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ExamForce :: Article Archive :: Newsletter Article
 The Cert Times: IT Edition Article Archive
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| Roll Dem Geek Bones (B1N@RY N@T10N (A.J. Axline)) |
I don't do a lot of RPG table-top gaming these days, although I definitely think there is still a place in the Digital Age for an evening of D&D, or Car Wars, or Zombies!, or even Talisman. That last one is technically a board game, but bears as much resemblance to anything that comes in a Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley box as does Windows Vista resemble a 5-year improvement over Windows XP.
I still participate in table-top games from time to time, when I can find the time. There is something wonderfully atavistic about pencil-and-paper gaming. Polyhedron dice still possess the ability to enchant me with the simplicity and wonder of random number generation; they do so with a physical adroitness that other objects of chance such as roulette wheels (or CPUs, for that matter) cannot match.
I also love the other trappings of the hobby. I love overly-elaborate character sheets with over-erased "thin spots", crude pencil notations in the margins, and the seemingly inevitable pizza sauce and soda/slush stains. I love the myriad of mechanical pencils, dry erase markers, and click erasers that congregate (often along with the dice) in some sort of sanctified bag or container. For almost two decades, my dice and writing instruments have been stored in a black cloth bag that my girlfriend sewed together and then painstakingly embroidered with silver thread with the legend "BAG OF VECNA".
(You either laughed just then, or furrowed your brow in puzzlement. Both are appropriate responses in their own way.)
(Aside #2: The girlfriend who spent several afternoons sewing together my highly treasured dice/pencil bag, is now my wife. She enjoys playing evil clerics. I am of the opinion that most women are evil clerics under their curvy facades. This world view likely explains why I didn't date a lot before I met my future wife.)
Table-top RPGs are significant items in the geek fossil record. They represent an incongruous yet intelligently balanced pairing of rules and imagination, a marriage of strictness and fancy that literally looks good on paper. The best players of table-top RPGs are those who are willing to suspend just enough disbelief to jump into a story that takes place in a setting with laws of nature similar to our own. That is, you need people who can "play nice" in a waking dream that (like our universe) still uses mathematics to determine certain consequences of actions.
Even my young friend Vector the Spectre, who has silicon flowing through his veins (no, I'm not being metaphorical... it's a long story, and not all of it is declassified yet), embraced table-top RPGs when I introduced him to them a few years ago. He currently runs a D&D campaign that uses a hybrid rule system of his own creation, and he's planning on starting a second game that will be based in a cyberpunk setting. Because he is Vector, he has managed to introduce a lot of computing into the process. He shows up for gaming sessions with very little paper, as he insists on running practically everything off of his laptop. He still uses dice, though.
"The analog has its place," he told me defensively a while back. "Usually in museums or in landfills, but some of it is... quaint enough... to keep alive."
"You just used the word 'quaint' in a sentence," I replied. "According to the house rules, I now get to beat the back of your legs with a length of coax until I get tired, or bored."
"Show me a copy of these 'house rules' you speak of," Vector squinted.
"They're more of a set of guiding tenets than an actual static document," I said, looking around for a length of coaxial cable.
"Is that the last of the Diet Dr. Pepper that was in the fridge?" he asked, looking suspiciously at the half-filled glass sitting next to me. "The beverage which I forbade you to consume upon pain and suffering?"
"It's not the... I don't think you're... maybe," I said.
Vector shook his head sadly.
"What?" I said.
"How's your poison save vs. laxative?" he asked me.
You guys are lucky I got this written. The wireless signal in the john is not the best.
A.J. Axline is the chief popcorn maker at Closet Universe, and remembers how brutal hand-to-hand battles were in the original Top Secret game.
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Posted by
nam on 30/05/2007 08:22 |
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