Living games...

I have been gaming for over two decades now. Scary. In fact, it has been one of the very few constants in my life! (And by constant I mean that, while it may have been shoved into the background on occasion, it was always an underlying motivator at the very least.)

Let me tell you a story...

It all began when I was an innocent young lad. (Waits impatiently, glaring, for the laughter to die down.) My days were lazy and carefree. My parents owned a house close to a beach in a small community in Connecticut. We weren't right on the water but we were close enough that I was able to sneak off for a swim with my friends whenever I thought my parents weren't going to be paying attention for a while. (To tell the truth, I was probably caught more often than I got away with it but, well, I loved being in the water.)

Our story begins on the dawn of my eighth birthday. I awoke at 6 am to my father yelling at me to get the hell out of bed and get dressed. (No one is allowed to sleep in on their birthdays in my family.) It was time for us to go have my birthday breakfast. (Bacon egg and cheese biscuts from McDonalds. My father is a man of exquisite tastes.)

As we ate, my mother (who had likewise been woken up so she would know she wasn't coming with us to McDonalds) was at home hiding my birthday presents from me. This was a game my parents liked to play with us as children. They would hide the presents and you had to find them before you could have them. It saved them the cost of wrapping paper and, if you didn't manage to find them all, they could return them to the store and we would be none the wiser. (I actually think that this threat may have been followed through on once or twice. Either that or my brothers stole some of my birthday loot and my parents never caught on.)

When my father and I returned I was allowed to begin my search.

Step one. Check all the places they used last year. This plan of attack yielded me nothing so I sat down to reassess and redeploy.

Step two. Search the common areas like the living room and dining room. Our house wasn't big but it had about a million nooks and crannies. By the time I was done with these first two steps I had wasted about an hour and was still no closer to my birthday presents.

Step Three. My bedroom. This is where I struck gold! Right there in the middle of my desk was a beautiful red box with a dragon on the front! I was immediately enthralled. I had always been a fan of the fantasy genre and dragons and unicorns were my bread and butter. I tore into that package and started flipping through the books inside as fast as I could. When I noticed the dice (and what dice they were!) I was hooked. It wasn't until almost three hours had passed when it occurred to me that I hadn't had a desk the day before. (My parents thought the desk was going to be my big gift that year... Shows what they knew! :P )

It took a few weeks of asking every person that I knew as well as more strangers than I care to count, (note: People give you extremely strange looks when you approach them in a grocery store to ask whether they play Dungeons & Dragons.) but, eventually, I found a group of kids in my neighborhood to play with. (They were all older than me. My parents had missed the line on the box saying "for ages 12 and up")

That first game was amazing! I rolled up a fighter! (Being 8 years old and the youngest one in the group I wasn't expected to understand all the rules for magic yet.) I was strong and not very bright but I had a sword and armor and I was ready to kill things!

Skeletons shattered at the heavy blows I rained down on them. (Remember THAC0?)

The magic mouth was confounded when the wizard, not only knew the answer to it's riddle, but was able to stump it with a riddle in return.

The cleric saved us all when he turned the zombie lurching in our direction while we daringly fended off the group of goblins we had stumbled into.

And when, at last, we found the Dragon, slumbering atop his horde of riches... We all died horrible, screaming deaths the likes of which none of us would ever know again. (After that first time, everyone realized that n00blet characters had no business trying to hit things with negative ACs. If only we had understood THAC0 from the start!)

Dungeons & Dragons. What a perception altering tool to give to an eight year old! For years I was intoxicated by the game. Other games have come and gone through the years but, inevitably, I always return to that one tried and true first love.

Eventually, as time went on, I was introduced to other games. GURPS, Vampire the Masquerade, Shadowrun... The list seems to go on forever as I glance back at my library of gaming books. (Seriously... It's a freaking library. No joke.)

Eventually, I developed an interest for video games.

Oh sure, I had had an Atari 2600, (I still do in fact. Eat your hearts out gamers! :p) but that wasn't a video game. At least not when compared to the new and exciting world of Mario Brothers!

Now, I won't claim to be a gaming guru. I mean at this point I don't even own a television set, let alone a console game. Even so, I was pretty avid as a teenager and even into my early twenties. Still, table-top paper and dice games were where my heart lived.

Thankfully, as I grew and matured (Glares at the audience waiting for the snickering to die down.) so did my gaming style. Hack and slash became a thing of yesteryear and role playing took its place.

Role playing... What a thing of beauty! To become someone else... To sit and envision an entire life! (It was like having my very own baby. You know... Without the diapers, spit-up, crying or, really, any of the other drawbacks to actually having my very own baby.) This was when all those other gaming systems I mentioned became a big draw for me. Games built on social interactions, political stories, and plot or character driven stories as opposed to the old brute force method of gaming.

Now, just so you understand, I am not only a gamer. In high school I found myself involved in theater. Role playing became acting and, eventually, I even went away to college for it. I double majored in Theatrical and Musical performances with minors in English, philosophy and psychology. I was even good enough at doing what I do that they payed for me to be there! (Yup. I have a little pride in that.) What all of that adds up to is that I can become anyone and convince you that I am, indeed, that character. Unfortunately, I am still searching for ways to turn all that into making an actual living. (There is grifting but, well, I just have this aversion to ever going to jail.) But hey, at least I got some skills and had a great time! (Skillz, I haz em!)

And through it all, Dungeons & Dragons was there. Just waiting for those times when I really needed to get back to basics and kill some shit!

When PC games started getting big I was all over it. I had played FFVII but this new, interactive community... The Massively Multiplayer games... This was special! This was like... Animated Dungeons & Dragons! With even MORE people to play with! My first love had come back to me and she loved me still, with all her heart!

I reveled in this new and exciting world, hopping from game to game... Learning mechanics... Memorizing lore... Writing backgrounds and storylines for characters who finally had an enthralled and captivated audience.

By now, I have played so many different MMOs and told so many stories that I couldn't name all of them if I wanted to. Some I have loved; some hated. Some for years on end and others for only a day or two before realizing that I didn't fit in their world or, sometimes, that they didn't fit into mine.

These days, there are actually a couple releases coming up soon that I am genuinely excited about! (Specifically Aion: The Tower of Eternity and the rebirth of World of Warcraft with their new expansion, Cataclysm... If anyone knows whether Blizzard has announced a date yet, let me know.)

Last year, Wizards of the Coast released Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. Like millions of others, I rushed to the bookstore on release day to buy my copy of the core books and I was genuinely excited. I mean, who wouldn't be beside themselves with glee to see the love of their life grow and become all that it had to potential to be?

That very same week my friends and I began play testing this new system. Things had been realigned in an effort to appeal to a new generation of gamers who had started out with MMOs and were just now discovering the joys of my humble beginnings. Fighters were finally a playable class again! (They had long since became boring for me. There are only so many times I can hit something with a sword before I start feeling like a one trick pony.) With new "powers" driven combat the game was reborn into a world where it could be better appreciated by a much larger audience.

Unfortunately, it has done less well among those of us who have mostly outgrown hack and slash. (Mostly but never entirely :D)

These days, I am far from alone in enjoying the role playing aspect of gaming. This new system is absolutely phenomenal for combat but it is woefully, poorly designed for RP. There is no system in place to effectively progress a character without becoming involved in what, for all intents and purposes, can only be considered grinding.

Le sigh.

I still love Dungeons and Dragons but I think that, for now, maybe a GURPS based campaign is going to better suit my paper and dice group. If that doesn't work for us, maybe I will take a turn at DMing and introduce everybody to the wonderful world of Shadowrun.

In the mean time...

MMO mechanics belong in MMOs and while I will always belong to the table top arena in many ways, I also realize that I belong in the MMO world!

I have come to thrive in the online communities where I can act out my toons. I have met some wonderful people and friends there who have enjoyed meeting my characters and playing their parts in the continuously unfolding stories that I tell with my characters. (And I have equally enjoyed playing my roles in their stories. Yay for symbiotic relationships!)

Eventually, I would like to design worlds and stories for even more people to play and interact in. My mind is constantly churning with ideas for stories, characters and plot twists. What better place for me than lovingly watching over a world of my own devising as thousands, maybe even millions of other players likewise enjoy the wonders and enchantments of my love-child? (Insert maniacal laughter here.)

Obviously, I have to start a good deal smaller than that but I am a tenacious little bugger sometimes (Alright, fine. A big bugger. Happy?) and I am more than willing to work my way there. In fact, I look forward to it!

Now to get started...

You can like train a n00b but he'll still be like a trained n00b.
-Jeremy from Pure Pwnage-