laugh.
"Hey!" I said, "I can see you judging me!" I said to the other guy.
"No, man. I just thought that was funny. We both play Pokémon," The other guy said.
"Yeah, it's nothing to be embarrassed about; it's a really fun RPG," The first guy said.
"That's what my friend told me," I said, "so here I am at 38 years-old finally buying Pokémon for the first time.
"I am given to understand that they are essentially the same. Is that right?"
The other guy said that I had been correctly informed, and added that it pretty much depended on what box I liked better.
"Well, this thing kind of looks like … a dragon? I guess? Yeah, a dragon … and dragon's are cool, so…"
The first guy typed a few things on his computer. "We have White version, but we only have it used."
"I actually prefer to buy games new, to support the developer and stuff," I said, feeling a little self-conscious, like I had just extolled the virtues of fidelity while standing in a whorehouse, or giving a shit about the middle class while visiting Congress.
"No worries," he said.
"Okay, so I guess I'll take this, and Super Scribblenauts."
He rang me up.
"Hey, I … really like the work you do on Big Bang Theory," he said.
I know this sounds weird, but I often forget that when I'm interacting with strangers, there's a non-zero chance that they know my name and have seen me act. It used to make me feel like I had an arm growing out of my head when it happened, but I've gotten over that, and now it actually makes me happy, because I'm proud of what I do.
"Oh, thanks, man! I like being on Big Bang Theory," I said.
"Did you want a bag for these?" He asked.
"No, I'm good," I said, "I'll carry them out in the open so the whole world can know my shame. Thanks for your help."
I walked out of the store, past another employee who was explaining the differences between a couple of FPS games to a guy who was about my age, and seemed as uncertain about his purchase decision as I was about mine, but not nearly as self-conscious.
*I get it; some of you hate GameStop. That's cool, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't need a list of reasons why it sucks, delivered in Broglish. Twitter already accomplished that for me earlier today, thanks.
I came across this post at No High Scores yesterday. It's about how mega publishers are starting to limit access to the media in terms of review copies, overall access, as well as in potential ad money.
There are a lot of great things about working in the games industry.
You know what the best thing is?
I work in the games industry.
Every day I get to play, talk, and write about games. I get to talk to people who make games. I get to share my opinions with other people who play games and they get to tell me how brilliant or how stupid I am when it comes to games. When people in the sleepy Ohio town in which I live ask me what I do and I tell them they stare at me with both amazement and sometimes derision.
“Yes, Marge, I’m a 39 year old child. Just give me my mail already.”
You know what I don’t like? The other stuff.
Fighting with PR over review copies. Being told that we can’t post a review of game X before the embargo “unless the grade is at least an 85 on Metacritic.” The sites to DO score that high get all the pre-release traffic so we’re forced to ether inflate a grade or lose the hits.
Being told that sites which use letter grades do not get advanced copies. (Because of the way those scores are translated on Metacritic.) Knowing this is untrue because 1Up sure does. Then realizing we aren’t 1Up.
Defending my writers’ competence when they “score” a game lower than the average for a game.
It's a super-interesting post that’s worth reading in its entirety. I don’t even pay attention to game reviews or critic scores any more, because the whole thing just seems like a corrupted process intended to generate positive PR, rather than give actual useful information to gamers.
I’ve pretty much stopped pre-ordering games because of this, which I know the games industry doesn’t like (pre-orders are super important to publishers, because of the GameStop effect), but what choice do I have? When I can’t trust sites like 1Up or Metacritic, I have to wait until people I do trust have actually played a game to tell me about it. And how do game journalists feel about this? If I were a game jouranlist, I would feel pretty gross being part of a system that's similar to the relationship between the right wing and FOX "news."
Gamers: how much influence to game reviews have on your buying choices? Is there a site that you know you can depend upon to give you a completely honest assessment of a game, like Penny Arcade does?
(No High Scores is a fantastic gaming site, by the way. I read it every day.)
This morning, while driving around town, Anne and I heard Green Grass and High Tides on the radio. It was part of a set of songs with "green" in the title, on account of it being St. Patrick's Day. It's a stretch, but any excuse to play a great song on the radio — especially a song that's nearly 10 minutes long — is fine with me.
After a minute or two, I said, "it feels kind of weird to just listen to this song, and not feel worried about failing out of it before it's over."
"Is this that song from Rock Band?" She asked.
"Yeah."
"I totally remember you and Ryan playing it over and over a couple years ago."
"Well, it's –"
"and over and over"
"I know. It's a really great song," I said, "it's just so … evil … at the end."
We drove on and just listened to it, until there were about three minutes left in the song.
"This is where it gets brutal," I said. In my mind, I could see the bar on the left side of the screen turning yellow, then red. I kept my hands on the wheel and resisted the urge to reflexively activate Overdrive, which we will always call Star Power, no matter what music game we're playing (even DJ Hero, which doesn't make any sense at all.)
I realized that my heart was beating harder than it should have, and I felt flush.
"Oh my god," I said, "I'm getting stressed out! It's like I have Rock Band PTSD!"
"Nice," she said. "You want to slow down?"
"What?"
I looked at the speedometer and realized I was going … a little too fast for the street we were on. I took my foot off the gas and gently applied the brake.
"Whoops."
Speaking of Rock Band and Green Grass and High Tides, here's a story I originally wrote about it in 2008, which is included in the Chapbook I did for GenCon last year, called Games Matter.
Ryan goes back to school in just under 2 weeks, and I've been bugging him to play the Endless Setlist with me on Rock Band before he leaves.
If you're unfamiliar with Rock Band's multiplayer thing, the Endless Setlist is the last thing you unlock in the game when you're playing as a band. It is exactly what it sounds like: a concert featuring all 58 songs that come with the game. It takes about six hours to play if you don't take any extended breaks.
Today, Ryan and I tackled it on expert. He played guitar, and I played bass. It was awesome. We got five stars on pretty much everything for the first 20 or so songs, including three gold stars. I got the authentic strummer thing and 99% on about half of them.
We were seriously having a good time, striking the rock pose, putting our backs together while we jammed through epic songs, bonding through the power of rock.
Then, with five songs left to go, we got to Green Grass and High Tides.
For those of you unfamiliar with Rock Band, this is a fantastic southern rock song by the Outlaws. It's also one of the hardest in the game, and the longest, weighing in at around 10 minutes. It's a song that you don't play as much as survive, and it does its best to really beat you down. If a song could kick you in the junk, this would be it. If this song were a poker game, it would be Razz.
So, after already playing for 5 hours, (and not exactly conserving our energy) we started to play this rock epic, knowing it would be the greatest challenge we'd faced yet.
Our first time through, we failed at 84%. It was entirely my fault for holding my guitar too high and deploying our emergency overdrive when we didn't need it.
"Sorry about that," I said as we lost 360,000 fans. "I blame my guitar."
Ryan looked at me.
"Okay, I blame myself."
Ryan laughed and said it was no big deal. He was confident we'd get it on the next try, and when we started the song, I could see why. He was in the zone, nailing 97% of the first solo. I wanted to holler about how awesome he was, but I felt like it would have been the same as talking to my pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter, so I stayed quiet and did my best not to screw things up.
I screwed things up, and we failed the song at 96%. We lost another 360,000 fans, almost wiping out the million we'd picked up when we did the Southern Rock Marathon last week. Compared to the nearly 5 and a half hours we'd spent playing, that 18 minutes wasn't that long, but it sure felt demoralizing, especially because it was, again, entirely my fault we'd failed. See, there's this bass phrase that's repeated over and over and over, and if you're just a tiny bit off (like I was) you're screwed, and . . . well, you get the point.
I dropped my hands to my side and let the guitar hand around my neck. My arms were tired, my legs hurt, and my vision was getting blurry.
"I think I've identified the weak link in our band, and it's me," I said. "I'm really sorry."
"It's okay," Ryan said, "but I think I want to take a break."
"Good idea," I said. "Let's pause this, go out for something to eat, and come back later."
Ryan walked into his room and turned on his shower. I unplugged my guitar so we didn't have to worry about our dogs knocking it down and starting the game again while we were gone.
In my memory, the next few moments happen in slow motion:
- I pick up Ryan's guitar, the wireless PS2 guitar from GHIII.
- I hold down the button to get the control screen.
- The dashboard comes up, and it gives me the option to cancel, turn off the controller, or turn off the system.
- I click the strum bar to select "turn off the controller."
- I set the guitar on the ground — carefully — and reach up to click the green fret button.
- I hear the Xbox beep.
- I push the button.
- I realize that the beep was the strum bar clicking one more time when I set the guitar down, selecting "Shutdown the System."
- The system shuts down, taking all of our progress with it.
- Time resumes to normal. For the next 120 seconds, I use every curse word I know, until my throat is raw. It takes everything I have not to grab the guitar and get all Pete Townshend on it.
Ryan came out of his room.
"What happened?" He said.
I told him.
What happened next was astonishing to me: Ryan didn't freak out. He didn't get upset. Instead, he told me, "Calm down, Wil. It's just a game. We can do it again."
I was still really upset. It was an accident, yes, but it was my fault. In my head, I kept replaying all the different ways I could have powered down his guitar that were more careful. I really felt like an asshole, because I screwed up twice and caused us to fail both times. I felt like an asshole, because I screwed up and lost all the progress we'd made. Mostly, though, I felt like an asshole because I really wanted to accomplish this feat with my son. I really wanted to have that memory.
What I got, though, was better than what I'd hoped for. I got to see Ryan exhibit one of the key values I'd raised him with: he kept everything in perspective, and found all the good things in the experience, like the gold stars we scored, the fun we had playing all the other songs, and the time we spent together. He reminded me that it's not about winning, it's about playing the game.
If you've read my blog for any amount of time, I'm sure you can appreciate how great it felt to hear my words and my values come out of my son's mouth.
I don't write about my boys very often these days. Their friends read my blog, and they sometimes read my blog. They're not little kids any more and I feel like it's not cool to talk about everything we do together with the Internet . . .
. . . but in this case, I'm making an exception.
You can hear me read this story on Radio Free Burrito Episode 20, if you're into that sort of thing.
Saturday, I got together with Cal, Martin and Steve so we could finish our now-epic one-shot of Cal & D.
The plan was to start at 10, because Martin had a family commitment that we all decided (despite his disagreement, which was wrong) that wasn't nearly as important as crawling the dungeon and emerging victorious with copious amounts of treasure.
However, we all stayed up too late on Friday, so we started a little bit later, like … 1130. Well, that's not entirely correct, either. See, we got all our stuff together at 1130, but we had to bullshit and tease Martin about his family commitment for at least an hour, so we actually started at 1230.
We could have sat around my dining room table, but since Cal & D requires no maps or minis, we instead played in my living room, Cal standing on one side with his DM stuff, and the three of us sitting in different places on my two couches. It made me tremendously happy to sit around and play like this, because it's how we used to do it in the old days, when minis weren't nearly as integral to combat as they are today.
Cal recapped for us, and Martin rolled 2d12. He pointed at the result and asked, "So do we win now?"
"No," Cal said.
I rolled d20. "How about now?"
"Still no," Cal said.
It was the perfect way to start Cal & D, where the table talk — in this case, living room talk — is more important than the actual game.
We explored the Tomb a bit more, until Steve's Gnome wandered into a room and turned himself invisible before the door closed between him and us. Our characters didn't know that he'd activated some teleportation device while the door was closed, so we decided to role play it as honestly as we could: Steve's Gnome was fucking with us, so we just walked away to teach him a lesson (because that makes a lot of sense when you're in a Tomb filled with traps and who knows what else.)
"DMs just love it when you split the party," Cal said, using a tone which indicated that this probably wasn't true, or if it was, he was not one of the DMs who subscribed to this particular opinion.
We did the split party thing for close to 30 minutes, until Martin and I ran into a locked door that we couldn't get through. "Let's go back to that room at the bottom of the stairs and get L'Anklebiter," I said, "so he can pick the lock."
This eventually led us to a room filled with giant rotating knives ("Knives?" "Rotating knives, yes." "We just wanted a nice block of flats." "I see. I guess I didn't properly divine your attitude toward the tenants.") I was cut to fat ribbons by them, and Martin's little gnome guy tried to dodge them, but failed for some reason.
"Don't I have [some Gnome thing that Martin made up to get out of the way]?"
"No, that's in an older edition of Cal & D," Cal said, "it's not in this edition."
"Yeah, didn't you read the Rules CALpendium?" I said, particularly pleased with myself. "That whole system was pretty heavily revised."
"I guess I haven't picked up that particular book, yet," Martin said.
Eventually, we met up with L'Anklebiter, who was fighting some kind of nasty Hag. During the fight with the Hag, Martin's Gnome (who you may remember is the Travelocity Gnome) used his Gnomish Hookhammer (this is hilarious if you're a certain kind of gaming geek) to trip the Hag.
"You need to say some kind of trip-related pun," Cal said, "or the attack fails."
Steve and I laughed, and Martin completely froze. His face turned red, he stopped breathing, and I'm fairly sure he begain to sweat. "Uhh," Martin said.
"Come on, man! You TRIPPED her, and your whole thing is that you send people on TRIPS. You have to come up with a pun."
Martin looked as if he had forgotten how to speak, and quite possibly how to think.
"Five, four, three," Cal counted down, "two … one."
Martin blinked. "I got nothing."
"BOOOOO!!!" I hollered.
"THUMBS DOWN!" Steve said.
"The Hag gets up," Cal said, "And the Travelocity gods are so displeased with you, you are transformed into …"
An excited silence filled the room. Even Oingo Boingo, which had been playing on the stereo, seemed to fade into the background.
"You are transformed into … William Shatner. And now you work for Price Line."
I exploded into convulsions of laughter. When I got my breath back, I said, "Oh my god, Martin. You're The Shatner now!"
Martin looked about as sad as it's possible to look while playing Cal & D. "I just … I couldn't think of anything."
"Have a nice TRIP?" I said. "You should have booked TRIP insurance?"
"I know, I know," Martin said.
"I'm sorry, you didn't sound like The Shatner at all, just then. You're going to have to work on that."
Around this time, we took a break to compose ourselves. Then we realized that Martin had to leave for his totally-not-important thing, so we put the game on hold, to be completed at a future session.
Shortly after Martin left, Cal's wife and my wife came home, and we transitioned to board games.
First up, we played Pandemic, with the On The Brink expansion. I am of the opinion that Pandemic should always be played on the Hard setting, because we're probably going to lose anyway, and there is much more glory in beating the game on Hard or Legendary or Are You Fucking Serious than the easier settings.
We set up, and Anne said, "isn't this that game you say you never win?"
I told her that it was, and it would be a good bonding experience for us all, since she'd never played it with us before.
"Okay," she said.
"Seriously, I have had more fun losing this game than I have had winning other games."
"If you say so," she said.
"Trust me!" I said.
"Let's just play the game, okay?" Cal said.
"Good idea."
We won, with just two cards left to draw and the outbreak level at 7.
"I thought you said you never won this game!" Anne said, clearly disappointed to have been victorious.
"Well, you're just too good at it," Steve said to her, "so it's all your fault that we won."
We broke for dinner. I made Pappardelle with Vegetarian Bolognese. I was really stressed out about screwing it up, especially because Cal and his wife Raellen are incredible chefs and we usually play at their house and eat their food … but it was amazing. I was proud of myself, and everyone enjoyed it. Go me!
After dinner, we played Shadows Over Camelot. It was a ton of fun, as usual, even though we lost, because Cal was a filthy stinking traitor.
Cal and Raellen went home after that, because Cal, Steve, and I were planning to go to OrcCon by LAX on Sunday, and we didn't want to get down there too late.
I've written about OrcCon before, but a quick recap: it's a mid-sized gaming con that I just love. I've been going to it since I was in high school (not every year, sadly), and it is what comes to mind when I think of "going to a con." It has a great community feel, tons of open gaming, a great library of games to check out, and tremendous volunteers.
So Steve and I drove down to LAX around 10, met Cal, and found our friend Shane, who was volunteering to run tournaments, teach games, and generally help make the con awesome for its attendees.
We had hoped to get into the Dragon Age RPG, but we missed the start time by nearly 2 hours, and we'd missed the BSG start time by over an hour, so we grabbed a copy of Forbidden Island from the game library, and played it in Open Gaming, while we waited for Shane to finish running a tournament.
It was a seriously fun game, and we beat it on Hard (I wanted to play Legendary, but they were chicken.) My friend Paul Tevis, creator of the fantastic indie rpg A Penny For My Thoughts joined us, and we played Tales of the Arabian Nights with him. This is a great game that is truly about the journey instead of the destination. The goal is to have an interesting life that's filled with stories and adventure, even if terrible, terrible, terrible things happen to your character. It's a polarizing game, but I love it.
Paul had to leave for a game, so we wandered the dealer's room for a bit. I bought a copy of Lunch Money (finally) and considered buying coasters with dragons on them.
"I don't think I can sell these to Anne," I said.
"Hey, if the wives want us to use coasters, we should get to pick them out," Steve said.
"You know what? That makes a whole lot of sense to me," I said, and I bought four of them.
Our shopping completed, Steve headed down to the airport to fly home. Cal and I found Shane and played Power Grid Japan with him and a young couple (Crystal and Kevin) who I think Shane knows from the con. I was in the lead for the entire game, until Crystal connected and 15 cities when I had 13 and needed one more turn. Oh well, second place was fine.
I could have stayed at the con and played more games, but I wanted to have dinner with Anne, so I thanked my friends for playing with me, and left around 6:30.
When I got home, I proudly showed Anne our new coasters.
She was Not Amused™. "How about you use those on game day, and we pick out some different ones … together," She said.
I silently cursed Steve, even though I still thought that his idea was intriguing, and I wished to subscribe to his newsletter.
