A Gaming We Shall Go

A friend commented on my first post in the ‘Once Were Gamers‘ line as said, “And here I thought you were going to write about why we play games!” So, let’s venture down that rabbit hole, shall we? Why on Earth to we Game?

I actually have given the quit a bit of thought, in the past. I even thought to myself that I should write something on that, but time and tide wait for no author. I have noticed that over the years Gaming has become quite the thing for nearly everyone. Is it the Game itself that draws people in?

When we speak of pen and paper gaming we start counting the days with Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax penning the first manual in 1974, a variation on their miniatures game, Chainmail. Over the years Marc Miller would recount the folks at Game Designers’ Workshop playing D&D just before they branched out with their science fiction game Traveller. There were more in there, but the hobby fairly well started with the fantasy game, itself. People using their imaginations to create fantastical worlds that has fueled generations of gray matter to crunch the numbers, over and over again.

I believe that the desire to imagine worlds greater than our own goes back to the dawn of time. The Greek stories of gods and heroes are almost a perfect example of that. Were they real mean and greater beings? One can almost imagine a Greek father taking his son out to hunt one day…

“Jason, my son, it is time you learned to hunt.” Our Greek would begin. “Today, I will show you how to hunt a boar. I will be the boar and you will take your spear and show me how you would hunt the boar.”

Jason would approach his father and in a sudden quick motion, he would swing the butt of the spear into his father’s groin. After his father struggled to his feet he would lean on his son’s shoulders for support.

“Very good, my son.” he would squeak. “Now we shall go see your mother. while she teaches you how to dress the boar, I shall lay down for a bit.”

Well, you get the picture. Fathers and sons or even mothers and daughters would role play to teach their children how to perform roles in their daily lives. I am sure even fathers taught daughters and mothers taught sons. Using role play helps us pass along things much quicker than just lecturing.

I am sure tales would get told of the hero Hercules and his trials. As much as they may be tales of morality and lessons, I can easily imagine a young boy pulling a rabbit pelt over his shoulders and exclaiming, “I am Hercules!”

When we give ourselves permission we like to imagine. We tell tales of heroes and sometimes we take on the part of heroes and journey with our friends and fellow heroes to take on the world of imagination.

So tell me Tigers, why to you game? Do you read stories and then imagine a system where you could lead your friends through an adventure that relives that story scene?

Why don’t we write?

Is being bored a bad thing? I sit here writing this, after watching a TV episode, that was streamed from a service when I wanted it to be played. I did not have to wait for a specific time for the show to come on TV. Nor did I have to wait for the DVD to be published or buy it from Amazon.

“When I was younger, so much younger than today,” so the song goes. I remembered living in Memphis, TN and there was only four channels. Three major networks and the Public Broadcasting Service. This is not one of those diatribes where I complain that I has to slog through waist deep shag carpet, just to get to the TV to change the station. In fact when I was a teenager, we did not have a TV. Anyway, I digress.

Today, though, I look around my desk and see that I have many things to distract me, to keep my mind active and not allow myself to fall into the boredom that promises to be, um, boring. Seriously, if I languish for too long, I can switch on Facebook. Or when I face a problem that I can not muscle past, my weakened mind can turn to a game to play. I don’t even have to read any more (which is good because my arms are getting shorter as I get older. If you do not get that joke, wait twenty years.)

Remembering when I was younger and just starting to get into gaming. Pen and paper stuff, early Traveller or Dungeons and Dragons. I grew bored. I had bought the latest module or rule book and read through it. My friends were either in college classes or the sun was just a little too hot to be out in it. As I became bored, my mind turned inside and I began to write my own scenarios. I drew maps that turned the adventurer around corners and faced monsters, sometimes of my making or sometimes other players imaginations. My mind soared from star to star.

So, when did it leave me? I still read books then. In high school I finally acquiesced to my uncles insistence that I read a book. I had finally read “The Rolling Stones,” by Robert Heinlein. My uncle was quite the reader himself, having spent ten years in the Navy traveling all over the world. That is when he was aboard ship and not on leave journeying through the countryside.

So, I had actually read my first book. Another uncle went to flea markets all the time and he gave me choice pickings at piles of books he would buy. I started to read science fiction all the time. I had dedicated myself to reading one book a month, to start. I stopped recording the number of books and their titles when I graduated high school, but that last year I had counted 256 books over the school year. I had a collection of nearly 3,000 paper backs nearly all science fiction.

Then real life started to sink home. College classes, working and hanging out with friends. For several years, I continued to write and create. Since 2000, however, I have noticed that I have slowed. And, to be honest, nearly stopped entirely. I would get spark to read and create, then the spark would fade. I had too much to do. Too much keep my interest going, keeping my mind engaged.

Today we have our smart phones, iPhone or Android, feeding us advertisements or texts or Facebook. We have over a thousand channels on cable fed TVs or streaming services that offer shows on demand. Some of the services offer a season at a time, while some offer a weekly TV show. do not despair, there are other shows to occupy yourself with until your next episode comes on. Missed an episode? Go back and re-watch it. Miss “WKRP in Cincinnati,” from when you were younger? Don’t worry you can get that whole series on DVD from Amazon for the right price.

You can even ask the new generation of kids and they will tell you that Hell is when they are bored. They do not even know how to handle themselves with nothing to do. Okay, I will admit most of them do not, at least.

I wonder if one of the reasons we are descendant into this world of chaos and dystopia is because we no longer stop to smell the flowers or just let ourselves be bored sometimes. Sometimes we feel the urge to write and create more when we allow ourselves the time to feel our inner selves reach out, but we have to be very quiet because our inner voices seem to be drowned out by the chaff or our daily lives.

Party on, Tigers! Get bored again!

Once Were Gamers, Part 1

Over the year of Pandemic and Chaos, I have given much thought to gaming. What is the root of why people play games and, on a personal level, why do I game?

For me gaming started in 1980, just after graduation from high school. Until that time my friend Ron H. and I had talked much about science fiction all through our senior year of high school. We were big fans of Edger Rice Burroughs, John Carters of Mars. We often sat and discussed this new technology “telepresence,” and fantasied about a Walt Disney World-type theme park with free roaming Tharks, huge walking robots, piloted by people in the back ground. It is interesting to note that even with modern advances, we are just now seeing free standing robot that can walk on their own, piloted or not. Alas, I digress. Where was I? Oh, yes, gaming.

The first game I played was a D&D game, that Ron H. had heard about. We played at the Lou Zocchi’s store warehouse in Gulfport, MS, on Pass Rd. the exact location escapes me, but it has been a day or two since then.

I remember making a fighter, for the first time, and choose for his weapon a morning star. (At the time, this was the stick with a chain and spiked steel ball at the end. As I understand it this definition has changed and is now called a “Morning Star Flail”) It stuck me that the fellows who were helping me were shocked as they started crunching the numbers to find the “To-Hit Armor Class Zero,” or THAC0 as it was abbreviated. I might even still have that sheet somewhere in the Archives. Maybe not, it has been forty years.

Needless to say, I was hooked form that short session. After that I had started making my own dungeons and drawing out the maps. Over the years I became quite fond of making my own maps. Taking out butcher paper, when I could find it, and sketching out the islands and continents. Scouring the for any traces of graph paper. At the time it was rare, outside of a college book store, to find any graph paper. Well, at least anywhere I was looking. In the ’80’s I had not my own transportation, yet. I was 18 and still sorting out what I needed to do to strike out on my own.

Later that year my Mom would decide she needed to go back to college and we needed to more to Hattiesburg, MS to facilitate this. You know, since I was at the college age now, and she was sure I would be attending college. As much as I reflect on that time, and I know she had most likely asked if that was my goals, I am sure I was rather clueless and went along with her plans.

Ah, 1980. Tops songs that year were:

  1. “Call Me” by Blondie
  2. “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II” by Pink Floyd
  3. “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John
  4. “Rock with You” by Michael Jackson
  5. “Do That to Me One More Time” by Captain & Tennille

Overdrive Thruster Activated!

So, I mentioned “overwhelmed” in reference to certain movies. Immediately, the Universe coalesced on me and everything got real busy. Who knew “real life” could get to “real.” Oh, what, yeah right. This is what we had before the world started pushing so much information down our throats.

Why, I remember a time when I could stop and read a book. Heck, I even wrote lots of material for my games. Now, I do know this is a self discipline thing. Though it does get tough when we have hundreds of channels on TV, billions of websites and tons of advertising at our very fingertips. Go, go gadget Smart Phone.

Of late I have drifted into a habit of nimbly sitting in front of my computer, after work. Searching, searching. Sometimes I feel like Neo, looking for possible reference to the world behind our world. Is the Matrix out there? I have yet to see the White Rabbit.

And games. From time to time I indulge on playing a few games. Mostly of the MMO variety, with at least one mention of a voice pen-and-paper game, Champions. Now, the computer/console games, those are almost like swimming in someone else’s pool. A pool of their design, and you paddle around and swim to the beat and flow of their intent. what happens when you decide to get out of the pool, or walk past, as you dipped your toe in the water and found it lacking.

Alas, you can tell my first love is the pen-and-paper, free form role playing game. Perchance when the “real” world decides to slow, I can finally step off the train and have a look around. Sadly, this is not that day.

Overwhelmed?

Day One

Just watched a movie trailer. The latest in a slew of Marvel movies… trailer. It caused me to scroll back and remember the comics to which was it was alluding to. And I am… Well, I am over whelmed.

It has been building for some time. For awhile I was numb to the movies. Now I don’t even go to the movie theaters any more. I just wait until the movies come out on Blu-Ray or DVD.

But why overwhelmed? So much in the visual category to catalog. Anyway, just over whelmed.

 

Perpetual Waiting

I sit at the computer, nearly every day. Scrolling past Facebook entries, checking out Yahoo news items (can’t really call them ‘articles’), and what am I looking for?

Recently I have been wanting to game. I have gone through Traveller, Cyberpunk, FASA Star Trek RPG, now Champions, and others. Each of them I have fond memories of playing in days gone by, but what am I looking for?

It would be different if I had a solid idea for something to write to run in a game, yet my thoughts and activities are all over the map. I have started these games and just seemed to drift away. Either I stop focusing on the game or stop writing the stories. What am I waiting for?

In the last year I have come up with ideas for a couple video projects, even. Alas, I have drifted away from them, lacking something to say. I seem to have it for a while, but circle back and lose faith. Where is my voice?

I turned 56 years old, this past week, and start my journey into the 57th year of my life. I thought back to many things, on that day. Ran across the Jack Webb video on teens, from his Dragnet (1968) episode, talking about kids (teenagers) wanting to change the world, as the expense of others. Seems that Joe Friday and Bill Gannon have some very interesting things to tell these young folks. It does seem to be the teenager angst that makes them believe that no one has ever thought like they do or suffered like they have. When in fact, every teenager has felt that way, throughout history. The times have changed, but the angst stays ever the same.

Okay, so I started this diatribe on my birthday and I needed to change the tense a bit, as I circle back to this entry, now five days after my birthday. Watching that episode, I mentioned earlier got me to looking at Dragnet again, as well and Jack Webb. This led me to watch an old movie from 1958, “The D.I.” And this movie led me to one of my favorites, “Heartbreak Ridge” with Clint Eastwood. A lot of my history seems to be hidden from me, closed behind doors in my mind. Where have my thoughts turned?

Over the past week I have been giving great thought to why I sit here at the computer or plot and scheme for games that I never seems to be able to get off the ground. Don’t get me wrong, there have been many starts, and false starts, and just plain screeching halts in mid-campaign. So, where does my resolve go?

On the game front, I have been playing role-playing games for 36 years. Well, more off than on, in the last 20 or so years. It does seem that I am always looking for that perfect gaming group, again, and not finding it. Always searching, always scanning the horizons, looking for that long-lost sail.

Anyway, going to wrap this one up and try to start a new, less philosophic entry.

As always, Tigers, as my friend the World/Game Engineer says, “Game on!”

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