From memory, it all started with Quakeworld. Online gamers, previously at best able to pick a colour and nick name to signify their character, suddenly became able to download or create their own skins. Online gaming was revolutionised, you could proudly display your personality clearly for all to see.
I decided to devote this column to showing you all what I do in a typical night of EverQuest. When I sit at the computer to play some EQ, I have 3 roommates periodically peering over my shoulder saying, "What the hell do you do in this game!? You just run around and kill things?!" Well boys and girls, read this column and I'll tell you what I do. Pay attention, take notes.
If you are not a Game Master, Storyteller, or Dungeon Master then read no further. If you do your dice will be horribly cursed, and you will critically fail at anything you ever attempt from this day forward... Of course, knowing players like I do I know all of you are still reading. That's fine. It won't save you.
It's the nature of gamers to want to get the most out of the characters they play. The experience of spending hours hunched over a blank character sheet and a Players' Handbook, trying to figure out just how to arrange those last few character creation points to make an indestructible fighter or an undetectable thief or an infinitely enlightened wizard, is common to just about all of us.
In the lead up to this review I said Violence was "so degrading, so disturbing, so vile and loathsome that you may very well never recover from reading it, let alone playing it.". In actuality, that's a lie. Really, if you are anything but a total newbie to roleplaying, Violence won't offer up anything you haven't seen before. The book isn't some psychotic's thoroughly researched tome into the dark and macabre, it's fairly tame in the scheme of things. It doesn't even need to be poly-bagged.
Throughout the last decade I have owned just about every game system out there. Everything from the Sega genesis to the Dreamcast to the Playstation to the N64 has been attached to my television at one point or another.
When I opened up my birthday present this year and found a copy of the D20 Conversion for Holistic Designs' Fading Suns RPG, my first thought was, "What in the world do I need this for?" But being the rules geek I am, I had to pick it up and read it. While I can't say I loved everything about it, by the time I finished it, I had to admit, I was impressed.
In which our hero experiences various persuasive and other brainwashing techniques all in the name of entertainment.Oh boy, a troublemaker. By the sharp suit, immaculate hair and perfect teeth - they all have perfect teeth - he's in the cab and talking before I can tell him to stick it, personal stereo hissing an amniotic beat with his headphones around his neck, but he is attentive, his voice clear, melodious and not forced - each word measured and carefully considered as I pull away from the hotel.
I am a gamer. I spend my evenings and weekends holed up in cavernous basement rooms consulting sourcebooks and to-hit charts, or running around parks and community centers in full makeup and costume playing rock-paper-scissors at various intervals. I spend my paycheck or my allowance on the latest games and supplements and mounds of polyhedral dice which have a way of turning up in the oddest places around my house or apartment. I have hundreds of stories about games I have played and characters I have known, some of which are actually interesting and funny to other people. I am a gamer, and this is how I spend my free time.
There is a game genre often shunned by loyal RPG-ers and CCG-ers: the standalone card game. And I now feel it is my duty to do a little evangelization for these gems so often ignored. What is my angle, you may ask? Gut-busting, tongue-in-cheek, wit amplifying humor.
