The coolest RPG sourcebook I can't bring myself to buy

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One of my previous jobs exposed me to a lot of different religious websites. Most of these were perfectly respectable websites by perfectly respectful people, but there were a few I came across that were… well, a good ways down the road to crazyland.

One of the websites I came across—and I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to discern whether this falls into the Reasonable or Crazy category—is that of Texe Marrs, an end-times preacher who talks a lot about the Illumati, the JFK assassination, the Mark of the Beast, and the many ways those topics all supposedly tie together.

Why do I bring this up on a blog dedicated to gaming, you ask? Well, because Marrs’ latest insane manifesto book , Mysterious Monuments: Encyclopedia of Secret Illuminati Designs, Masonic Architecture, and Occult Places, might as well be a sourcebook for Unknown Armies. Here’s the back-cover blurb:

A sinister and curious Architectural Colossus is exploding across planet earth. Are mysterious monuments part of a Grand Design? Are the Illuminati elite using satanic architecture and magic to seduce men’s minds and catapult humanity into a New Order of the Ages?

Gee, I hope so, because that sounds awesome.

Take a look at its list of contents and tell me this doesn’t sound like a list of adventure seed locations from a typical horror/investigation/conspiracy RPG. Among the topics covered:

  • The Georgia Guidestones, whose mysterious builders left frightening messages in granite demanding that some six billion inhabitants of planet earth be eliminated to achieve “perpetual balance with nature.” (page 21)
  • The Great American Pyramid, newly erected in Memphis, Tennessee—was it dedicated to the Devil by the Illuminati millionaire who oversaw its construction? (pages 28 and 29)
  • The odd “Stonehenge” structure in California which serves as the entrance to an Apple Computer Corp. facility. Questions: Why is Apple’s logo an image of an apple with a bite taken out of it? And why did the company’s founders price their first product, the Apple 1 computer, at exactly $666? (Page 56)
  • Astana, Kazakhstan, gleaming new occult City of the Illuminati. Is this city slated to become the antichrist’s futuristic, new capital and global headquarters? (pages 64-67)
  • Sandusky, Ohio, a city laid out in the form of a Masonic square and compass, home to the company that operates “The Beast,” the world’s largest wooden rollercoaster, which boasts three 6-car trains, numerologically 666. (page 124)

(Sandusky, Ohio, eh? Who knew?)

Honestly, that would work just great as a list of plot seeds for a game of World of Darkness (any of them), Call of Cthulhu, Conspiracy X or anything written by Ken Hite.

Unfortunately, there are at least two things keeping me from picking it up, as much as I love this stuff:

  1. It’s $35 plus shipping and handling (hey, Marrs is even using RPG rulebook pricing!).
  2. That $35 plus shipping and handling would be funding a lot of Crazy, and I don’t think I want that on my conscience.

I’m willing to bet that this particular book doesn’t come with the “hey kids, remember this isn’t real” disclaimer that a lot of horror RPGs did (and some still do). So I think for now I’ll stick to buying my occult-conspiracy RPG books from people who don’t actually believe their contents to be true….

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One man's unplayable game, another man's source of endless fun

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What makes a good game good, and a bad game bad? If you’ve ever frequented any of the big RPG forums, you know that gamers can be vicious in their criticism of games that don’t meet their personal standards. This rather mundane observation sprang to mind today as I was reading Grognardia‘s post on Monte Cook’s new “Dungeonaday” venture.

The Dungeonaday project is interesting, as is James Maliszewski’s insightful-as-always commentary on it. (Seriously, that’s a blog that should be on your daily reading list.) But I did a full stop (actually, I let loose with a bemused “hah!”) when I read this sentence from the post:

[Monte Cook] was, after all, the writer of the execrable Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

The "execrable" game itself.Why did that strike me as funny? Because I think I’ve run Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil more than any other adventure campaign in my gaming career—at least three or four different times, for a different gaming group each time. And I loved it each time, as did my players. So hearing somebody describe it as “execrable” is just amusing; I’m sure they have a perfectly good reason for disliking it, but for such a horrifically bad product, it’s provided me with a heck of a lot of entertainment!

I have not read a formal review of Return, so for all I know I’m alone in my opinion that it’s a really fun D&D campaign. And I’m not criticizing James for his judgment at all; I have my own list of games and sourcebooks I think are terrible that somebody out there absolutely loves. There is no product or work of art in the world that isn’t loved by some and hated by others. But I think the adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” holds particularly true in the gaming hobby, where creativity and enthusiasm can redeem even the most poorly written, badly designed game product.

This is one reason I tread more carefully with game reviews than I do with movie or book reviews. There’s not much I can do to make The Phantom Menace an excellent movie. But it’s a rare gaming product, however mediocre it might be, that can’t be turned into something fun if you’re willing to put in the effort.

There are a lot of game materials I’ve had a great time with that are often roundly (and in some cases accurately) condemned when they come up in online discussions and reviews:

  • No online discussion of Decipher’s Lord of the Rings RPG is complete without people chiming in to remind us that its combat system is “horribly broken” and “unplayable”—a fact my game group somehow managed not to notice during our entirely enjoyable adventures with that game.
  • TSR’s early Dragonlance modules for AD&D are legendary for committing the cardinal sin of gaming: railroading. Ask a veteran gamer and you’ll hear how those awful modules force players down predetermined paths, leeching all the fun out of the gaming experience. And yet that didn’t stop my young self from having a great time with them (they were among my earliest introductions to D&D, as it happens).
  • Rolemaster‘s supposed glut of charts is often said to make the game painful at best and unplayable at worst. But my high-school self ran that game for years without being troubled by its alleged unplayability.
  • Iron Crown’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying is generally considered to be quite unsuited for roleplaying in Middle Earth. But as with Rolemaster, I ran it for years and somehow failed to notice this supposedly game-damning problem.

(I often suspect that Rifts players can relate to this; I can think of few games that are criticized quite so much as it is, and for generally compelling reasons; but it makes me perversely happy to think that people are having fun with Rifts anyway.)

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t critique games, or even declare them Bad if we think they merit the condemnation. And hey, many of the games above actually are flawed, some of them in serious ways; in many cases the critics are dead-on with their judgments. Those Dragonlance modules really are railroady. Rolemaster really does have way too many charts. The combat system in Decipher’s LotR really does have serious problems. For all I know, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil really does have some terrible feature that makes it bad.

But I’ll never cease to be amazed at how much fun you can have with a “terrible” game. And if you’re having that much fun with it… how terrible can it really be?

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The best and worst game box cover art

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PCWorld has a list (with pictures), compiled by Chris Jager, of the best and worst video game box art. It’s worth perusing. There are some familiar images there, as well as a few I’ve managed to forget over the years. I like the inclusion of Psygnosis’ Roger Dean cover art; those were some gorgeous and evocative box covers (although as the list notes, they didn’t always seem terribly relevant to the game).

Kudos also to Jager for noting the stark but classy cover of Dune II.

I’ve rambled about game box art a bit here in the past; you may recall my professed admiration for Ultima 7‘s box art. Trying to think of additional game boxes that I’d nominate for the PCWorld list, I can’t help but think of Wasteland, whose cover art very nicely evokes the game’s feel:

Perfectly captures the game's mood, does it not?

Perfectly captures the game's mood, does it not?

But then, I’m biased, as Wasteland is probably my favorite computer game of all time. Unfortunately, my other favorite computer game, alas, falls into the “worst game box covers” category:

Yikes.

Yikes.

I’ll try to give Interplay the benefit of the doubt: given the character-centric nature of Torment‘s storyline, they probably wanted to grab gamers’ attention with a jarring view of the protagonist’s face. But instead of screaming “This is a beautifully-written story about sin, guilt, redemption, love, and judgment set in a bizarre and dreamlike astral city,” this box cover just yells “Hey, it’s a game about an ugly dreadlocked Frankenstein monster! Or possibly Rob Zombie!”

What other noteworthily good or bad game box covers can you think of?

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Punch Out!! retrospective

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Linking without commentary to an Onion article is probably not a characteristic of brilliant blogging. But I enjoyed this Onion article too much not to do my part to spread it around the web: New Mike Tyson Documentary Features Exclusive Interviews With Super Macho Man, King Hippo.

From the article:

“Tyson was the toughest fighter in the boxing game at the time, but he was also the first fighter to pay attention to patterns and warning signals,” Yoneyama said. “Before he came on the scene, no one realized that opponents sometimes raise their eyebrows or twinkle the gem in the middle of their turban immediately before throwing a punch.”

Tyson himself admits that it was his incessant blinking—the only time he showed any weakness in the ring—that ultimately lead to his demise.

Is there any male in my age bracket—let’s say 25-40—who doesn’t have fond memories of that game?

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Witness to the end: the final hours of Tabula Rasa

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Last night I witnessed the final hours of an MMORPG.

Several years ago, I read this fascinating account of the last days of Asheron’s Call over at Wired. That article, and this strangely touching collection of quotes and screenshots from the game’s final minutes, has stuck with me ever since. What does a doomed MMORPG look like in its twilight hours? Is it a barren wasteland devoid of players save for a faithful few long-timers mourning the game’s passing? A madhouse of activity as thousands of gamers crowd into the game to experience it before it goes away forever?

So when word came out late last year that Tabula Rasa was going offline in February (and more importantly, that its last few months would be free to play), I knew I had to at least check it out. My original intent was to play the game fairly heavily throughout February, trying to experience as much of it as possible before the end. Unfortunately, reality (and house maintenance, parenting responsibilities, the lure of other games) shot down that dream. Nevertheless, I wanted to be there for the game’s final few hours, especially when I read that the TR developers were planning to shut down the game with an apocalyptic in-game event.

The bad guys of the TR universe were going to launch an all-out assault, and everyone was going to die. The cities and bases that players had gotten to know over the last year were going to fall. Players would be pushed back to Earth for a final stand. At least TR players could go down in a blaze of glory.

So last night I logged into TR for the game’s final hours. I didn’t stay to the bitter end (1am my time; I didn’t think my church choir director would appreciate me showing up to the service crashing from a Mt. Dew-fueled late night gaming). But I was online for 2-3 hours up to about midnight.

So what was it like?

It was interesting.

Players gather to hold back the invaders as long as possible.

Players gather to hold back the invaders as long as possible.

There were a few problems. First, the game was crowded. For the first hour or so of the final event, the game was nearly unplayable due to lag. (Some players joked that the Bane apparently planned to defeat humanity by bringing their servers to a halt through lag.) From what I gathered in the in-game chat, a lot of players from TR‘s European and other servers (which had shut down earlier in the day) had flocked to this, the last online server, to replay the end again. Throw in who-knows-how-many curious observers like myself, and you had one crowded gameworld. The lag problem eased as the night went on.

Another problem was my lack of familiarity with the game. I’d only played a few hours throughout February, so I had only a basic grasp of how to travel around the game universe. It took me a while just to figure out how to travel to the “frontlines” where the invasion was expected to begin. Also, there was the little matter that my level 5 newbie character was probably going to last about 2 seconds against the sorts of epic alien invaders that were coming to destroy the world. (This did, in fact, turn out to be the case.)

I don't think my level 5 character is a match for these walkers.

I don't think my level 5 character is a match for these walkers.

But it was nevertheless a worthwhile experience. The invasion kicked off at 9pm Eastern time. In the hour leading up to the invasion, the in-game chat was so abuzz with chatter that I could hardly read messages before they scrolled off the screen. The game developers were present and participating actively in the chat. It was fascinating to read, with the same questions coming up over and over again:

  • Where was the final stand taking place? How do I get there so that I, too, can take some alien scum down with me?
  • Who’ll group up with me to visit [cool game location] or do [cool game quest] before it goes away forever?
  • Can the developers make me level 50 so I can slog it out against the invaders in the final stand? (A rumor was flying that developers were levelling people up to level 50 upon request. I did see one developer saying he’d do this if people asked him, so apparently it was happening.)
  • Lots of people thanking the game developers for creating the game and making it a fun world to play in.
  • People trying to sell in-game objects for high fees. (Capitalists to the end!)
  • People hatching crazy and impractical schemes for “saving” TR.
  • A lot of people whining about the lag. (Geez, people….)
  • A lot of people discussing which MMORPG they’d be moving to after the end of TR.

Then the end began. At 9pm reports started rolling in from players in various bases throughout the game world: the attack was underway. Aliens—big aliens, allegedly controlled by the developers themselves—were hitting bases. The chat started to fill with calls for assistance, players trying to rally others to defend important locations, other players calling out sightings of the ultra-powerful Neph (the Big Bad Guys).

Heading out to the frontlines for a final stand.

Heading out to the frontlines.

One by one, player bases fell and became inaccessible. Players made plans for a final stand on Earth.

And I had to log off.

All in all, it was a curiously touching experience, even for somebody like me who had no emotional tie to TR, its gameworld, or its community of players. TR wasn’t the empty wasteland that Asheron’s Call apparently was; a lot of people showed up for its final moments. There wasn’t a sense of a tight-knit community dying forever, although it was clear from the chats that people had formed friendships with other players and with the developers. One imagines that, in 2009, it’s pretty easy to relocate to another MMORPG when your favorite one goes offline. But there was still an edge of sadness as the bad guys swept through the game universe, shutting it down as they went.

All in all, it was a classy way to end a game. I hope TR‘s players and developers both enjoyed their final fling with the game. Let it not be said that TR didn’t go out with a bang.

It was a beautiful world, while it lasted.

It was a beautiful world, while it lasted.

[Note to Tabula Rasa veterans: if I got any of the details here wrong, I apologize—I’m just going by what I was able to gather from my few hours of play yesterday.]

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Lend me a hand, Wizards: sell me some non-randomized miniatures

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I bet this miniature gets a lot of use in your average D&D gameI like Wizards’ pre-painted plastic miniatures, both the D&D and Star Wars flavors—I make heavy use of them in the games I run. But I really think Wizards is missing an opportunity by not releasing a few RPGer-friendly miniature sets.

By this I mean that I would be a happier GM if I could go to my friendly local game store and buy a box of non-random, themed plastic miniatures—say, a box of a dozen skeletons, or goblins, or kobolds or Stormtroopers or what-have-you. As it is, because the miniature packs sold by Wizards are randomized, I’ve got just as much chance of winding up with a celestial black bear (truly, a staple of any D&D game) as I do of getting the basic gnoll that I’ll actually use in my game.

Yes, it’s not too difficult to assemble “encounter groups” by purchasing miniatures individually from a place like GMSarli Games or Miniature Market. The former online store even sells themed encounter packs to make your life easier. But why isn’t Wizards doing this? Why aren’t they selling packs of miniatures as companions to the adventure modules they’re releasing? (Some brave soul on rpg.net has gone through and listed out miniatures that cover every monster in Keep on the Shadowfell—looks awesome, but prohibitively expensive to collect individually.)

Ah well, I’m just another GM ranting that Wizards isn’t making the exact product that he wants… but I’ve seen other gamers online calling for non-random miniature sets, and you’d think Wizards could at least test the concept with a release or two. Wizards, are you listening? Add my vote to the record….

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Let's play Infocom's Infidel, part 1: "May the jackals feed well on your bones"

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All that talk yesterday about Infocom games left me in the mood to dig out my collection and try out a classic text adventure that I’d never completed. And I figure it’ll be fun to post about my progress as I explore the game; I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way through the game or if I’ll call it quits after a few sessions, but either way I hope it’ll be interesting.

So the first question is: which Infocom game to play?

After some deliberation, I decided that I’m most in the mood for a puzzle-heavy exploration-type game. The Zork games are thus the most obvious choices, but I’d like to try one I’ve not completed. My memories of the Zorks are very vague at this point, but I’m afraid I’d remember too many puzzle solutions as I played.

That still leaves quite a few choices, but I’ve decided on… Infidel, Infocom’s 1983 archaeologist-exploring-lost-pyramids game. You don’t really hear too much about this one, which may or may not mean that it’s not a very memorable game, but I can’t resist the lure of modern-day dungeon exploration with Egyptian trappings.

Note: major Infidel spoilers follow.

As with most Infocom games, Infidel‘s opening text brilliantly establishes the scene:

You wake slowly, sit up in your bunk, look around the tent, and try to ignore the pounding in your head, the cottony taste in your mouth, and the ache in your stomach. The droning of a plane’s engine breaks the stillness and you realize that things outside are quiet — too quiet. You know that this can mean only one thing: your workers have deserted you. They complained over the last few weeks, grumbling about the small pay and the lack of food, and your inability to locate the pyramid. And after what you stupidly did yesterday, trying to make them work on a holy day, their leaving is understandable.

The Professor’s map was just an ancient map — as worthless as an ice cube in the Arctic without an instrument fine enough to accurately measure longitude and latitude. You knew that the site was nearby. You dug, and you ordered the workers to dig, even without the box. As you listen to the plane and rub your aching eyes, you pray they left you supplies enough to find the pyramid and to survive, and that the plane’s carrying the long-overdue box.

That’s a darn fine opening. Infocom had some really top-notch writers for their games. The writer for Infidel is one Michael Berlyn.

Reading through that introductory text, it clearly lays out two clear goals I should focus on: survival (which probably means tracking down food and water), and locating the lost pyramid, which is nearby but not findable until I can get a hold of that navigation box.

The first order of business then is to scout out the immediate area. As soon as I leave the tent, an airplane passing overhead airdrops a crate into my camp: it contains the long-awaited navigation box. Very good. I spend a few minutes traveling around the camp, only to find that I am indeed utterly alone and abandoned here—the workers have all packed up and vanished. Here’s the map I’m drawing as I go:

I do pick up a few useful-looking objects (and a few that don’t seem terribly useful):

  • a pickaxe
  • a shovel, the classic tool of the adventuring archaeologist
  • a pack of cigarettes
  • a matchbook
  • a canteen! Empty, though.
  • the navigation box from the crate mentioned above

I also come across a menacing note left by my former camp workers:

Fi aman Allah!

Hereafter you shall pursue your fool dream of the hidden pyramid and its riches alone. May the jackals feed well on your bones. We have left you what you need to get back, though we hope you do not. We put several things you treasure above life itself inside your trunk, locked with your precious padlock, but we could not bear to part with the key. Especially after what you said of our rites. We hope the drug we placed in your drink did you harm. If not, we are at least satisfied you slept especially soundly while we cleaned out the camp. Farewell.

Charming. So much for getting along well with the natives. Well, let’s find out what’s in that trunk the note mentions. The pickaxe chops through the padlock and inside the trunk I find an inspection sticker (complete with amusing Infocom in-jokes!), some beef jerky (there’s my food, I suppose), a treasure map indicating the coordinates of the lost pyramid (excellent), and a cubic stone with hieroglyphs on it that read something like “the queen and all the queen’s treasures”. Hmmm.

The next order of business is to find some water, because by now the game has started warning me that I’m getting thirsty. I’m guessing the Nile riverbank is where I can fill this canteen, so I head that way. As it happens, I’ve spent a bit too much time poking around the camp and picking up junk, because I collapse of thirst and die before I get there.

Ahem. Apparently this is one of those games that enforces rather strictly the human need for sustenance. Duly noted.

One hastily restarted game later, I’ve refilled my canteen and eaten my beef jerky, hoping that this will last me a while. One positive note: since the Nile is a limitless supply of water, I can keep refilling my canteen as long as I’m able to return to this spot later in the game. There’s a big “if” in that statement, but for now I’ve staved off thirst and hunger. On to find this pyramid.

Looking at the map (included in the game box; I’m looking at a grainy PDF scan of it), it looks like the lost pyramid is located at 24 degrees 11 minutes 4 seconds N latitude, 32 degrees 12 minutes 42 seconds E longitude. Not having been a Boy Scout I have little clue what that means, but I can move around the desert (east of camp, extending infinitely, it seems) checking the navigation box until I get there.

Attempt #1 results in my second death so far. I misread the map coordinates and dig (using the shovel I picked up earlier) in the wrong spot, and get killed when the walls of the hole I’m digging collapse on me. Forgiving, this game is not.

So, er, another restarted game, and I’ve found the correct location now! I dig… and dig… and EUREKA! The top of what must be the lost pyramid! There’s a cube-shaped slot in the pyramid which is rather obviously where I need to insert this cubic stone I’ve got; sure enough, the pyramid door opens and I’m looking down into a room called the Chamber of Ra.

Which is a good place to stop for now; it looks like I’ve made it through the game’s prologue and only died twice. Not bad. I save my game (always save your game! I’m slowly remembering what it was like before the days of auto-saving games). I’ve scored 50 points out of a possible 400 in 71 moves. That seems rather impressive—either this isn’t a terribly long game, or they stacked a lot of points right at the beginning.

We’ll find out in a few days when I venture into… the Chamber of Ra. Hope you’ll join me!

If you’re interested, here’s a picture of my Infidel maps-and-notes journal so far.

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Remembering Infocom's Enchanter

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Congrats to jeffro on beating Infocom’s Enchanter! (OK, that’s a really old post, but sometimes I get way behind on my blog reading.) I played the Zork trilogy like crazy back in junior high and high school, but for some reason I never picked up any of the Enchanter trilogy. It’s too bad, because playing it now I think I might actually have enjoyed Enchanter even more than I liked the Zork games—the Zorks are essentially gonzo Gygaxian dungeon crawls, whereas Enchanter seems a bit more traditional and plot-oriented, and in general I prefer the latter to the former.

I played Enchanter for the first time ten or so years back after acquiring a copy of the wonderful Infocom Classics collection. I got maybe two-thirds of the way through before getting stuck and then distracted by school, but I’ve always intended to revisit it. The puzzles that I recall were a little less… random than those in Zork, and I didn’t encounter any that exhibited the sheer nasty near-unsolvability that some of the Zork puzzles did. (Jeffro mentions Zork III, which was the game that finally made me break down and consult InvisiClues for help: that stupid maze with the movable walls still makes me angry just thinking about it.) I really like Enchanter’s central gimmick—you’re a magician who knows a handful of low-powered but useful spells, which must be put to unorthodox uses to solve puzzles. Some of the puzzles made really clever use of the spells.

Ahhh, now I’m in the mood to dig out Enchanter and see if I can solve it this time. It’s strangely comforting to know that should I ever want to dig into Infocom games again, I’ve got an entire unplayed trilogy to explore.

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D&D players strike back

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If you’re still smarting from those disparaging remarks about D&D by the John McCain campaign, take heart: the folks at Hasbro have stepped forward to champion the cause. Take a look at this letter from a Hasbro exec to the McCain staffer who wrote the infamous press release:

Dear Mr. Goldfarb,

I was disappointed to read the disparaging intent of your comments regarding Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fans, both in your response to New York Times editors, and on the John McCain campaign website.

Dungeons & Dragons is a global game with millions of consumers in the U.S. and abroad. The brand is owned by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.

For fans, the game is essentially about heroism and therefore it is not surprising to us that thousands of military personnel play and enjoy the game. Hasbro, in turn, supports the U.S. Armed Forces by sending multiple crates of game products, including Dungeons & Dragons, to our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recently a soldier who saw your comments online said, “Wizards of the Coast (the makers of D&D) has sent care packages to the troops on many occasions, providing free gaming supplies in support of our men and women serving the country overseas to help them decompress after hours. McCain’s people should really check their facts before they spout off. Does John McCain have no idea how many GIs play D&D?”

We would very much appreciate you not making any more condescending comments about D&D — as it is a great game enjoyed by millions of people around the world. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Wayne Charness
Senior Vice President
Hasbro, Inc.

Weirdly, this is apparently not the first time that D&D has been used as a political pejorative by Goldfarb; earlier in August he issued a clever apology for his first such offense [note: looking at this apology, I’m unsure if it actually happened or is just a joke that’s circulating around the web. If you can confirm one or the other possibility, please comment below!]:

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.

OK, that’s pretty amusing, and lends credence to my suspicions that Goldfarb is a D&Der (or a bitter ex-D&Der). I mean, he even listed the stats out in their correct order.

And lastly, faithful reader (yes, I seem to have one or two of them) Raymond points out a very nice photoshop job of McCain reaching out to the gamers his words have so deeply wounded:

mccain

(If McCain thinks the Iraq War debate has been brutal, he’d be well advised to steer clear of the D&D edition wars.)

So at any rate, this is all just a lot of silliness, although I’ve seen more than a few gamers online taking the D&D jab a little too seriously. McCain, let us put this regrettable incident behind us. And yes, I admit that I am probably shallow enough to vote for whichever candidate first poses with a D&D Player’s Handbook.

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Alienating the RPG voting bloc!

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I’m back from Gencon—pictures and details in a future post. But this morning I’m just trying to wrap my brain around this quote from a recent John McCain press release:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

On the contrary, I thought you couldn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons & Dragons and not learn a little something about courage! Maybe an enterprising DM should volunteer to run McCain and his staff through the Tomb of Horrors?

And is it wrong of me to secretly hope that “Dungeons & Dragons crowd” will become a frequently-used political pejorative this election season like “flip-flopper” or “limousine liberal”? No publicity is bad publicity. Seriously though, unless McCain is secretly nursing a grudge against a DM that killed off his 12th-level rogue years ago, I don’t really see why one would use that phrase as an intended political insult, or what it’s even supposed to mean.

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