Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 – Sort of a Pen, Paper, & Dice Game

Adventure Atari 2600
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?

Role Playing is Playing a Role

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Pools of Radiance Japan
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.

You Can’t Pwn At Pong

Mario Bros Atari
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.

Legend of the Red Dragon

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.

Scenes from Childhood

Westminster Street, Worcester MA I can’t sleep. Dada. Hiss. Moon in the window. My flower undies. Rocking yellow wicker. White soft sheets. Warm. Rocking. Yawn. Creak. Rocking chair.

The whiffle ball and bat are still in the car. They are brand new. I have to practice for when I’m older and can join the major leagues. I’m not even five yet, but Mom says it’s okay to go across the street to the car and get them. Mom gives me the keys. They’re in the back seat, so I have to unlock the door in the front because there’s no keyhole in the back. I can crawl in the back real easy, which is more fun and faster than unlocking the back door. I crawl back into the driver seat and decide to put my bat and ball in the passenger seat. I’m the driver. Vroom, vroom! I turn the wheel and peer over the dashboard. The wheel doesn’t move when the car is off, but I can pretend. I can see pretty good when I sit on my knees. Suddenly I’m not pretending. The trees are moving, and I’m going down the hill. I’m in so much trouble. I’m stopped and I don’t remember crashing into the tree. I’m in the yard again but Mom’s there and she’s screaming at me.

Meatloaf had five kittens. Then she had another four later. They seem kind of dirty to me and I think they need a bath. I asked the fishies if I could use their water. They don’t mind. There is a little light at the top of the tank so I can see the kitties swimming around. They’re having fun meowing and swimming around. Mom comes in and she’s mad. She’s drying the kitties and she won’t let me pet them, even though I asked. I said please.

You can run all the way from the kitchen, into the living room, into mom and dad’s room, and jump onto the bed. You can’t do it when mom’s sleeping during the day. You can’t do it when dad’s sleeping at night. But, when mom goes to work, then we can play roll ’em! Dada rolls and we fall down if we don’t jump over him. He also has the recking-ball lemon-squeezer. It’s really just his cast and his leg. He’ll squeeze us if he can catch us, but he never catches me. I’m too fast.

When you are watching television and you turn it off or change the channel, why isn’t it the same thing you were watching when you turn it back on? Why can you do that with the movies as Grouchy Grandma’s house?

Chris said that if I pick up all his baseball cards for him, then I get to keep them. He really doesn’t want to clean his room. So, I pick up every single card, even the ones under his bed which smells like pee. After I’m done, he laughs at me and takes the box of cards. I put my hands on my hips and tell him that he’d better give me them or I’ll call the police on him. He laughs. Dada walks into the doorway. He tells Chris to give me the cards. He tells Chris not to make deals he can’t keep. Don’t be an Indian-giver.

It’s in the middle of the night and I’m creeping out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. Dada is in the living room next door, so I can see a little. I crawl onto a chair and then the kitchen table. There’s almost a whole stick of butter in the dish. Midnight snack. I make it back to my bed undetected.

When Dada helps me change clothes, he tells me to lift up my arms so he can take my shirt off. Sometimes he doesn’t do it all the way and the shirt is stuck on my head. He tells me I have a nice hat.

We live in a triple decker which means there are people living upstairs. One of the people is boy older than me. He’s as old as my brother, but he’s not like my brother. He hates my brother and together we make fun of him. Sometimes though he plays with my brother instead and they make fun of me. They can both say the alphabet faster than me. They say that means that they’re smarter.

I’m playing pretty ponies and little people when my brother opens the door and farts. He closes the door and runs away laughing.

Every once in a great while my dad smokes a cigar. I don’t like the smell, especially when it gets in my room, but it’s funny when he puts it in the plastic Halloween pumpkin’s mouth. The pumpkin looks funny smoking.

On one side of the triple-decker there is a bank-in. It’s steep, with trees, but then gets flat again at the bottom. We’re not supposed to play there, but we do. We even have a fort. Chris doesn’t play fair, though. Chris only has fun if I’m not having any. He’s laughing in the bank-in. I’m at the top. I’m going to go tell mom and dad, but they won’t do anything. If I scare him so we won’t laugh at me again. I find a rock I can barely lift. I throw it next to him, down the bank-in. It’s heavy, but the slope helps. It hits his head. He falls down. He screams. I stand at the top of the bank-in. I just watch him scream. My parents come and take him, yell at me. No one believes that I didn’t mean to hit him.

We have a stone wall in the back running along the apartment. It is between the side of the yard where the swing set is and the side of the yard with the bank-in. The wall has a bit of ground at the top of it, then a fence that separates us from another apartment. Sometimes we climb up and sit there. Is being off the wall when you are on the wall and jump off? The jumping doesn’t last very long and it’s not very high up. I don’t get it.

Mom says that we are human beans. God is not a human bean, though. He is just a bean. I don’t think that makes sense. I think he’s kind of like a cloud that looks like the face of a man, the man in the moon. What do we have to do with beans? What kind of beans?

When Chris is mean to me I tell him I’m going to call the police on him. Sometimes he believes me and stops being mean. He doesn’t believe me this time, so I pick up the phone to call the police. I put it to my ear and a man’s voice says, “This is the police.” I scream and put down the phone. Dad comes in laughing. It was him on the other phone. I didn’t know you could do that.

Inspirational Video Game Quotes Part Deux

Breath of Fire SNES Shoop!I felt like there needed to be a second edition once I started reminiscing. Playing roms and giggling should be shared! So here is the sequel, the quotes that I remember and love for their charm, wit, or plain old badness. Click here to see part one.
– – – – –

 
“Hmm, don’t have time to play with myself!”
– Duke Nukem 3d, Duke Nukem said when using action button on arcade game of the same name (PC)

Chrono Trigger SNES Nu

 
Guybrush: “You fight like a Dairy Farmer!”
Pirate: “How appropriate, you fight like a Cow!”
– Guybrush Threepwood, Monkey Island 1: The Secrey of Monkey Island (PC)

 
“Hmm, a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. What possible use could that have?”
– Guybrush Threepwood, Monkey Island 1: The Secrey of Monkey Island (PC)

Breath of Fire 2 SNES Die

 
“Am I butterfly dreaming I’m a man? Or a bowling ball dreaming I’m a plate of sashimi? Never assume what you see and feel is real!” – Doreen, Chrono Trigger (SNES)

Dragon Warrior 4 NES Counter

 
“In our world, every storm has an end. Every night brings a new day. What’s important is to trust those you love, and never give up. We must never give up hope!” – Priestess in the Cathedral, Chrono Trigger (SNES)

 
“How do I get out of this chicken outfit?!” – Marine, StarCraft (PC)

 
“I really have to go… number one.” – Battle Cruiser, StarCraft (PC)

Dragon Warrior 3 NES Pepper

 
“E=MC… d’oh let me get my notepad.” – Science Vessel, StarCraft (PC)

 
“This is not Warcraft in space!” – Artanis, StarCraft (PC)

 
“Besides humans, dogs also sleep at night. Why aren’t you asleep?” – Dog, Earthbound (SNES)

 
“Run, run, or you’ll be well done!” – Kefka, Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) 6 (PS)

Earthbound SNES Nausea

 
“I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE YOU!!” – Kefka, Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) 6 (PS)

 
“Terra. . . Please wait for me. . . And. . . please. . . don’t let a lecherous young king, who shall remain nameless, near you!” – Locke Cole, Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) 6 (PS)

 
“Thou are so… odd.” – Cyan, Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) 6 (PS)

Final Fantasy 1 NES FIEND

 
“I’m working for the Empire. But, don’t worry… I’m not going to garrote you!” – Shadow, Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) 6 (PS

 
“This monkey’s going to give you a spanking, Shupkay!” – Sten, Breath of Fire 2 (SNES)

 
Natsume: “Thanks! But I have nothing to give you in return..except, maybe myself…”
Kite: “WHAT?!?!”
Natsume: “No! I meant I could help you out if you need it…”
– .hack//MUTATION (PS2)

Goonies 2 NES Ouch What

 
Man: “Here’s your question. ‘What’s the secret to success in business?'”
Hero: “…”
Man: “That’s right! Silence. Silence is golden.”
Hero: “?”
– Dragon Warrior 4 (NES)

 
“Sure.. hope this is not… Chris’s blood.”
– Barry says stilted like Kirk in Star Trek, Resident Evil (PS)

Lufia 2 SNES Master Catfish

 
“One more wrong move and you would of been a Jill sandwich”
– Barry says to Jill, Resident Evil (PS)

 
“That’s a face only a sledgehammer could love, and has!” – Morte, AD&D: Planescape: Torment (PC)

 
Fall-from-Grace: “You know, Nordrom, you are perhaps the cutest little rogue modron I have ever encountered.”
Nordom: “‘Cutest’ is a subjective term. I prefer the designation ‘fearsome clubed warrior’.”
Fall-from-Grace: “Of course! That’s why you’re so cute.”
– AD&D: Planescape: Torment (PC)

Lufia 2 SNES Master Monster or Human

 
Nordom: “A query, Annah: is your tail’s purpose to indicate your current level of hostility?”
Annah: *angrily* “What kind of stupid question is that you pikin’ sod box?”
Nordom: “My analysis is correct. Danger! Danger!”
– AD&D: Planscape: Torment (PC)

 
Morte: “Hey Nordom, knock-knock.”
Nordom: “Why do you persist in addressing me as a door?”
Morte: “It’s a joke, you stupid polygon! You’re supposed to answer ‘Who’s there?'”
Nordom: “I know who is there. It is you. Why would I ask a question when I already know the answer?”
Morte: “Just forget it.”
– AD&D: Planescape: Torment (PC)

Lufia 2 SNES Confront Swell

– – – – –

 
Let me end this with a quote about video games from the once upon a time president of the USA, Ronald Reagan made August 8, 1983:

“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
Final Fantasy 2 SNES 4 PS Dwarves

 
So let us fly their jets.

 
Screen shots from the top:
Breath of Fire (SNES)
Chrono Trigger (SNES)
Breath of Fire 2 (SNES)
Dragon Warrior 4 (NES)
Dragon Warrior 3 (NES)
Earthbound (SNES)
Final Fantasy 1 (NES)
Goonies 2 (NES)
(next three) Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES)
Final Fantasy 2 (SNES) 4 (PS)