Now that you’ve seen some of these characters in action for a couple scenes, let’s get to know them a bit better. You can also find out about characters in the stories posted here by visiting the Characters tab on the top navigation bar. Click here to see all of the Team IT postings.

Craig Johnson
Age: 29
Astrological Sun Sign: Capricorn

Craig has worked for Computer World, your one stop IT service and computer sales shop, for a few years now. Somehow, Craig is still convinced that one day, some day, the work will be finished so that the team will have time to work on other projects. Every time he makes progress with this goal, customers, the big bosses, sales, or marketing throw him a curve ball and they go back to being back logged. Craig figures all they need to do is band together and get a “system in place”. Most of his efforts are thwarted by the bosses that own the company as they have ideas of their own about what those video game playing slackers can do. They love to load on more work, almost as much as sales and marketing likes to try and pass their work off on the IT Team.

Craig is the self-designated liaison between Team IT and the bosses, for more reasons besides no one else wants to do it. When he speaks, they give him some measure of respect. He threatens to quit about once a month and the bosses will usually back down just enough right as Craig is ready to ride off into the sunset. Craig would like to be left to just manage the team, though the Team has other ideas on the subject, especially Sarah who thinks of herself as the team’s muse. Regardless, there is too much work to be done to just be a supervisor to jump in on only tricky cases. He’s a hard worker, but avoids being on the phone as much as he can get away without his teammates getting angry.

Craig used to work “for the government” and that is “all he is allowed to say”. Most of the team suspect he is just embarrassed about his last job which was probably at some big box electronics store. Sometimes they wonder, though, as his knowledge is pretty extensive for someone not yet thirty, especially when it comes to slapping together spare computer parts “just to get the damn thing working already”.

Craig has a fondness for organization. He loves wikis and has a bunch of them set up for team usage. He also adores Excel spreadsheets that list and compare data.

Craig is single and has a hard time with dates though he’s quite good looking. He’s been accused of being boring, controlling, and uptight. He’s extremely logical-minded and likes things to be clear, cut, and dry. Craig worries about his lack of luck in love as thirty is right around the corner, though he’d never admit it to any one on the team.

To go with my last post where I outlined a system of classes and abilities, I’ve now written a scene where people from normal our every day world find themselves in the world where these abilities exist. I used some characters from a little thing I’ve been working on (but haven’t posted yet) where there is a team of techies who work in the basement of a store and repair shop called Computer World. These techies at Computer World are somehow expected to single-handedly support all of computer technology and operating systems. This is because people who buy computers from here (many of them custom built or fixed by the team) also buy a tech support contract with them. In addition, the sales people in the store above know nothing about computers (like something out of The Website is Down: Sales Guy VS Web Dude) and have little care or respect for the basement dwellers who struggle to keep the customers after the sales people sell them what they don’t want or need. A post with some of their antics, trials, and all will follow at some point.

I wondered what would happen to them when thrust into this other world that is likely in the books they read and video games they play, and here’s what came out of it.

======

“So, people come to this school and… what chose a class like a job?” Ben asked.

“It’s not so much people chose a class as it chooses you… Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it’s already part of who you are, you just don’t know it yet. The Test just lets you know what your abilities are and what your focuses should be to develop yourselves into skilled soldiers.”

“If we have any abilities at all. You said there were some people who came out of the test with nothing,” Craig pointed out.

“Correct…. and then there are those who come out with less than nothing. The Test is not something people take lightly. It can scar or even kill you. Even if you come out on grid, you may be a different person after. But really, the test brings out who you really were before and shows your potential for success and failure. Some face that better than others… and some cannot face that at all.”

“That explains why not everyone does this. The abilities people have here are amazing…” Angus had earlier watched a class they had passed in absolute awe and more than a little bit of longing.

“So there’s more to it than getting a focus, and getting abilities. People see things and learn things about themselves… How exactly does that work?” Ben asked.

The teacher smiled lightly, as if addressing a novice pupil, “People don’t generally discuss their own test. It’s very personal. And, we’re not entirely sure how or why it works. It’s a ritual handed down that takes twelve of us, a representative of each focus, to perform.”

“So, it’s magic?” Bill asked.

“Not exactly magic, as that only covers the powers of one school. It’s all the powers combined, drawing to the surface the aptitudes of a person. It also draws forth truth and weaknesses as well. People may face their demons. Or… there are people who have claimed remembering nothing at all after wards.”

“…and we have to do this?” Bill asked with a bit more urgency than he meant to.

“If you want to stand a chance of survival, then yes, you do. Even if you reject your role, it won’t stop The Others from finding and killing you. They know you’re in this world now, and that very fact is a threat to them. As it is… you won’t have much time to train. I dare say, the test is the least of your worries, and the greatest of your chances.”

It hung in the air, the unsaid. It was unlikely we’d all survive to see home: our own world again. We were brought here for a common cause tied to the fate of this world and had to follow it whether to help or just to get back to where we belonged. Each of us knew we were more than a little overwhelmed, and by looking at each others’ faces we knew we weren’t alone in that sentiment. We were all plagued by a combination of worry, doubt, and amazement. I doubt we’d all handle it well, thought Sarah, if handled at all any time soon.

“So we should all take the test as soon as possible,” Sarah announced.

“Won’t we be safe here, though? All of these skilled people here… and you and the other teacher pwned them Others, or whatever, pretty good,” Bill was grasping at straws.

“Them?” he chuckled lightly as he pounded his staff on the packed earth, “That was but one of their Masters. They have their own schools, their own soldiers, and many more to send after you. If you stay here too long… we’ll all die. We sent some Masters ahead to prepare the way for when you do get sent off. We sent messages to those we trust to create more than a few red herrings, but I’m afraid even the most optimistic we can be is that you’ll get a few weeks here to prepare.”

“Well, I don’t get it. Why us? What’s so different or special about us? I mean you have to understand, we come from a world where we’re a bunch of lazy asses,” Craig was trying to explain away reality like Bill was, but with a little more confusion than urgency, “We go to work every day and sit in cubes and work on computers. What the hell do we have that these guys, some of who have been training since they were in diapers, don’t?”

“I don’t know,” admitted the Master, “and I know little of your world. All we have are the prophecies. These prophecies were left by the same people who left us the ritual of The Test, so I expect they have some powerful truth to them.”

“There’s a lot of room in these prophecies for us to be offed,” Sarah sighed, “If nothing else, we are smart and we do work well as a team, guys. Don’t be so quick to give up.”

“Another thing I don’t get is why only half of us are here, and why this half,” Craig said as if trying to argue that this was a dream he was waiting to wake from.

“Good point. With the other five of our team here, we might have had a better chance,” Bill paused, “This is not good.”

“I don’t know, would you rather be dealing with customers?” Ben asked, when no one answered, “It was meant to be a joke.”

“How soon can we do the test?” Sarah wanted to see what kind of chance they all had as soon as possible, but without getting that bit out of the way, there was no way to know.

“Wow, you’re in a hurry,” Angus smiled as if this was part of some cosmic joke, “Can’t wait to cast Magic Missile, can you?”

That gave the group a bit of a laugh, except for the Master who furrowed his brow in confusion, but didn’t say anything.

“I want to cast… magic missile,” quoted Ben in a geeky voice. There was a pause and a bit of tension release before the group turned serious again.

“We need to know what our own as well as each others’ strengths and weaknesses are as soon as possible, to work as a team in this,” Sarah pointed out, “Like right now we know to go to Angus for a Linux question or Craig for anything to do with daisy chaining crap together…”

“It’s a good point, we need all the time we can get to train,” admitted Angus, “It’s not like ya’ll are like me, doing martial arts in your spare time.”

Sarah didn’t continue the point as she was mentally beating herself up for not exercising more.

“No, we can’t all be as awesome as you, Angus,” Bill said in his sarcastic, good-natured way, “Some of us were stupid and played sports in our spare time instead. If only we knew our life would turn into a freaking Narnia book.”

“Word,” Angus said with a short chuckle like a hiccup.

The Master continued leading them down a path in what the rest didn’t realize was confused silence. They all seemed to speak a common language, and yet it was times like these the Master had no idea what flowers had to do with chains or what sort of animal a Linux was. He chalked it up to cultural differences and figured that in spite what Craig had said, they were knowledgeable, skilled people who would all have strong focus once they had done The Test. If people were lazy in their world, he figured these people who were brought over were an exception.

It was probably better that he didn’t know a IT tech support team for a computer repair and reseller was their one hope for winning the war and continuing existence as he knew it.

This post is brought to you by Adventure for the Atari 2600. Don’t get eaten by the… seahorse? Ostrich? I think the main character would be the best Con outfit ever. The Adventure square, the original fantasy game hero…

There have been a lot of whispers as of late about there finally being a new edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and how people feel about what has been announced (or just rumored). There are plenty of things that are making me gape and cringe, one of them being the attempt of Wizards of the Coast to try and make AD&D a pen, paper, dice, and laptop game.

It sounds cool to have an online community to access resources and have discussions. It seems WoC is planning for this to be a place to either print out all of your materials or just plain play. Your mouse is your dry erase marker and avatars are your miniatures.

How do we feel about this? There is no need to look at each other or interact… just look online!

This is what I see happening…

“You encounter a roving band of rogues. Wait a minute while a print it out. Or better yet, log in and we can all see the map over the internet!”

“Cool. It’s like a LAN party. Can we play Doom?”

“If we’re just going to play on the internet, why did we drive to your house?”

“For the cheetos and mountain dew, duh!”

“I have those at my house. Why did I drive if I didn’t need to? I could be playing naked. I want to cast magic missile… naked!”

“Dude, that’s creepy. But I see your point. I could be home, playing World of Warcraft and this game at the same time.”

“Why don’t we just all play World of Warcraft instead?”

“Good idea.”

“Naked?”

“Uh, no. Not a good idea. But, what you do in your own house is your business.”

Scary stuff, huh? It sounds like a lot of the things WoC is removing, changing, or adding are an attempt to lure the MMORPG crowd into the AD&D fold.

Any thoughts on this?

This post is brought to you by AD&D: Pools of Radiance for the NES, or should I say Famicom? This screen shot is inviting heroes to step up in New Phlan. Really, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I recently started role playing again, and as much as it feels like sitting in that comfy divit in an old chair, I think maybe I picked the wrong chair.

A game master (aka GM or DM: one who runs the game) puts forth a framework in which to operate our imaginations. By playing in their game, we are accepting to follow that framework alongside the imaginings of the fellow players. The GM provides the world and our tasks, and we provide the heroes.

I realized that is my problem with this game I’ve recently joined. We didn’t provide the heroes. We had to fill in most of the lines on the character sheet- like our starting equipment, but we didn’t get to pick the name, sex, race (eg: elf), class (eg: wizard), or background (recent & far past) of our characters. Since we are a sum of our experiences and genetics, that sort of sums up the whole personality of the character we’re playing. We didn’t come up with our role to play while role playing.

At first, I saw it as a challenge. Play a character you would have never come up with on your own. I thought it would be kind of closer to acting in a play. I thought it could be fun.

And it is a challenge, so much so that not only do I feel like I don’t relate to my character in any way, I feel like I don’t know what my own character would do in most given situations. If given time to think I might come up with a list of things he might do with reasonings, but I don’t exactly have that luxury while playing in real time. It’s getting frustrating.

I love characters. If you would ask me why I write fiction or read it… why I play the video games I do or like the movies and shows I watch, it’s the characters. I admire the way they are developed through the story, their interactions through dialogs and gestures, and seeing how they grow and change. In a good story, you get to know the characters as if they’re real people and feel interested and invested enough in them to care what happens to them.

Is it such a stretch to think that the reason I love role playing is coming up with and playing a character? I love being the GM to make up and play many roles. Players only get to be one, single hero. I’m feeling like I’m fitting into my role like it’s a few sizes off, and it’s no wonder. I didn’t come up with or chose it. The one bit of creation that a player is allowed is their character, and I was denied that chance.

And so, it’s no wonder I’m thinking of leaving the group. It makes me sad because the players are top-notch. I really like playing with them a lot.

And the GMing isn’t so bad either, it’s just that he inadvertently took away my favorite part of role playing.

A lesson learned, I guess, but it’s a lesson I already learned once before.

In Milford, MA there used to be a gaming store called The Gamers’ Guild. I was in a game once where I was only allowed to play if I took on an existing NPC (non player character). There were two I was able to chose from. I selected the one I thought would be more fun based on her class.

Then, I tried to develop her as a character through playing her. I was told that my character wouldn’t do this or say that. I found out my character had a history and personality and relationships that I wasn’t aware of. Every time I tried to speak or act, I found myself defending my actions to one player in particular. In short, I found out that this wasn’t my character.

Yet again, they were a group of pretty awesome players, but it wasn’t allowed to role play, I was just a warm body rolling for a NPC of someone else’s imagination.

So, I feel like I don’t want to mess up the game by quitting. I also don’t want to stop playing with these neat people, but I’m fast losing interest in trying to play this character. For all of you thinking I should just kill him off, the in game situation makes even that very difficult.

Should next week be my last game? I can overcome any number of other game flaws if I enjoy playing my character, but without that, I’m not sure anything else is enough.

I think it may be time to take up the mantle of GM once again.

I attribute my writing to a natural result of reading so much, but the internet surely played a large role as well. I started writing once upon a time in the (then) magical land of Compuserve. Sure, before that I wrote long posts and emails and even sort of ‘message role played’- but it was just communicating thoughts and words. It didn’t occur to me that I was writing stories, poetry, and essays.

The lame story of how I figured this out was an encounter with a luser with the handle of “ForumRuler” mocking me even though he didn’t know me. I was about ten and not going to let it go. I had a “Well, I rule more than you do.” attitude and online persona. We went back and forth and finally he threw the gauntlet down. He challenged me to a contest of words. The rules were that we write a poem about our own awesomness. Who ever wrote the better one would be the true forum ruler. I think he was expecting an easy win because I was “Huh… never wrote a poem before”.

We were working something close to real time, both online, so I wrote:

You first hear footsteps,
Then the smile,
You know you will be dead,
In a little while,
You say why me?
You whine and run,
But you know what will happen,
She is the one,
She is the one I say,
The one you despise,
She is strong and charming,
and she is wise,
Whom is she you say,
Why has she come?
It doesn’t matter,
Your life is done.

He admitted it was ‘not bad’ having posted four lines of clever ‘roses are red I rule ‘n stuff’ and I never heard from him again. He probably had to change his handle and start over. I, on the other hand, found it very satisfying and started writing for the sake of writing actual works for the first time.

Notepad and I would sit down and write poems, story lines, dialogs, beginnings, middles, ends, and scenes. I wrote about taverns without ever have been drunk. I wrote about dueling with swords and sorcery, even though I’d never fenced. The real bits were always in the poetry and the characters. I only wrote about emotions, motivations, and interactions as I understood them. This was the a part of writing I fell in love with.

My true motivations for writing were somewhere between escape and expression. I felt better after all the jumbled thoughts in my head came out and made some sense on paper. Those thoughts didn’t have to be me, they became characters in far off worlds with much more important things to accomplish. They had much bigger trials to face.

The stories in my head were no longer just bedtime stories to myself after closing my eyes. They bore some sense of importance that I might one day get them down properly and share them with others.

I’m only twenty-something, but I still am not sure I feel right saying ‘pwned’.

It feels a bit unreal to have gaming be the younger cool. It seems like just yesterday, I was my little brother’s age and getting flack for the same reason he’s considered awesome. I feel like the same people who will wear Mario Bros. shirts now might be the same ones who poked at me in school for video gaming. Part of me wants to reveal the poser they are. I would ask them:

In the first level, do you go down the pipe for the coins? You do? Now why would you do that? There’s a barely hidden one-up that you miss if you go down the pipe. 100 coins equal a one-up. Do the math.

They look at me blankly, thinking, “Up-whats?”.

Am I still allowed to use the word poser?

Across the room, nestled between cd video games and Super Nintendo cartridges are little rectangle bricks that belong to no Nintendo. One of them even says “Mario Bros.” on it.

People think Mario, they think Nintendo. It’s hilarious how many games people remember as being exclusive classics for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System originated for the Atari, early PC, and even old Macs.

You just can’t pwn at old video games. There was no typing to other players in a multiplayer environment. Even when doors and muds came about in BBS land, I don’t know about you guys, but I remember there usually being 1 node for one person to play at one time. In Legend of the Red Dragon, when you killed someone in the field and were interviewed for what you said after kicking ass, no one ever uttered “Pwned!”. They would have looked at the screen, backspaced a few times, and totally “Owned!” you.



I also feel I don’t really pwn, because I don’t play Halo. To me, Halo is just MIDI Maze, Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Heretic, Hexen, or GoldenEye 007(etc.) all over again… in space… with more jumping. Wait, System Shock was in space (with zombies even). So yeah, just with more jumping. I know people will raise their fists at me, but to me Halo has been repeated so many times that I shrug.

I watch my little bro in his headset screaming ‘Dude! Let’s super jump.’ and just ask, “Why is there so much jumping?” and feel kind of old.

I don’t mind feeling out of touch with pwnage. What is kind of sad is that I’ve stopped being as excited by new video games. I’ll say, “That’s kind of cool.” or “That’s pretty neat.”, but for the most part, I just feel like I’ll never be as excited as I was when video games were still new with leaps and bounds in their advancement. I didn’t even have the money for them, but I had plenty of time and an obsessed uncle.

Don’t get me wrong, I roll up my Katamaris and I play my voice acted RPGs, RTSs, and TBSs. So, maybe I’m just not a shoot ‘em up kinda gamer.

This is not the case, because I’m not all about the MMORPGs. Instead they horrify me. The amount of time (or cheating) you have to invest to have a good time just boggles my mind. In addition, it’s kind of like I say when I see someone play Halo and I say, “Why is there so much jumping?”, with these it’s, “Wow, why is there so much running around?” Sure, there’s always been world map trekking, but this is insane. It used to be a few steps to the next town or a few random fights, now the random fights *ARE* the game. The intimacy of you, the characters, and the plot has been sacrificed to hack and slash with a subscription fee.

If you are reading this and like Halo or your MMORPG of choice, good for you. I mean, I’m obviously old and not so cool, so don’t listen to granny here.

I will keep saying “In my day…”, but that’s okay too. The best part about it is that now I have the resources to find all the old games I missed and try them out with the PC and emulator. Then I’ll snap shot the screen shots that amuse me and put them away for future posts. I know old games are not without flaws, but their flaws were lack of budget and technology to back them. I am floored by the mediocrity of today’s games. We have the tech and budget now, but where is all the fun game play and awesome writing? Creativity used to outpace the ability to convey it, now that the money and tech are there… where has it gone?

I am glad that there are exceptions. I just wish they were more the rule than the exception. At some point I’m hoping I’ll see it come back around and people will learn that eye-candy and hack and slash just isn’t enough.

Pure pwnage needs something more to back it up.