Articles in “Gaming”

So, I’ve made the point a couple of times that my Elf Ranger will sleep with anyone whom she comes across in the course of her adventures.

I’ve been playing the “Tower of Darkness” adventure in the background while live-blogging “Forest of the Dead” and I’ve just succeeded in this encounter:

Saeana found an empty guest bedroom in the expansive castle. Exhausted from her travels, she decided to rest for a moment on the bed. She was awoken by a kiss from a handsome stranger.

Saeana made a Wisdom check with a difficulty of 18 . . . and rolled 24

Saeana smiled and rose from the bed to introduce herself, but her romantic encounter was cut short as castle guards burst into the room. They moved to take the man. It hissed, dropped its guise, and spread its wings. A succubus! For a moment, Saeana felt compelled to protect the impostor, but she quickly shook that off and helped the guards subdue it. The captain of the guard rewarded Saeana for her help in the matter.

Now do you see why I’ve been complaining about your behaviour, Saeana?

If you continue to sleep with every handsome stranger that you come across in your adventures, some of them might turn out to be soul-sucking succubi.

I suppose that this time she bothered to at least try to introduce herself first.

Tonight, Nick suggested we play less Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures and spend more time together.

I reluctantly agreed.

(The reluctance, I might add, had nothing to do with spending time with Nick and everything to do with wanting to level my Elf Ranger up to level 8.)

But first we compromised: I was allowed to finish my current adventure, Hidden Shrine of Nahautl.

And that’s when I came across this, my final encounter:

At the end of a sloped hallway was a poorly lit chamber. A few small windows let light in through partially occluded glass. Half the floor was a pool of water, the light playing across the rippling surface. A young man bathing in the pool noticed Saeana as she entered the room.

Okay, I thought to myself, I have a Thundering Mace and a Phasing Short Sword. One half-naked bloke in a pool isn’t going to be much of a challenge.

And, he wasn’t:

The man beckoned Saeana into the pool and, as he did so, it became quite apparent what might take place there between them. It was equally apparent that this man was using his charms to get the better of Saeana but she was going to turn the tables on this suave seducer.

Saeana made a Charisma check with a difficulty of 17 . . . and rolled 28

A battle of charms ensued, with winks, flirting, careful placement of hands, and whispered words. Saeana easily bested the charmer in this contest and came out of the situation with more treasure and better memories than she had gone in with.

Saeana obtained a suit of Plate Armor +2!

Seriously.

I want to make several points about this encounter.

1. I thought I was a serious adventurer. I didn’t realise that that meant getting my kit off at every given opportunity.

2. Saeana, you climbed into a pool with a complete stranger and only then did it become apparent “what might take place between you”?

You daft cow.

3. “Careful placement of hands”? As in, you’re afraid you might slip on the soap? If my Elf is going to sleep with everyone she comes across, at least make it sexy, WOTC.

4. “Better memories than she had gone in with”? Well, I thought the instance in which I seduced a halfing lad for a suit of armour was at least ambiguous. This one really doesn’t seem ambiguous at all.

5. There really is nothing that my Elf won’t do for armour, is there? And, once again, the treasure she’s obtained by sleeping with some random man encountered in the pursuit of adventure is a suit of armour that she can’t even wear.

Saeana, I must insist that if you’re going to sleep with people for treasure—instead of obtaining it in the old-fashioned way of bludgeoning your enemies—you at least ensure that it’s treasure you can use.

I refuse to seduce anyone else for the sake of sixty-three gold coins.

Yes, I’m talking about Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures again.

But, seriously, this is hilarious:

Two elves were fighting in a yellow wood. Long Saeana stood, trying to determine which one of them was the bad guy.

Saeana tried to peer as far down into one’s soul as she could, then fairly chose the other whose expression was less worn. More telling, perhaps were the symbolic trinkets each wore. The first’s marked him as an agent of evil, while the second’s marked him as a follower of good. After helping defeat the evildoer, she and the good warrior lay in the leaves, sighing and telling tales of deeds they’d done, and roads they’d traveled.

(There was a wisdom roll in the middle, there, but I think you can tell how that went. I worry about my Elf, when she chooses who to kill on the strength of how “worn” their faces are, and only then thinks, “Also, that necklace made from the skulls of children? That might be a clue.”)

Are the people behind Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures enormous fans of Robert Frost? He is a dearly beloved poet, after all.

Or do they simply have too much time on their hands?

As for me, I don’t have too much time on my hands, but—well, you have to do something during your cigarette breaks, don’t you? (Something apart from smoking, that is.) And it’s been a while since I posted a dreadful poem on the blog.

The Elf Not Slaughtered

Two elves battled in a yellow wood,
And, sorry I could not battle both
And win the battle, long I stood
And checked my Wisdom roll (not so good),
Lurking awhile in the undergrowth.

Then killed the nearer, a fitter goal,
As having perhaps the better claim,
Assuming that darkness was in his soul.
(Though, since I failed my Wisdom roll,
The two seemed really about the same.)

The other and I together lay
In leaves my mace had made gory
We would perhaps fight another day!
For, knowing how way leads on to way,
Odds are I must replay this story.

I shall be telling this with a sigh,
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two elves battled in a wood, and I—
I slaughtered the evil one, aye,
But it didn’t make a difference.

1. I’ve just been hit in the chest with a golden cannonball. This is, in fact, why I started this post.

Who uses a golden cannonball? Isn’t that insanely expensive and also rather impractical? Or I am just cranky because I took six points of damage despite, and I think the word is warranted, absolutely pwning my Armour Class Check?

2. Slightly before that, I was hit on the head by a falling scythe after failing a Wisdom roll. Still, the man who dropped the scythe on me was more annoyed about the whole situation than I was:

Disapointed, Plurbius faded from view, mumbling “‘Oh, don’t worry Plurbius, we’ll have thirty scythes . . . and they’ll spin and shred . . . .’ Last time I use gnome contractors.”

So there is that.

3. I’m deliberately not re-mentioning the time I apparently seduced a Halfling. (Plus, aren’t they tiny? Like hobbit sized? It’s all very odd.)

4. I don’t think it’s good for my Ranger’s reputation to have to hide in a soot-filled chimney because she can’t overcome a few skeletons.

5. I once tried to climb a tree to rescue a family pet: none of the actual family could manage the climb. But then goblin raiders appeared, and I fell out of the tree on top of them. Not on purpose, of course. But, honestly: Elf and Ranger. You’d think I’d be slightly more sure-footed than that.

Of course, this was immediately after the encounter in which I slipped and fell while walking through the forest, poisoning myself with toadstool spores in the process.

What kind of Elf falls over in a forest? (Ooh, Zen.)

Maybe I just have a very clumsy Elf.

6. That’s not even including the time I waited in ambush for an orc lord, behind his throne, and fell asleep on the floor while waiting for his bodyguards to leave. That was just embarrassing.

7. There was also the time I tried to grab a vine to swing across a pit and completely missed. The more I look at these misadventures, the more I think that my Elf is a bit rubbish, actually.

It’s one thing to have sharp enough eyes to spot the pit and another to fall straight into it anyway.

Later in the same adventure, I was lured into a trap by the promise of treasure and fell straight through an illusory floor. Into a pit, obviously.

8. Of course, the stage was set for all of this during my first adventure, when I was not only shot in the leg by an Elf after failing my Charisma roll but was also bitten by an alligator.

More accurately, I experienced “an unpleasant sensation of being bitten in the thigh.” Is that opposed to the slightly less common pleasant sensation of being bitten in the thigh?

Actually, don’t answer that.

9. I once ended up as a king’s food-taster, despite the fact that the whole point of the adventure was to drag the self-proclaimed king back to the town in chains. Of course, the disadvantage of becoming a food-taster and then failing your Constitution roll is that you end up being poisoned.

They never did explain how the king found me, why he didn’t demand to know why a heavily armed complete stranger was strolling around his fort immediately after he’d announced his secession, or why I accepted the position of food taster in the first place.

10. By now, it’s probably no surprise that the time I decided to fix a dumbwaiter (Why? Why would I decide to do that in the middle of an attempt to track down an Undead Paladin?) I, in fact, slipped and fell down the shaft on top of it.

11. I also worry about my character’s morality. For example, the Undead Paladin adventure above ended with me escorting him back to town, where a priest freed his tormented soul and I nicked his armour.

(I couldn’t wear Bonegrim Armour, of course, but we’re all familiar now with the depths to which my character will sink for the sake of armour.)

But this aspect bothers Nick more than it bothers me. Whenever we’re both playing at the same time, I can hear him muttering things like “a Paladin would never try to rob a sleeping giant!”

I’m thoroughly enjoying the game, which has completely ousted Packrat from my affections (although, gods of Packrat, if you could see fit to send me a Great Wall of China pop-up card, I might stop sulking).

In fact, when my father-in-law came around for dinner tonight, I greeted him by shouting from another room, “I’ll be there in thirty-nine seconds! I just need to finish this encounter!” Rude? Possibly. But he’s known me for eight years by this stage.

(Then when I did finish the encounter, Nick was strangely annoyed at the outcome.
ME: I killed the metal dog.
NICK: I don’t think that’s anything to boast about.
ME: It wasn’t K9!)

But there’s a fine line between thoroughly enjoying a game and being slightly miffed when your easily distracted, accident-prone Elf Ranger cops a golden cannonball in the breastplate.

I was happily running Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures in the background this morning while I was slogging through some donkey work, when I stumbled across the following encounter—or should I say “encounter” (nudge, nudge)—in the City Under the Streets adventure:

Saeana’s eyes widened as she entered a room to find a handsome halfling lad sitting dejectedly at a wooden desk. “I’m so bored,” he moaned.

Saeana made a Charisma check with a difficulty of 13 . . . and rolled 16

Saeana worked her magic (so to speak) on the halfling and a good time was had by all. As thanks for their new friendship, the halfling gave Saeana a gift.

Saeana received 88 XP.

Saeana obtained a suit of Eladrin Chain!

That’s . . . not right, surely? I mean, I may be reading this incorrectly, but it does look as though my character—in the middle of an adventure in which I’m supposed to be tracing the mysterious killer of city guards—stopped for a little dalliance with someone who, frankly, sounds underage and then accepted a costly gift (that she couldn’t even use, since she’s a Ranger).

I’m trying hard not to read this as a broader indictment of gender politics in role-playing games—and, frankly, it hasn’t stopped me playing the game.

But I’m fairly certain that the male characters aren’t offered the chance to “work their magic (so to speak) on the halfling.”

Of course, Nick hasn’t done this adventure, yet; if his male character has this encounter, I’ll eat my words.

But, as it stands, it’s reminding me of C. J. Cherryh’s shift to writing about giant cats on the grounds that at least her illustrator couldn’t put those on the cover in gold bikinis.

I’ve rattled on at length about my Packrat obsession, I’ve written a dreadful poem about playing Pirates—I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m fond of the games applications on Facebook.

But they’re all paling into insignificance now that I’ve found the Facebook application for Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures.

I’m slightly fixated on Dungeons and Dragons at the moment anyway, since it’s the first time in a decade that I’ve done any real table-top RPGing—I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

But Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures is both curiously passive and oddly addictive.

It’s curiously passive because you don’t actually do much yourself: most of it’s taken care of for you by the gaming engine.

So you select your character class—Elf Ranger, of course—and then the game invests your choice of name with a pleasing sense of weighty importance, by insisting that once you’ve selected it, you cannot change it. The character’s name, it seems, is inviolate.

Then you pick an adventures from a short list . . . and that’s the last active thing you do for a while.

I’m currently halfway through “Curse of the Wolf Moon,” trying to “travel through Felltooth Wood to find the legendary Mirror Lake of Felltooth Mountain. There blessed wolfsbane grows in the spray of the Singing Falls”; it’s the only way to save the villagers!

But once you’ve selected an adventure, a ticker appears in the top left-hand corner, saying “Next event in 9:00 [or 7:53, or 3:57, or any of a random assortment of minutes and seconds].”

And you wait.

The time ticks down.

And then you can click a refresh button, and see whether you’ve defeated the monster or been knocked around a bit.

It’s the strangest thing.

In fact, you don’t even know what you’re going to be facing until you’ve hit that refresh button, by which time, paradoxically, you’ve already faced it. The computer takes care of everything, including your dice roll. You could roll a natural 20 or a critical fail, and not even know it until the dust has settled.

Frankly, I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with it, since I have to keep finding things to do, to amuse myself while the ticker ticks down.

And yet I am oddly obsessed.

Partly, it’s that I’m doing unusually well in this current adventure. I’ve done this one before, but the server crashed over the weekend, and when I picked the application again today, I’d dropped back to level 1.

But I’m having more luck this time. Last time the sad-looking shepherd came up to me and told me he’d lost his magic sheep, I failed my Wisdom roll, looked him square in the eyes, told him there were no such things as magic sheep, and sodded off.

This time, I didn’t fail my Wisdom roll—and succeeded in not only finding the sheep but also looting a forgotten shrine.

I’ve also killed a dire toad, set fire to a zombie, and freed a caravan of people from the thrall of a sorcerer.

And picked up some nifty loot in the process.

I have also been stabbed by a goblin, but it was only a flesh wound—and that’s the price you pay for derring-do. (Which is why I prefer to do my derring from behind a computer screen.)

But I think the primary reason Nick and I are obsessed with this is the anticipation.

When you’re playing with dice and paper, you’re master of your own destiny—to an extent. If you roll a critical fail, you rolled it.

But with this version, the control over the dice is taken out of your hands. You wait your seven, eight, nine minutes and then, and only then, do you see which foe you’ve been facing, which treasure you’ve been grabbing, and how much damage you’ve taken.

It’s almost contrary to the spirit of the original game, and yet we’re fascinated.

All evening, the conversation has been running along these lines:

“Honey, come and make a cup of coffee.”
“In twenty-two seconds!”

“I just killed a zombie! I set fire to him with a branch out of the fire!”
“Cool!”

“Damn! I died on the last encounter.”
“Which one? Wolf Moon? Oh, that’s basic, that is.”

It’s odd: the pleasure and pride that one can take in achievements that are not only represented entirely by pixels but also occur entirely outside your control.

Seriously, it’s the strangest game on Facebook.

But awesome.

Lego Indiana Jones depends on collecting two types of things: studs (which double as money) and artifacts.

Now I’ve finished all the levels, I’m looking back through the game to find the artifacts that I’m missed, which I assume are hidden in cunning places.

The problem is that I’m not very good at it.

ME: I’m just running around now randomly throwing myself off cliffs, hoping there’s a hidden ledge. I’ve died so often that when I did once land on a hidden ledge with an artifact on it, I nearly fell off the edge from shock.
NICK: But if they want you to throw yourself off a cliff, there’s probably some sort of subtle clue.
ME: Well, they do sometimes have big arrows made up of studs, leading off the edge of the cliff.
NICK: Well, there you are then.
ME: Yes, but when I see those I tend to think, “Ooh, I might just leave those studs where they are. Otherwise, I might fall off the cliff.”

(I only wish we’d had this conversation after I’d taken the cold medication, and not before.)

I would imagine that almost anyone who has tried to evade their taxes or fake their own death has realised this fact. But I’m fairly sure that few of them were creating an identity from a completely different species with proficiencies that an ordinary person can only imagine.

That’s the fun part.

In fact, I suspect that’s the real reason for the addictive nature of MMORPGs.

It’s been a long time since I rolled up an entirely new character for a role-playing session, and the last time I did so it was for a different game, with entirely different rules.

But tonight, Nick and I have been creating, respectively, a human Cleric with a fierce hatred of the undead and an Elven Ranger who wields two swords.

Oh, we can’t wait to come across those kobolds who slaughtered all our characters in the last game.

(My poor dwarf. She tried her best, and yet she ended up crushed by a giant boulder, twice, while glued to the floor in a room swarming with her enemies. It’s an ignominious death, really. Plus, I was the first to die, which is just embarrassing.)

So far, I’ve learnt the following things:

1. I’m allowed two one-handed weapons, instead of being limited to an ordinary weapon and an off-hand weapon (something like a dagger, light and easily carried). These two blades—entirely imaginary and represented solely by the rattle of dice across the table—are now my most cherished possessions.

2. I only have limited money to buy my provisions. That’s fine—except I didn’t realise that that included my primary weapons, which led to the following conversation:

NICK: Of course, you’ve already spent some of that money on your long sword and your short sword.
ME: What? They should have been given to me by my parents at birth. Or at least when I entered Two-Blade Ranger Academy, or wherever I trained.

3. Elves are just cool. And so are Rangers. When we were fighting the kobolds, their native sneakiness allowed them to sneak up and then dash away without allowing us the standard retaliation.

Frankly, I find that both annoying and unsportsmanlike.

But not when my Elven Ranger can do much the same thing.

Then it’s just the natural outcome of long training, and something to be respected.

4. Unfortunately, Elves largely have rubbish names. And I’m completely stymied on creating an entirely new name, so I’ve just had to pick the least offensive of the standard options. It could be worse: one of the recommended names for a female human character is Shawna. Apparently, this fantasy universe intersects with the 1980s at some point.

5. Ultimately, it might be easier and less time intensive to simply find a way to enter a chaotic fantasy universe and slay real enemies than it is to interpret the spreadsheet we’re using to calculate our abilities.

Then again, it’s easier to use the spreadsheet than it is to do this manually, so it’s all relative.

6. I worship a god of storms, strength, and battle. Apparently. I’m sure that will come in handy.

7. My special attacks have exciting names, including “Dire Wolverine Strike” (oooh) and “Jaws of the Wolf.”

There’s no way this character’s going to end up glued to the floor while a boulder bears down on her.

8. But most exciting of all is a potential paragon path (the move towards a specialisation, which requires me to survive to level 10. Still, I’m hopeful).

Stormwarden.

We haven’t even played a single encounter with these characters, yet—and we didn’t cover ourselves with glory during the last encounter. But I’m still eying a paragon path in which I “learn the ancient ways of the stormwardens of the Feywild. These techniques turn your whirling blades into a storm of destruction that rains down punishing blows on your enemies. With each slash of your weapon, the wind howls in anticipation of the coming storm.”

See, that just sounds fun.

If I die before that comes about, I’ll be terribly disappointed in myself.

I keep coming back to this game again and again and again, and every time I mention it, I complain about it.

That doesn’t seem entirely fair, given how much I actually enjoy the game. It’s variable but generally beautiful, and great fun to play, when it’s playable.

But it seems to me at the moment that it’s actually not playable, or not unless you’re prepared to devote an enormous amount of time to it.

Once upon a time, you could flip through your friends’ and the rats’ packs, hoping for a decent card, rummage through the markets to see if a coveted item had appeared, make a couple of low-level items, and still not waste more time than would have been required for a quick round of Freecell.

But that’s not the case now, and it’s all to do with the increasing dependence on pop-up cards.

Take the two new sets, for example: Lucha Libre and Toys, Toys, Toys.

To make the top-level item in Lucha Libre—the Title Belt—you require a Wrestling Ring, Blue Amigo, and Purple Diablo.

The Wrestling Ring is easy enough: it’s expensive, but you can buy it. But those two wrestlers! Both require a mask (in addition to boots, cloaks, or shorts). And masks are pop-up cards.

They’re rare pop-ups, as well: I’ve never seen the Purple Mask in the wild. So I can’t make Purple Diablo.

And I need more than one mask: to complete the set, I need to vault the Purple Mask, the Purple Diablo, the Blue Mask, the Blue Amigo, and the Title Belt. That’s three masks of each colour.

So far, I’ve found two Blue Masks. So my collection has large, frustrating holes in it.

Toys, Toys, Toys is even worse, if possible.

The top-level item there is an Electric Train, made from a Metal Robot, a Model Rocket, and a Hot Rod. The Model Rocket itself is made from three other items, but at least those are all available in the markets, as is the Hot Rod.

But that Metal Robot! He requires (of all things) a Bubble Wand and two Wooden Soldiers. The Wooden Soldiers, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn, are pop-ups. Once again, I have never seen one in the wild, although I did once gaze longingly at one in a friend’s pack.

And, remember, I need to vault the Metal Robot on his own as well as the Wooden Soldiers card itself.

Five examples of a pop-up that I’ve never even seen? Is it any wonder I’m becoming frustrated?

I’ve heard a friend say that his frustration with the game comes from the fact that the rats have nothing of value in their packs. When you play co-operatively, as we do, you don’t raid your friends’ packs, though they will grab cards that they know you need. So you rely on the rats to offer chances to steal interesting cards—and stealing cards is, after all, the stated aim of the game.

But, honestly, I’d rather buy everything—regardless of how slow and frustrating it is to build up credits—than have this reliance on pop-ups.

Because it’s ruining the flow of the game.

You can no longer just pop in and out of a game, planning on a quick flip through the packs. Chances are, not a single pop-up will appear in that time and, when you’re waiting for pop-ups and desperately reliant on them, the game then becomes an exercise in frustration.

I don’t know if the intention is to induce us to spend more time playing the game, but that’s the outcome of these changes to the game mechanics.

And I may be lazy and prone to procrastination—in fact, I dare say I am.

But I’m not sacrificing my work, my students, and my writing by spending more and more time looking for cards that never appear.

I’m afraid that as more collections come to rely on pop-ups and, consequently, the game shifts to a more time-intensive mode of play, my inclination to finish those Feats of Wonder is going to fall away.

Because I’m a little worried about that.

As I may have mentioned before, I am obsessed right now with Lego Indiana Jones for the Nintendo DS.

Only in my leisure hours, mind.

But obsessed.

It’s enormous fun, especially now I’ve finished it in Story Mode and can play all the episodes in Free Play, which is vastly more fun (and more productive: generally, most of the maps and artifacts you need to collect can only be accessed in Free Play, when you can switch between characters. So you have a small character to climb through hatches, a Knight of the Cruciform Sword to open certain doorways, creepy priests who pull people’s hearts out to allow you into different areas, and so on.)

But what’s bothering me is that there are two characters on each level: one you control and one controlled by the computer.

(When we played Lego Star Wars, it was two player, and both characters were controlled by us. Which led to its own problems, since Nick isn’t used to co-operative play, and kept running off while I was trying to build things.)

But when one character is computer controlled, it gets quite frustrating.

Sometimes they become stuck behind things, and you have to run back half a level to guide them out.

Sometimes they’re unusually dull: I was driven to despair a few nights ago trying to navigate a dinghy. You can only navigate these if there are two people in them. But I got stuck. My computer character—Willie, the irritating night-club singer in Temple of Doom—leapt out of the boat. I couldn’t leap out without falling in the water and dying: trust me, I tried every possible angle. But she, daft cow, wouldn’t get back in the boat! (I always did dislike her.) So there I was, unable to move, all because this silly Lego figurine was posing, in my tuxedo, on the banks of the river with an umbrella!

Hmmm.

Sometimes, the computer characters actually kill you, by blocking the point of access when you’re jumping, so you fall in, say, a pit of lava.

And sometimes the computer characters get in your way. This is unusually annoying when you’re leaping from train carriage to train carriage (Last Crusade) or from truck to truck while having exploding barrels thrown at you by a Nazi (also, oddly, Last Crusade.)

And then there’s nothing for it but to repeatedly punch them in the face until they either move or, as a secondary effect, die and re-materialise somewhere else, somewhere less annoying.

But often my sidekick is Marcus Brody.

And I really liked Marcus. I was devastated when we watched the most recent film (this was a devastation that came on before the fridge was nuked and before the events of the last fifteen minutes) and I realised he was dead.

I really don’t want to punch Marcus in the face.

I want to punch Nazis in the face. Little Lego figurine Nazis. That’s the point of the game. (Although Lego apparently doesn’t call them Nazis. They’re generic villainous Germans. But I call them Nazis, and so does Indy.)

But if Marcus won’t move out of my way, what choice to I have?

None, really.

I just have to punch him in the face and then feel like a cad for the rest of the evening.