Ego Poisoning

You know, the kind for those of us still alive.

Starting things off with a summat spoiler-ific link is actually in service of the post itself, note. I imagine most of my readership would ask if Portal could be spoiled at this point; people have been asking that question, and assuming common knowledge, since shortly after the game dropped.

Me, though, I only played it back in March. I’d heard of it before, and understood that it was awesome. I knew enough to question the veracity of baked goods. Thanks to playing Darksiders, I’d even used a portal gun, albeit a fairly neutered one. I had a free copy of Portal from the Steam to Mac switch, but had never enjoyed access to a computer that could play it. When I did get a computer which could play it—the Magnificent Daltor, ‘pon which I type this entry—I started Portal immediately, but moved on to swordier pastures after a few stages.

Needless to say, when I came back to the game I finished it almost immediately. And talked about it. And felt my brain growing and warping underneath its influence.

I also knew that I had to get my lady friend to play it. That part of the plan took a while longer to bring into fruition. She’s pretty dedicated to the idea that she’s neither a gamer nor a nerd, despite all the indications to the contrary:

• She loves Firefly more than I do, and I love Firefly
• She beat Puzzle Quest before I did
• She’s been an avid PoxNora player for two+ years, and has max level Avatars in multiple factions and several powerful decks.

I certainly admit that Stacey’s endured a ton of pressure from me; I tend to take any opportunity to put things that I enjoy in front of other people, so they can share in the enjoyment. I’m versed in explaining why they’ll enjoy whatever the thing is. And I’m persistent, and opportunistic, about finding chances to revisit old joys. Stacey puts up with a tremendous amount of that, which is to her credit. When I finally got her to play a game of Magic–which she’d offered to do as part of an earlier conversation–she was a little horrified at how much of the game’s mechanics she could immediately call to mind from my subtly and not-so-subtly dropping it into conversations over the last several years.

Anypants, Portal was recently free. Free again, actually. And that was awesome, so I bought it for Stacey using Steam’s awesome gifting program and the fact that I’d had the foresight to already create a Steam account for her.

She was frustrated, at first. She fought me on playing the game, and was irritated that I’d picked up a game for her—which went away when I explained it was free, but for maximum impact I didn’t do that until she’d been playing for a few hours.

Because, yeah, she played for a few hours. Then a few more. Then, on the second night, she meant to go to bed around 9 and didn’t make it to bed until 11 because she “had to beat this last stage” for three or four consecutive stages. She’d run into a puzzle that stymied her, exclaim loudly in vexation, and then refuse my help because she knew she’d get it. And she would.

I did offer assistance on a few puzzles, but I think only three overall, and mostly when demonstrating a new mechanic (dropping crates from the ceiling, long-shotting an orange portal down a hallway so you can make it across the winding hallway with its moving platforms, etc.).

She dominated the game. She learned about cake (and was deeply unsettled by the writing on the wall). She murdered turrets with abandon.

She hated cameras, and let them experience her hatred.

It was awesome. Letting her reach the end of the testing, without spoiling it, was a tremendous effort on my part which paid off magnificently when she muttered “Oh shit, I’m dead aren’t I?” and then immediately railed against that fate with a flurry of aptly-placed portals.

I’d always suspected, but was happy to confirm, that Portal is as fun to watch others play as it is to bull through oneself. Stacey got to confirm that too, just yesterday, when my younger brother dropped by and I plopped him in front of the game. With John, I bumped things up to the level after you have both portals, just so he could play with the mechanics. Again, John’s not much of a gamer, and what games as he plays have largely been thrust on him by me; I gave him Red Faction when it was on sale, because I knew he’d appreciate driving a dump truck through a wall then demolishing a building. I actually figured he’d love that more than me, because the few games he’s played are disproportionately sandbox, which are games I almost never touched before Red Faction.

Watching John play Portal was especially interesting because, despite having no tutorial (other than me mentioning the controls) he took immediately to the mechanics. He played differently than Stacey, in particular because he was less aggressive and had a harder time murdering turrets (though he got an awesome camera shot that dropped a turret and drew applause). However, I was immediately impressed because dude would not walk anywhere a portal could take him, and seeing some of the simple, unconscious ways he bounced through the levels was pretty great.

When he left, Stacey and I suggested he’d be getting the game but he shrugged it off and said he’d just play it when he visited. A few hours of Doctor Who (again, my lady doth protest her nerddom a bit much) later, I came down to the computer and saw a message from the man—Portal purchased.

Today, I returned from teaching my class to see the following text message, sent at around 10am: “Level 16.”

PS- It should be noted that, right now, Steam has Portal 2 at half-off.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Portal, Steam

Newly moved, newly minted, newly anointed…appellate as you like, the posts be flowing again.

The biggest impediment to my writing thatthat wasn’t financial or connective in naturewas the marked lack of game-playing which accompanied the afore-indicated impediments. I wrestled with the question: “Can someone who isn’t really gaming write about gaming?” But, I admit, i wasn’t wrestling all that hard, due to a return to the homestate, new job-action, and the ever-present excitement that is living with my Special Lady Friend. At this point, I believe we’ve trumped any previously standing records for most consecutive nights spent in the same building, and she’s barely been in town a month.

Anypants, before I delve into the meat of this admittedly brief post I want to stress that the Magnificent Amazonian and I do not yet have a relationship which would be grist for angsty, troubled posts. Besides, those would go on my live journal. Because I totes still possess one.

No, our last several disagreements involved:

• Whether Clay and Gemma were married
• Whether the two minutes of the beginning of this week’s episode, which I missed, referred to last week’s aired episode or the last week of in-universe time
• Skin grafts and premature babies*
  *I should stress that this was actually two separate conversations, but the primary crux of both involves her medical background versus my “I’m a guy what knows things” background. She handily won both conversations.

Obviously, I am a fortunate man. However, I’m also a thoroughly introspective and reflective fellow, so every time my fiancee and I engage in an exchange of comically raised voices I’m given to consider other arguments and disagreements I may have had.

This leads back to gaming because I’ve just made my very first Pathfinder character for this organize play chapter. Maulmouth is differentiated from Napan, the character in this
game, who has been featured before. The latter character is a 4th edition Runepriest githzerai liberally stained with PF flavor; the former is a half-orc alchemist built in full-on PF style.

Returning to the heady days of 3.5 brought the value of a single +1 into a perspective I’d all but forgotten, what with 4e’s generous paired stats to defenses and level-based modifiers to stats. Suddenly, I was sweating over every skill rank and ability mod in a way I never worry about my 4e characters. Suddenly, I was explaining just why I needed a 7 Cha over an 8…explaining this in my head, mind; vetting arguments ahead of time to be ready if I was challenged.

Of course, there is no need to challenge me on a 7 Cha; my 1st level character’s 10 hp aren’t much impediment to a pair of solid swings or a lucky crossbow bolt, so my MAD-suffering pirate is hardly game-breaking.

But I’ve been away from the thick of gaming long enough to be extremely conscious of how valuable every +5% has suddenly become to my character. The fact that the last time I worried this much about numbers was as a DM in Tinderbox only further illuminates the issue; as a DM, I can always find a few +1s, especially since PbP 4th runs best with group initiative. Flank here, bull-rush there, and the elite with the impressive attack will get his hit even on a shoddy roll.

As a player, though, I’m left scrabbling for every modifier I can find. I’ve already spent a few days pondering ways for Maulmouth to compensate for his weaknesses (Poor Dex in a system where I can’t use my spellcasting stat for my spellish attacks) while maximizing his strengths. In turn, I’ve spent a few days reflecting on how rarely I need to do the same thing in 4th, where 2 good stats and a single decent one usually see you through the battle.

The stark divide between the way I’m thinking of my half-orc pirate and the way I’ve played games for the last few years has me thinking about modifiers, fighting for them, and allowing them. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about adding a rule to games that prohibits players from fighting over less than a +2 modifier in any situation, in any edition. Obviously this is a wild hair of a concept at present, something barely formed, but it’s weighing on my mind. Would letting players know that no +1 bonus would ever be debated (you either have it or you don’t, in most cases gaining it through the pronouncements of the DM) break the experience of the game? Or would it speed and streamline things, allowing players greater opportunities to get lost in the hackery?

Posted in Uncategorized

As I stare across the very short span that separates me from 30, I’m the first to admit that there are things I haven’t done. I haven’t published the novels I would like, or the sweeping campaign world epics that gamers the world over could thrill to. I haven’t built the resume I might like, or even lived anywhere I’ve ever wanted to live.

But on Friday the 13th of May, 2011, I accomplished something of which I am very proud, and by which I am truly blessed. That was the day I proposed to my special lady friend, and she said yes. And, while the story has very little to do with the fine art of tabletop gaming, I’ve been promising to write it out for a while—my people are scattered throughout the civilized lands of the world, and it’s much easier to point them to the proposal story than try to get every one on the horn.
If you JUST want the proposal story, skip to them BOLD texts

Posted in A-Z, Gaiden, How I Proposed, P, Stacey is Awesome

Hey kids!

I’m still around, still grinding my brain on the unyielding surfaces of gaming products and fantasy media. I’ve got a handful of half-finished posts from the last few weeks, some of which will eventually make it into a form that reaches the broader nets.

I’ve also picked up a few new games; did you know Pathfinder is the hotness? Turns out that it is! I was as surprised as you may or may not be. The prospect of playing 3.x has been so unfathomable for years now; outside of Dungeons and Dragons Online, which is a heavily-modified version of the system. I’ve had occasion to check out the d20 SRD a time or two in the last months, as when I wrote about Disciplines. Every time I dipped my toe back into that vast, wordy sea—one I used to swim like a magnificent afro-having Selkie—I recoiled at the chill touch of its unfathomable depths. Despite the complaints of many, complaints perfectly encapsulated in the first few episodes of this podcast by a player horrified at pretty much everything, I’ve never wavered in my enthusiasm for 4e. I love the survivability of the characters, the options afforded to players, the ease with which a new player can pick the game up and the flavor and mechanical opportunities present for someone whose dedication to the hobby spans most of their life.

Have to admit, though, if Pathfinder had beaten 4e into my hands, I might never have switched at all. The Penny Arcade play podcasts would still have influenced me, but Pathfinder does so much of what I love in 4e, meaning that suddenly the 3.x rules seem sparkly and new. I’ve been perching in the game ads section of Myth-Weavers eying each new PFRPG game in the hopes that it’s the one I can dive into.

I also jumped into a Savage Worlds game, a small affair with a DM (the esteemed Doctor Kash, who has posted commentary on this very blog on occasion) and one other player (who reads the blog but doesn’t comment, to my knowledge). SirLarkins tried roping me into the system back when we were two crazy rare book appraisers slinging leather-backed Americana and signed ARCs, but my love of Fate was (and remains) great. Kash had an equally hard time breaking me down, but it was more because I read this article and desperately wanted to play a character who leveled into being a 4e necromancer. The game is fast-paced yet challenging, due in no small part to our playing as 10 year olds. Starting so young, we’re untrained in most skills and equally below-average in most traits. Still, we (and let me be clear that when I say we I mean Wayland, which is to say the character I’m not piloting) kicked the shit out of four wolves and were awesome.

Seriously, though, I didn’t do a damn thing during that conflict. I made a rocket sled shortly thereafter though.

I’ve been digging deeply into the nourishing platters on offer at the above-linked Gamer’s Haven, listening to hours of actual-play podcasts. I found it in order to listen to some Savage Worlds gameplay, specifically Deadlands: Room Enough to Die. I’ve long appreciated Deadlands, but always in a way that involved reading and learning about it while never playing it. I once spent a month organizing someone else’s CCG collection and never once played a game, though I built many decks. I’m also tucked into the Keep on the Shadowfell podcast I linked above, as well as a few others. It’s all been very entertaining—save those times when my DMpathy kicks in over a complaining player or group that just won’t listen to the man who’s working SO HARD to give them vistas of the mind—but it also makes the quality of the original Penny Arcade DnD Podcasts something even more precious. The podcasts I’ve listened to at Gamer’s Haven, so far, feel very genuine and true to my own half-remembered gaming experiences; people can’t always make it, sometimes someone is distracted, dice come up fuck you and everyone is sad, occasionally folks get hyper and go off on tangents or a single NPC captures the party’s imagination in a way that the epic storyline utterly fails to. I know that Mike and Gabe are professionally funny men, but seeing how well they were able to gel with Scott Kurtz and this new game system—an entirely new hobby for Mr. Krahulik, no less—is pretty shocking.

Put another way: I’m enjoying the other podcasts, and it’s nice to have something to listen to as I do whatever the hell it is I do all day at my computer. But I have every episode of the PA podcasts (all four seasons PLUS the live show at PAX) in heavy rotation. I listen to them when I’m doing the dishes. I listen to them on long drives. I listen to them as I take my daily constitutional. There’s something magic there, which is why i find myself continually hoping they’ll drop another one.

Did a lot of reading, too; last week I read seven novels.

One other thing I’ve been doing over the past few weeks, sad to say, is quitting a lot of things. Specifically, I’ve quit something like 4 games and put myself into hiatus in another 2. The inciting incident for much of this was the unfortunate loggerheads that one of the games I was playing in came to, and while I’m still very disappointed in how that shook out it mostly just highlighted how little I’ve been enjoying myself in several others. I was suddenly conscious of how much time I was spending each day logging in and checking my subscribed threads; but how little joy I was getting out of seeing an update in most of them. Since I’ve also been trying to find a job and a new apartment and so on so that I can settle into domestic bliss with my fiancée*, the acknowledgment of how much time I spent on a hobby that wasn’t giving much back eventually became intolerable. That, in turn, fed back into the decrease in my input here; I asked myself if I was allowed to write about gaming if I wasn’t spending every waking moment gaming.

But of course I’m allowed to do that. I’m a man who knows more about longswords than long division, and could more easily explain the spells per day of a 15th level Wizard (pick any edition) with 18 Int than I could elucidate the rules of baseball. And I still have some characters I love, and two of my longest-running games are entering very exciting phases: in one, we’re about to fuck a dragon most thoroughly up; in the other, we’re blade-deep in a Piers Anthony-esque reframing of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

So that’s me, then. What’ve you been up to?

*I did successfully concoct and deploy a proposal plan, resulting in fiancée get.

Posted in A-Z, Audience Participation

First, please see for reference my preview post, which is to say the review I wrote of Thor prior to actually watching the movie.

Then Jump the Bump for Sad Words

Posted in A-Z, Avengers, Movie Review, Natalie Portman, T, Thor

A few days ago, Wizards.com posted a gem from the 1e DMG regarding humans as a playable race. Quoting that article as my source for what’s in the book—something I’ve painstakingly explained to my mother she should never do in her master’s program papers—I present you with the following gem: “This is done principally because the player sees the desired monster character as superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or her in the campaign,” the Dungeon Master’s Guide states. “A moment of reflection will bring them to the unalterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted toward mankind.”

The article also quotes the following wall of text: “The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with. From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too!”

Aaand, wow, I have apparently been playing wrong for years. Maybe I Make a Case, Though>

Posted in A-Z, M, Races, Tinderbox, Tran Empire