Well Adjusted, Surely

Have you ever considered home-schooling your three daughters?  If so, had you also considered incorporating Dungeons & Dragons into the curriculum?  If you have, then you should read THIS.  Here's an excerpt:

"My oldest daughter - known on this blog as Elerisa Celerna - expressed concerns over this. When we first got started and I kept changing my mind about what system we would be running (AD&D 2nd Ed., then D20 SRD, and finally Pathfinder RPG), we kept making changes to hers and her sisters' character sheets. The other girls just kind of rolled with it, but Elerisa by nature is a bit of a rules lawyer... "

Gary Gygax On "Futurama"

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on this date in 2008 at the age of 69. While many people roll their eyes dismissively at the mere mention of D&D, his death garnered a surprising amount of publicity at the time (including an obituary in The New York Times that you can read HERE), which included glowing tributes to the broader influence of his creation. My favorite line in that regard was in his obituary in The Economist, which noted that the Wikipedia entry on D&D was twice as long as their entry on Proust.


Before he died, Gary Gygax appeared in an episode of Futurama, a 2 minute clip of which I've embedded below. ("Greetings!" he says, while rolling some some dice and pausing to eyeball the results. "It's a pleasure to meet you!") 

"The Dungeon Masters" Documentary

Yesterday I watched an obscure 2008 documentary called The Dungeon Masters, which profiles the lives of a handful of long-time Dungeons & Dragons players, most of whom look to be in their 30s or 40s. I had first heard about this film over a year ago, but could never seem to find it anywhere, not even any clips on You Tube.  But it's now become available on Amazon HERE for download as an on-demand video ($3.99). 


I really liked it, both the film and the on-demand service (which I'd never used before). Predictably given the subject, the featured personalities in the documentary are extreme and a little damaged.  One woman is in the habit of dressing up as an elf queen, including a striking white wig and charcoal black face and body paint.  But underneath all that make-up she's divorced, living alone, and frustrated in love.  Another guy is an army reservist in real life who is also a passionate and theatrical 'dungeon master' with a penchant for killing off characters (and thereby alienating his players).  But he's also a nudist who's trying to give up D&D at the insistence of his middle aged fiancee, for whom he's also converting to Judaism.  And that's just two of the four or five people whose lives are profiled in the film, as they struggle to reconcile their elaborate 'fantasy lives' with their mundane, disappointing and sometimes troubled surroundings in the real world.


Critically, the film makers do not mock their subjects, which in many ways would have been so easy.  But neither is the film an approving apologia for them either.  The documentary merely turns the camera on its subjects and captures what transpires, including many, many cringe-inducing silences between the subjects and their disaffected, uncomprehending loved ones.  In that way I thought that this film was very reminiscent of the 1997 documentary Trekkies, about fanatical Star Trek enthusiasts. I found that film funnier, though, to be honest, probably because the subjects seemed to be much better adjusted in real life, so their eccentricities aroused laughter, not pathos.  In The Dungeon Masters, the subjects are clearly struggling to cope in real life.  But those same struggles made the film more compelling viewing overall, I thought, than Trekkies.

True Crime: D&D + Love Triangle = Hammer Attack

Zachery King (mug shot at left) is charged with beating Logan Bryson, 23, and Daniel Shokrian, 20, in Cedar City, Utah, on May 30. King knew Bryson from school, and both men had spent time the previous day playing "Dungeons & Dragons" with Shokrian at Shokrian's house. Shokrian was the Dungeon Master, and King didn't like what Shokrian was doing with King's character, detectives said, nor that Shokrian was "acting cocky."

King went home after the game, took an over-the-counter sleeping pill and went to bed. He woke up still angry, however. So he grabbed a hammer from his tool shed and drove back to Shokrian's house, entering through an open window. King went to Shokrian's bedroom, yelled, "I hate you," and started hitting Shokrian with the hammer. King then went to the room where Logan was sleeping and attacked him, too. (King was apparently also angry with Bryson because Bryson was dating a girl after they had both agreed they would not date her.)

Cthulhu Legos

Do you know who H.P. Lovecraft was? He was a Jazz-age author of horror stories that, when they were published at all in his lifetime, were published in throw-away pulp magazines. He died poor (living for much of his life with his mother) and largely unknown. But his work has become much more "famous" after his death. Today he's widely regarded to be among the most influential authors of horror fiction in the 20th century, alongside the better-known Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.

In the 1980s, a highly-successful "Dungeons & Dragons"-type game was published based on his work called "Call of Cthulhu," which is also the title of perhaps his most famous story. Since the 1970s, a number of "B-movies" have also been made based on some of his stories. Most are terrible, though 1985's "Re-Animator" and 2001's "Dagon" are better than most. A video game called "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" was also released in 2005.

Anyway, his birthday was last week, August 20th. So it's in his honor that I have emebedded below a 30 second parody commercial for a "Cthulhu"-themed Lego set that has been posted on You Tube. If you've never heard of "Cthulhu" or H.P. Lovecraft, I wouldn't bother watching it. But if you have, and especially if you liked "Legos" as a kid as well, I think that you'll enjoy it, especially the last line at the very end...

Minute Sales of Role-Playing Games

The popularity of pen and paper role-playing games like "Dungeons & Dragons" has fallen dramatically from the mid-1980s peak. I didn't realize how far they'd fallen until now, however.

Today, most publishers (other than Wizards of the Coast and a few others) are lucky to sell even 1,000 copies of anything they produce, according to James Mishler, a former editor of "Comics and Games Retailer," in a post on his blog at this link below:

http://jamesmishler.blogspot.com/2009/07/doom-of-rpgs-rambling.html

If that's true, the photo above, taken at Gen Con 2007, may be of every living "gamer." (Notice how every person in that picture is male, caucasian, and over 30?)

The Story of Halogen Part 6: The Orchid

I created Halogen’s arch-nemesis, the Orchid, in 1986, as a villain for the role-playing game “Villains & Vigilantes.” The character became known as “Orchid” because he was fond of describing himself aloud as “beautiful but fragile.” (And you may notice the plant-like roots growing over his cyborg face.) Why “fragile”? This was due to a quirk in the rules of the game “Champions,” a different super hero role-playing game that became much more popular than “V&V” by the mid-1980s. The “Champions” rules provided that super hero characters could get more powers if they were also burdened by “disadvantages.” The more “disadvantaged” a character was, therefore, the more powerful they’d be as well. So it was never the good looking, well-built villains that you had to worry about in “Champions.” It was the blind quadriplegics with ADD and a speech impediment whose power you really had to fear.

Months later I noticed a contest in a magazine I was reading (did you like “Space Gamer” magazine, too?), asking readers to send in drawings of their favorite villains. The best one would be published in a subsequent issue. I entered the drawing of “Orchid” above in that contest and won. The first time I saw that illustration published in a real magazine, I decided right then and there to put together a package describing “Halogen” and his world (as well as a couple of my other, unrelated drawings and characters) and to mail it around to as many comic book publishers as I could. And I did. I was sure that this would lead to Halogen getting his own comic book and, one day, to me achieving my dream of drawing “The Incredible Hulk” for Marvel Comics.

Those mailings did achieve results all right. Just not the ones I expected. Treachery and Greed is next.

The Story of Halogen Part 5: Villains & Vigilantes

In the summer of 1984, I bought a copy of the Villains & Vigilantes, Revised Edition [BOX SET], which was basically "Dungeons and Dragons" with super heroes, mostly because I liked the cover art on the box. As with D&D, the game required each player to first create a character to play, a process that involved specifying each character's powers and abilities (and then numerically quantifying them according to a detailed rule book) on a one-page "character sheet." (That's Halogen's from 1985, at left.)

As in a video game or MMORG, these super hero characters then battle super villains and seek out adventure. Though unlike video games, V&V required that a lot of odd-looking dice (4-,6-,8-,12- and 20-sided) be rolled, and then that lengthy numerical tables be consulted to determine the results.

I'm not exactly sure what a "chick magnet" is. But I am certain that this process was its exact opposite. I say so based on an extensive scientific case study that I personally conducted from 1983-1986. Let me assure you: the results were statistically significant, and were subject to extensive peer review.

This process did, however, give me a much better understanding of which super-powers worked best (and which worked best together) "in reality," causing me to make repeated changes to Halogen's abilities. (Can't you just hear Motley Crue screaming, "Girls! Girls! Girls!") And because every super hero needs super villains to fight, I created Halogen's arch nemesis, the criminal mastermind "Orchid," specifically for this game.

And he ended up seeing publication first, in 1987. That story next time.

Dungeons & Dragons: 60 Minutes feature from 1985

Embedded below is a You Tube video of a feature on Dungeons & Dragons from the CBS TV show "60 Minutes," which was originally aired in 1985.

1985 was pretty much about the high water mark of the game's popularity, I think. And it shows in this feature, which focusses more on the then widely publicized fear that D&D was somehow satanic and corrupted the minds of vulnerable youth, than the stereotype that the game was played only by geeky teenage boys who are unable to get girls, a powerful stigma that that has endured to this day.

Gary Gygax, who died only last year, is interviewed extensively in this piece. But my favorite part is at the start, when the suave Ed Bradly, who usually interviewed celebrities like Lena Horne, has to struggle through a labored description of what a role-playing game actually is.

One warning: the video and audio quality is a bit rough, unfortunately.

Dungeons & Dragons: fear and loathing

A friend of mine recently received an intra-office e-mail at work inviting him (and all other employees) to an office game of Dungeons & Dragons. He had never played the game, but knew that I had been into it as a teenager in the early 1980s. So he forwarded the e-mail to me and to some other friends.

One reply opined that if he went to the D&D game at the office, he's be very underwhelmed because D&D players were nerdy "tools." Underwhelmed, I am absolutely sure is correct, I answered. But maybe also just a little bit intruiged by the spectacle. I expect that D&D still retains a (niche) allure, even in this modern Playstation and MMORG world. Just like live theater on Broadway survived the advent of TV in the 1950s and the coming of blockbuster Summer movies filled with CGI special effects, there'll always be some (limited) demand, I think, for a game that involves inter-personal, human contact, even more so one that involves a bunch of teenage guys sitting in their parents basements, acting out "teenage fantasies" and making fun of each other.

That being said, whenever I played D&D with strangers, "personal hygene issues" arose 100 percent of the time, usually related to the guy who was also the biggest "rules lawyer" and/or the guy who's character made the most idiotic decisions in the game. A shocking number of these guys: (i) wore oversized shorts (or sweat pants) and t-shirts (or over-sized hawaiian shirts) sprinkled with "Dorrito dust" stains, (ii) had a peculiar preference for cherry coke (or vanilla coke), and (iii) smelled like the clothes bunched in the bottom of a teenage boy's gym locker.

Even though I haven't played in over 20 years, I belong today to a few Yahoo Groups that discuss various role-playing games like D&D. I can almost smell some of the other members on those groups, based on their posts.....