"Woe unto thee who enters battle with the 'owl bear'..."
I. Onto Dungeons and Dragons
Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition was released last Saturday, and Powell’s books in Portland had a party in which people could come and play a sample campaign. About a hundred people showed up to the release, many with dice in hand. No physical acts of violence were taken out upon the gathering nerds by people browsing the sports book aisle, and with the exception of one employee who got uncomfortable and couldn’t look at my nerdy face when I asked where the event was taking place, the non-D&D inclined exhibited a fine display of, if not tolerance, ‘not-antagonism’.
I was drawn to the event, because I was looking to write something about alienation… and, okay, I used to play D&D (3rd edition) when I was in junior high. In my day, a couple of us would convince one kid’s ‘cool’ older brother to be the dungeon master, and we would sit around drinking two liter bottles of Dr. Pepper and play all night. Truth be told, we didn’t take the time to learn the rules of the game, but the cool older kid (in hindsight, he really was cool) was so good at making up stories, we would just collectively create weird scenarios for chaotic evil barbarians, Elvin clerics, and darkmantles to interact. Most of the stories were absurd, and the one time we tried to play a real campaign, we found it too limiting to be any fun.
So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the groups broke up to play the sample games, and I was teamed up with a crew of junior high kids. The three guys already knew all the rules to 3rd edition (the long-haired kid in the purple shirt with lightning on it that advertised ‘Idaho’, as in ‘the state of’, told me he had starting playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd ed. with his father when he was 5-years-old). I waited to choose the character no one wanted, some sort of Elvin wizardress, and the game began. “Two children were recently stolen from a nearby town, residents said they saw the kidnappers run towards this mausoleum…”
The kids with experience were pretty confident with the game, looking for traps, asking questions, solving puzzles. Though, one of the kid’s sisters and I had to be explained pretty much everything, from how to know how far we could move to what an initiation role is, the game was relatively easy to pick up given that its rulebook is around 250 pages long. Unfortunately, we had so many questions that I never got to the question I once overheard someone ask on the beach of a Massachusetts oceanographic institute:
Why would you allot points to the intelligence category when creating your character, isn't he already limited to being no smarter than you?
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Tim recently got on facebook and got in touch with a friend from high school. She is a helicopter pilot for the Navy. I liked this picture. It says something about contemporary warfare technologies.Also, Tim and I are making a new manipulation podcast together... if you do not subscribe, you are not my friend.
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I made a new music podcast! A set of German punk and new wave, some synth punk, and post-punk songs with violins. You can subscribe to it here:
manipulation itunes subscription
or listen here:
German Songs
Hans-a-plast - spielfilm
Abwarts - ???
4 kaiserlein - verunglueckt
synth stuff
Analysis Oppenheimer - cold war
2+2=5 - meeting mc.l.
our daughters wedding - airlines
dow jones and the industrialists - lets go steady
post-punk
do make say think - war on want
hanged up - go let's go
thee silver mt. zion - more action less tears
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