I am a geek. I have been for over
ten years. And every minute of it has been wonderful. Every late night spent
with a rum-n-coke and a classic Conan story, every Saturday afternoon spent
cheering my loser team on in whatever minis game I happen to be playing, every
second I spent locked inside my head, silently screaming because I had one red
mana and two black, when I needed two RED and ONE black mana. Every minute of
it has been magical…by default. There are very few geeky games that don’t
involve magic in some sense, but that’s what makes the games great, you know?
That sense of otherworldy involvement. That sense that, while you may BE only the
player, in a sense, you’re also a god, doling out your favors and curses to the
little people running through the ruins/forest/dungeon/kitchen table.
I suppose I should probably get to
the part where I started this bad ass lifestyle. I mean, very few loser high
school kids went on to this devil-may-care lifestyle, where you stab a goblin
without even asking its name first, and the enemy army limps home after a sound
thrashing while you dance like a happy ewok on their grave which is actually
the other side of the table.
My first memory of the genre was
early. At some point when I was a kid, my parents sat me down and had me
watching tv, but there was a Conan marathon on that day. When Conan tore the
horn off the monster at the end and it died, two year old Mike watched. And
then it went through the ridiculous Beastmaster movies, and when some vampire
thing engulfed the cowardly cannon fodder in its embrace, then spread its wings
to reveal only slimy bones, two year old Mike watched. At some point, he would
be doing this, but like any good story, we have a massive time gap.
Now that the massive time gap is
over, we enter Mike’s sophomore year at small-town high school in Hillbilly
Hell, Iowa. Mike is a loser. He spends all of his time watching tv, has no hobbies,
and no life. He’s interested in zero girls at school, because none of them are
remotely interesting. Also, he is fat. One day he gets an itch and watches The
Fellowship of the Rings. He’s into sci-fi, but has never attempted fantasy. He
loves it. A few days later, in study hall, he sees a kid he’s always regarded
as “weird” reading a book that has the hand of Sauron wearing The One Ring on
the cover. He’s intrigued and he learns that this is a “roleplaying game,”
which involves him making a character and then playing this character with a
set of rules in a Middle-Earth of this other boy’s imagination. But there are
others to this group. There are eight boys, total. They gather in the basement
of this weird kid, James. James is the dungeon master, so it’s his world. His
mom brings us wonderful snacks, and we have enough Mountain Dew to last for an
entire campaign. We all begin our adventure in a tavern in the city of Bree, a
rustic country town. Suddenly the doors burst open and…
Its four years later. Mike is in
college. He’s still living in Iowa, but it’s not so bad now, because he has
friends and hobbies. Some of his friends from high school he still hangs out
with, but they were all involved with the Lord of the Rings roleplaying game. He’s
in the dorms, playing Dungeons and Dragons. He knows the other few men in the
room. Each of them is a repeat offender, worthy of calling themselves his
geek-qual. It’s 4 A.M. on a school night. He wants to get to bed, but the
adventure has gone on too long. It’s a pre-constructed adventure, so it’s bound
to suck and make little to no sense at the end. Chances are we won’t even know
the name of the boss at the end. Mike and the group have been exploring this
dwarven keep for hours, and have little to show for it, except some dead
dwarves. I guess they were were-rats or something. His geekery is in full
bloom, spreading like fire where it takes hold. He has Warhammer guys at home,
but no one to play with. He has boxes of Magic cards, and dozens of decks. He
plays Dungeons and Dragons at LEAST once a week. No, there are no girls in his
life. It’s complicated, but not as complicated as he would have wished. His character douses the end boss in grease and starts
him on fire before there can be any monologue. At 4 in the morning, Mike
doesn’t play around. Then his character eats a pound of soap and dies so Mike
can go to bed. Money well-spent.
Its five years later. Mike is in
school at the University of Wyoming. He plays games regularly down at the local
shop, Games Gauntlet. He personally knows all of the owners, and has
collectively spent more hours with some of these guys than he has with members
of his own family. The table before him is 4 foot by 6 foot, and covered with
little buildings, trees, and walls. The
guy across the table is Orlando, a tall Hispanic guy who's one of the more popular guys in the shop. We each have a partner, and its a 2v2 game, but our partners are both concentrating on each other, occasionally shooting into the other person's fight when a target presents itself. Orlando made a few errors, but mostly tactically. He never read the cards from my army, which you're allowed (and encouraged) to do. Also he didn't quite understand his own guys. This made positioning for something especially brutal quite easy. Mike easily walked through most of Orlando's army, and its showing. The best way to end the game is to kill the enemy caster, but Mike's caster is Orsus Zoktavir, who's a bit of a tank. Orlando's caster gives Nightmare, a special assassination-happy heavy jack, the ability to walk through walls and enemy models, and Nightmare streaks like a bat out of hell at Orsus the Butcher, but Orsus has bodyguards. A war dog, which is a mastiff covered in plate mail, and a man-o-war drakhoon, which is a man in steam-powered armor, riding a Clydesdale, which is also wearing steam-powered armor. Both rush the enemy jack, and the drakhoon takes off one of the beast's arms. The beast lays into Orsus, but he survives with a single hit point left. His power shield is down, and his armor is in tatters, and single hit from anyone will bring down this mighty Russian bear of a man. On Mike's turn he rolls to see how much focus (magical power) Orsus gets. No one else has to roll, but Orsus is demented, and his brain isn't particularly responsive. Mike rolls a single dice and gets...4, giving him a total of 5 focus for his retaliation. Focus can be used to enhance the attack ability and the attack power of a caster. Orsus spends his focus points on extra attacks, swings his mighty axe, Lola, around 5 times, and the mighty helljack, Nightmare, falls into the grave he has dug for Orsus.
I am a geek. I have been for over ten years. Every minute of it has been wonderful.
No comments:
Post a Comment