Roll!

I was born cursed, or lucky depending on who you talk to.

My parents met through a mutual love of science fiction fandom. My dad a science fiction author, and my mom a perpetual organizer and volunteer at science fiction conventions (which she still does to this day.) This means that I was pretty much born a geek. You might as well have put Spock ears on me in the crib.

Like so many other geeks, I was picked on in school. I discovered I had little in common with a lot of the students around me, and it was just easier not to talk about myself to them. Fortunately, I found others who would make some kind of reference to a science fiction novel or were scanning a 2e DMG in the computer lab. Those people I would seek out. In time, it became easier and easier to have geeky conversations during lunch.

Nowadays, I almost never hide my geeky side (and heck, it might even be impossible for me to do so at this point, with what comes up when you google my name.) I fly my geek flag high in my office (literally, I bought it at ren faire). I put the games I’ve designed on my professional resume. I’m not afraid to speak out with my geek out, for those that judge me aren’t going to be the kind of people I want to talk to anyway.

Some would say I was born cursed because there was little chance I wouldn’t become a geek of some kind. Others might say I’m blessed because I don’t have to keep that side of my life a secret.  I would like to live in a world where being a geek is accepted for everyone, where everybody feels blessed because they are a geek.

(The title, by the way, comes from comments on what the title of my memoir should be called, should I ever write it, after I recounted my experience playing an RPG with Gary Gygax.)

Whether it’s for a D&D character, an internet handle, or a “he was a quiet neighbor, kind of kept to himself” alias, selecting a fictional name is the most important decision we will ever have to make in our lives. You certainly don’t want to get tagged with Doodly McSmoodly or HotSexTrixie69 (trust me on this one), because you have to live with that name way beyond when it stops being funny. People will begin to identify you with the name, perhaps even going so far as to assigning a nickname for the nickname, and you wind up in the unenviable position of a friend shouting, “Hey, Dicks!” at you across a crowded convention hall.

For me, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, in home room with my friend and DM Dave, and I had just rolled up a halfling fighter and needed a name. I’ve never been particularly good with names, typically coming up with something that looks good on paper but sounds foolish, stupid, and/or mortifying:

Me: “I am Prusterayte, Monk of the Northern Winds.”
DM: “Your name is Prostate?”
Hilarious Player 1: “Should we check him?”
Hilarious Player 2: “I do a Heal check with my finger.”

For my halfling fighter, I wanted something interesting, unique, and clever, something that would stand for the ages, something that would convey the strength and indomitable spirit of the little fellow but still suggest his humor, his warmth, and his likeability. I looked at the pencil I was using and immediately knew the name. I leaned over and whispered to the DM, “His name is Dixon Trimline.”

We have our four tables worth of players locked down (barring last minute drop-outs). We have a draft of the adventure being reviewed by the DMs. We have custom art being made. All the cards for this year are designed. The venue has been secured.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve taken a look at combat in 4E, with all the different stat blocks and monster roles and status effects, and wished it could be a little more complex. Sure, we all enjoy tracking a million different numbers for a table full of shouting, whining jerks, but how can we dress this lunatic salad with creamy chaos? Anyone feel like a three-way?

A couple months ago, I played in a one-shot where our party engaged a mind flayer and his drooling thralls, and right as the battle was heating up, a trio of drow appeared and attacked all of us. Apparently, the mind flayer hadn’t cleaned out the dryer lint trap or had put in the toilet paper upside down (it’s Real World: Underdark), so now we the party found ourselves in the middle of a massive, thrilling, and completely wild battle, with our allies changing from round to round. First, the mind flayer gave a psychic enema to the drow necromancer (yay!), but then seized our dwarf fighter and tried to gnaw on his gray matter (boo!).

If you’re going to run a combat like this, I’d recommend building the two enemy sides at LVL+1 or LVL+2, maybe just a little higher than a standard encounter, and clearly determine the motivations of both sides prior to rolling any dice. Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to gang up on the party, and probably slaughter them. In our encounter, the drow were hunting the mind flayer for some wrong or other, and we the party were just in their way. While they weren’t focusing on us, they didn’t go out of their way to choose attacks judiciously. Hey, if a burst or blast included us, what’s the big deal? They had no interest in sharing e-mail addresses or becoming BFFs, so once the mind flayer’s thralls started falling, the drow started targeting us on purpose.

This was tremendously fun, scary, and nutty, and I was very impressed with the DM’s ability to manage everything that was going on. One of my favorite parts of 4E combat is its mobile and tactical nature, and this adds another facet to that experience, as you can never be entirely sure if you’re safe on all sides.

I think unemployment is getting to me. I dreamt this morning that I was interviewing for a job doing programming, but once I got there nobody really wanted to talk about the job itself. The company was based in a huge, luxurious mansion, and all my potential coworkers were muscular, short on words, and wearing the kind of suit and tie normally associated with defending political leaders from bodily harm. I wasn’t interviewing with anyone in particular so much as I was listening to everyone tell stories about how they had to rough someone up to achieve some company goal. As time passed, the stories progressively got wilder, and the tales turned to epic superpowered combat (but still ending in something like a pickup truck getting repossessed).

I later found out that I was interviewing to be one of these metahuman repo-men, but that the job required me to code in PHP during the slow times when no faces needed rearranged.

Then, the dream turned to the saddest thing I’ve ever even heard of — a man whose only superpower was to die while reading a bedtime story to his children. I woke up in mid-sob. It was not cool.