The Gaming Outpost

While the mercenary knights chivvied the local militia back into the walled city, we, that is the two elves who ignored each other, the Gnomish first mate with a penchant for bragging, and me, the human verser rode around the town toward the thousand foot tall butte which was actually the hilt of the Sword of Night. The rest of the sword plunged into the stone, and it seemed harder than removing Excalibur, to me.



I walked up to the stone, and it cracked and fell all about me leaving the metal sword hilt nine hundred feet tall gleaming in the sun. The sword waited. Not a good thing.



“Who is this Enemy wizard, I’m supposed to kill with this sword?” I asked Dlarion the elflord.

“Some human, I think.” He said and shrugged.



I asked the same question to the air, and to the arch-mage who had enslaved me to complete a quest he had chosen for me. I’d promised him I’d kill him.



“The Enemy is fallen from the stars, and forced by the Great Ones to take a bodily form.” The wind, obeying the arch-mage’s commands answered. Great, a fallen god to fight. Now, I knew why they needed such a megapowerful sword to kill or disperse this guy.



I touched the sword, and it rang clear and pure. But nothing else happened.



Dlarion came and pointed out a series of runes painted onto the sword. The lead one said “peace”, and the sum of the runes was to make the sword unmovable.



I calculated a few things. In order to draw the sword,we would need gigatonnages in force. That was a no go.



So, I sat and thought.



“How much gold and jewels do you have. Archmage? Because, I need a lot, and I need it right now.”



He told me, and with a little help from my friends, we guessed he had about a hundred thousand man-years of wealth.



It was time to introduce the Middle Ages to the joys of Laissez-faire Capitalism. You see that I had no way of drawing the sword from the ground. The spells made it so my strength used in pulling increased the friction and strengthened the rock. It would have been roughly about as hard to move the planet telekinetically. It was beyond me.



I showed my figures to Dlarion and the Master Librarian in training. They both puzzled at them a long while, until Dlarion smiled.



“These figures assume the planet is spherical. Its not, I do not know where you got such a silly notion.”



“Hunh?”



“The planet is mostly flat with a slight curvature since the back of the turtle it rests on only really supports the planet in the middle.” Dlarion explained while the Master Librarian gave me the look reserved for uneducated barbarians who only could read in five languages.



I rubbed my face, and tried to force my thoughts back into order. They went but not without some incredulous screeching about gravity, and a bunch of other things.



“The Colonial Elf speaks truly. My father went on a trade mission to a point on the World’s End.” ‘Al’ said with condescension. Even still, I could see it hurt for him to talk to me since I was in his estimation a really annoying cockroach, or human.



I thanked them, and called the town together for a herald to make an announcement. He promised a certain amount of gold to anyone who removed a set volume of dirt or stone a mile from near the sword. Any method was allowable, just so long as no one got hurt.



We eventually had to give people claims like they were mining because people were stumbling over each other.



In the two weeks that followed, I saw a rapid improvement in digging techniques. Everyone in town got tested by this old wizard with hardly the strength to do good work. He found latent wizards, and trained them in a simple spell for evaporating stone and causing it to rain elsewhere. The Stonerain spell helped a lot. And he got a ten percent cut of what any of the dozen new wizards did. They would not have been discovered elsewise, but gold is an awful powerful motivator.



Dwarves showed up, and I told them my plan. I was making a mile deep stripmine. They set to work. The local horse barbarians showed up, and what they lacked in skill with a shovel, they made up in raw endurance, and in numbers.



Occasionally the sky grew terribly dark as the Enemy strove to get at us, and the Archmage defended this plot of land from his incursions.



At the half-mile mark down,we started using cables sold to us by the horse barbarians. The enchanted ropes made out of horsemane and moonlight and spring grass pulled at the sword of Night from all directions so that it would not topple over on us.



Another quarter-mile down, and we were well into the Industrial Revolution for some of the miners, and it grew toward night. Rain came, and I was forced to close the pit for even those who had night lights.



Then we saw another light in the sky. A ball of fire slowly drifted down toward us. It resolved into the shape of a pale, red dragon with a beard, and sharp-edged scales drab and metallic in the moonlight.



“Are you the mine foreman who is paying such and such a price for every square yard of stone or dirt removed?” Her voice was the most wondrous I had ever heard.



Still, I was not worried. Dragons are tough, but not that tough.



“And you are?”



“Terracyl the Queen, my throne is the Thorn Mountains, my front yard the Greenwood, and my pantry is the Pirate Sea.”



“So, I suppose this is your front porch, and we trespass?” I said with slight mockery that I could not help.



“Yes, tiny verser, you do. But I’m a generous sort so I don’t mind as long as you show respect.” Her voice sent chills running up and down my forearms which helped make me aware of Dlarion jabbing me, very hard, in the ribs.



Terracyl took off straight up like a missile being launched.



“Now you’ve done it, you imbecilic human. I thought I knew why a hammer was needed when you began to strip mine. I would never have thought of such a brash plan. But now, you have killed us all.”



“Surely not.” I began, and he threw his bow on the ground in disgust. It was then that I saw a shadow flicker across the moon. I looked up, and saw Terracyl race across it at several hundred miles per hour. Then she went into a vertical dive straight for the town.



“Close your eyes.” Dlarion muttered. I didn’t. Five hundred feet above the town the dragon breathed out a huge cloud of flame, no, it was plasma. It flared light so bright that you could have read by it from five miles away.



Then Terracyl flew through this cloud, and snap-turned in between buildings to fly down city streets, and out the still open gate toward me at about two hundred miles per hour.



I gulped and reconciled myself to leaving the world.



Terracyl stopped within forty feet of me at a whiplash inducing speed. I opened my eyes to see the dragon looking me dead in the face.



“I apologize, your Mightiness. Really, I’m sorry.”



“That will do.” Terracyl said, and then she hopped over me, and into the pit. The flame came again, and again. She wielded it like a cutting torch slicing out massive chunks of rock, bespelling them for lightness, and then sending a thousand ton (before the spell) rock to sail over our heads, and toward the rock piles.



In a few hours, she had finished the project. The last of the rock fell away from the sword, and it was beautiful in a “you’re scaring me out of lunch, dinner, and breakfast kind of way.”



Terracyl climbed out of the pit, and we payed her. We even added a bonus just in case she felt cheated. No one wanted the Overlord of the Continent mad at them. It was several king’s ransoms, but well worth it.



Right before, the dragon took off with her gold, she turned to me,and tapped her chest with a long claw.

“Tadeusz, to answer your unspoken curiousity. I’m not cooking with gas. I’m nuclear. A living nuclear reactor rests inside my chest.”



I bowed.



Then I took a few minutes to pray, and hiked up a cable with the use of tight-rope training until I stood on the hilt of the sword I was meant to wield.



I wondered how to activate the thing. Since, I could think of nothing sensible, I began experimenting.



“Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Come on thing, I need the help. There’s evil afoot.” Something in my second sentence helped.



I felt fine as power began to flood into me. The I felt the wind playing on my intestines. I was growing and thinning out at the same time. My friends looked at me in horror.



And still I grew, until the sword was the right proportion for me. I stood,nearly two miles tall, and less solid than a cloud.



Apparently I was out of phase with the rest of matter as well since I could step through rocks.



In the distance, I saw another figure, much like mine approaching.



The Enemy walked the plain. He stalked, and strutted, and laughed at me. He spun his wizard’s rod in intricate spins that seemed to start over there and continue elsewhere with no movement in between.



I pulled up the giant nearly mile long sword, and found that the blade faded from my sight at odd times. It refused certain slashes. The thing balked, and grew surly.



The wizard watched me fight with my own sword, and he just chuckled more.



He stood about five miles off, but it was like we were in the same room.



“Never fought with a multi-dimensional weapon before have you?” He said. I shrugged in agreement seeing as it was completely obvious.



“They are very tricky weapons. Even most lower level spirits could not properly use one. You’ve been recruited to fight me. Chained with a geas most unfairly, told that I was a bad guy, and that you needed to kill me. Why don’t you hear my side of the story?” The Enemy said most reasonably.



“Release me from the geas, and I might.” I bargained back. He made as if to do it, and then held back. I shrugged again, and started walking toward him. So he released me.



And then he told me his story of hideous abuse at the hands of Heaven’s hierachy. It was enought to make a man weep.



I asked him what he did in response. He told me he struck at the Enemy through those precious to the Enemy.



“Soft targets, eh?” I said with wry sympathy.



“Yes. Yes. That’s a good way to put it.”



My gaze turned cold, and without warning so did the air as a jet stream responded to my fury.



“Speaking as one of those ‘soft targets’ in your war that you lack the guts to take to the Gates of Heaven, I’d say I’m a little, no, a lot unhappy with you.”



And then I charged him with my sword raised over my head. Nothing fancy, clever, or pretty involved. I’d never do well in that kind of fight.



The hilt always stayed solid, and so I took a smack and another from his staff before I closed. Then I brought that hilt down on top of his skull. Again and again. He hit me a lot of times with his wooden wizard’s rod. He broke ribs, and fingers and battered me. I hammered him.



Finally, he was gone.



I turned about and called out in a cackling voice around the blood in my mouth and the loose tooth, and past the ringing in my skull.



“Oh, Archmage, Archmage, where are you?”



He appeared and waved his staff. The geas brought me up short.



“Put down the sword, Tadeusz, and I’ll free you.” He said from his spot on the ground a half-mile in front of me.



The Enemy had tricked me. The geas still held. Can’t trust anyone these days, not even a fallen god of evil.



I looked at my sword, and considered. It was a massive power source. With it, I imagine you could snuff out a sun. But, I’d already proven that I hardly knew how to use it. I could just as easily crack the planet like a plate dropped on the floor.



Besides, I had access to a power that dwarfed the sword. I reached out in my mind for help, and the geas fell from me. This time, I felt the undeniable exhilaration of freedom.



The geas had been rigged to defeat my rage, and my will. But nothing could be a perfect defense against everything, and so it was a simple matter for my faith to free me. I still think even if the geas had been rigged to defeat my faith, that it might have failed. Not that I’m all that great, but my Master is.



I turned to the Archmage with a smile on my face.



He started to cast a spell to teleport himself away. Stark terror made his movements jerky. I forbad it by the power of the Night Sword.



“Remember, I promised to sheathe this sword in your heart?” I asked him. He composed himself to meet his fate.

“I told you not to enslave me. It was wrong. Just because I’m an adventurer, you thought I had no rights.”



“I, we, the whole planet needed your help. I could not be sure you would agree.” The wizard replied.



“But surely you knew sometime in my travels that I would help anyways?”



“Yes, okay, what do you want me to say, I was wrong, but I’d do it again anyways. I don’t have the courage to not do it.”



I stood and thought. In ways, he seemed a dark reflection of myself. And the Spirit reminded me that I had been shown mercy upon the asking. Mercy was not given at proof of decency or even at plans of decency, it was a gift I had been given that I had not deserved. There was the worry that in being merciful to him, I opened the door to him doing this to someone else. But I chose mercy for the sake of gratitude. And because I would not want to deny freedom like he did.



I bent down to my knees, and the sword lay in my football field sized hand between us.



“I’m going to highly reccommend you give up enslaving people. The next person may not be nearly so kind as I. Might be downright irritable, and not a sweet person like me.”



Then I put the sword down on the ground, and shrank about halfway. The sword turned solid, but I stayed phased, and a half-mile tall.



The archmage was shocked. We tried various solutions, but nothing worked. I was a ghost without food or water, and messing with the Sword had made it so my mind was frazzled enough that most of my magic was temporarily lacking even if I had anything that would help in this situation.



A week passed, and I passed out, and into another world. Hopefully, I could find a world where I could reverse this, or I might drift starving and dying of thirst from world to world as a kind of very thin fog bank.



Tadeusz

  On a forum on another web site, not too long ago, Jack Spencer, Jr. (whose series The Wanna Be will be remembered by those who were frequenting Gaming Outpost in 2001), wrote, “if a gamer had made Jaws it would not have been a shark but a shark with a laser on its head.”  By this he meant that people who create game adventures have an almost universal tendency to go over the top, to push the envelope into the absurd.  Someone on that thread corrected, or perhaps expanded, him:  it would have been a shark with a laser on its head that had been built by a secret evil organization intent on taking over the world, whose identity is discovered by searching the shark’s body after it has been killed.  The term Lasersharking thus entered the game design vocabulary.

  I used the term two weeks ago when talking about Gamer Movies, when I commented that Pirates of the Caribbean:  The Legend of the Black Pearl was a bit lasersharky.  It’s not just pirates; it’s immortal undead pirates.  Yet that in itself became the failure of the lasershark concept.  After all, Pirates lures you into expecting a swashbuckler, but instead gives you a nautical ghost story.  One man’s laser shark is another man’s genre trope.

  Yet I retain the idea.  I note that when it was proposed, it rang a chord with a significant number of gamers, all of whom felt that they had seen this, and perhaps themselves had done it, in games they had played.  There seems to be this temptation to make it just a little more than anything believable within our expectations.  Thus I think for design purposes–whether designing monsters or adventures or entire games–it is worth asking ourselves the question, am I making a laser shark?

  It is not an easy question to answer, perhaps.  The question really is, have I gone just a bit too far?  In the words of John Wick (somewhere in his Game Designer’s Journal series here at Gaming Outpost), there comes a point at which you snap the disbelief suspenders of your audience.  There’s nothing wrong with a shark with a laser on its head, even if it’s built by a secret worldwide criminal organization intent on seizing power, if that’s within the expectations of the game.  It’s only wrong if it violates those expectations.  It’s good to push the envelope, to do things that are unexpected, even extreme.  You just have to keep in mind that there is a point that goes too far, and if you go that far the shared imaginary space collapses in disbelief.

  It’s also perfectly legitimate to bait and switch–a criminal activity in advertising and retailing, but a clever approach to fiction and gaming.  It’s what Pirates does so well.  We are prepared for a swashbuckler, expecting Captain Blood perhaps, a nautical Three Musketeers.  Then we get a ghost story.  We are surprised; but if we can roll with the punches, we’re still with the story.  We weren’t entirely wrong; there is still a lot of buckling of swashes in the film.  It’s just that there’s another element here which is outside of that.  If we’re willing to release our grip on what this story, or game, was supposed to be, and go with what it has become, we discover that there’s a great story here, made all the more interesting because it was unexpected.  I’m not in a swashbuckler; I’m in a ghost story.  This isn’t man against nature; it’s a spy thriller, in which a shark with a laser on its head was made by a criminal organization bent on world conquest, and sent to terrorize the beaches.  It’s not what I expected, but that’s good.

  Somewhere there has to be that point of balance, the place at which far enough is not too far, the spot where suspension of disbelief is stretched but not snapped, the place where the crazy idea is just within credibility.  Cross that line, and you lose your audience, or your players.  Stay too far from it, and you’re predictable, and thus boring.  You need to do something interesting, innovative, exciting, different, but not so far out there that no one is willing to make the journey with you.

  The secret may lie there.  It is not whether you go too far; it is whether you can take your audience with you as you go.  How do you do this?

  Foreshadow the true nature of the story.  As Pirates opens, there is an encounter between the ship carrying many of those who will play important rolls in the story and another ship, a seeming derelict, with black, tattered sails and an abandoned deck, adrift and sinister in the sea.  We are given to shudder at the sight, but there is no reason to think it other than the derelict it appears to be.  The scene is more about rescuing the boy who will grow up to be the hero, and about the girl who takes from him what Hitchcock would have called the McGuffin, that thing in the movie everyone wants, in this case the last piece of cursed gold.  The ship passes out of our attention; we move on to setting place and time and character for the real story.  Yet having seen that ship, we are not so surprised when it returns with a pirate crew; and having wondered how tattered sails can carry it in the wind or crews can vanish from the decks, we are less surprised to discover that they are cursed with an evil immortality.  If the shark has a laser on its head, if there’s some nefarious purpose behind its release against our shores, find ways to hint to the players that this is not an ordinary shark and that it may be part of something bigger before they themselves face it.  This may seem to be a swashbuckler, or a man against nature struggle, but if you have a few bits that don’t fit with that understanding, if you’ve got the players wondering why it doesn’t feel quite right, then when you pull the switch and tell them it’s really a ghost story or a spy thriller, rather than say, Oh, no, that’s just too ridiculous, who could possibly believe that? they find themselves saying, Ah hah!  Now it all makes sense!

  Also, let the mystery build.  The first hints of incongruity should be little things.  We saw the ship adrift; later we heard seamen’s tales of a cursed or haunted vessel.  By the time the other shoe dropped, we were looking for the explanation, trying to construct the puzzle from the pieces.  Some of us probably were there already; those who were not knew that the picture needed something it didn’t have.  When the big secret was revealed, we didn’t know exactly what it would be, but we were ready for it.  With our laser shark, perhaps the wreckage of the boats it has destroyed have unusual scorch marks; witnesses report seeing the gleam of a strange light in the water; seemingly unrelated incidents are pointing to increased criminal activities in areas where the unseen creature has attacked.  The evidence builds.  We can’t deduce the explanation from it, but the moment the explanation is before us, everything makes sense.

  In short, you’re only over the top if you’re there alone.  If everyone is right behind you, it works.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

You ever have one of those weeks? You know the ones I’m talking about. You can’t get anything done that you want to because the things that you need to do keep getting in the way. It’s very frustrating, and very obnoxious. I’ve been having that kind of week. Well, it’s been more like three weeks actually. Back to back to back hell weeks at work which have kept me from my articles.



I barely had time to write my last article due to work related fun (heavy sarcasm) and I had just formulated some ideas after reading Mark’s Gamer Movies article before work hammered me again as one of my clients dropped a massive project in my lap. Basically I got to do two weeks worth of work in one. Not too bad, I thought. I’ve had worse. Then Friday rolled around and I could see it wasn’t going to end there.



The next Monday was basically the same and I finally got around to reading Mark’s Diversification article on lunch today. Thankfully, things have finally slowed down to a point where I can breath, my heart rate has dropped to something just less than a rabbit on crack and I can finally do some of the things I like to do – Like write this article.



What does this have to do with gaming? Well, one of the things that I love doing with players is to keep them busy. Too much down time and they’re minds start to wonder and they can loose focus on the game at hand. While a break can be useful as we’ve discussed before, and there are times when it’s helpful to stop and think before you act, you can’t have too much down time or things get boring.



RPGs are similar to movies, much more so than novels. Movies need to keep a certain pace if they are going to get their viewers to sit through the whole thing. A book has the luxury of allowing a reader to put it down and pick it up again. Movies are meant to be seen in one sitting, and RPG sessions are meant to be full of things to do.



Wondering monsters are great ways to fill the time in some games, while random acts of weirdness can be fun in others. Not only does this keep the action in your games, but it also allows you to keep the players at bay for a while. Kind of a way to take a break from your plot while still playing.



If the players are marching quickly to the end of your plot sometimes you need to slow them down for a while so you can figure out what you need to do. Sure they may try and stall you, but that doesn’t mean you have to give them a lot of time to think. I’ve often told other GMs that I talk with that there’s nothing like a good high action combat to keep the players occupied while you think of what you need to do next.



Is there such a thing as giving players too much to do? Definitely. You can’t run anyone ragged for too long before they break down. Hit points will drop, spells will be used up, powered armor will need recharging – the players are going to need a break eventually. If you keep an eye on their condition (both PCs and players) you’ll know when to let up and let them rest up.



The other thing that this type of non-stop action can be used for is those game sessions where everyone just wants to blow stuff up. You know what I mean, everyone has had that long day at work and the idea of pulling a Conan move in some huge fray and standing atop a heap of your foes seems like a hell of a good idea. Sometimes contemplation and plot development are not what the group is looking for. Sometimes it’s action and lots of it.





Well, that’s enough out of me for now. I think I’ll be back on track next week. At least I will be if my GM… er clients give me a chance to rest.



See you in the Forums!

I sat before the front railing of the Dawn Dancer, a Gnomish hydrofoil, and ate my breakfast of bacon from the Shortman Hills and fried squid traded from the Mer, and slightly bitter tubers in a sweet sauce from the far-off Empire of Zinkaria. The ninety mile per hour wind did not disturb me for a glass shield along the front edge protected the flat deck, and the rock steady deck of a hydrofoil neither rose nor fell.



We were leaving Cloudshadown Mountain, the home island of a once-great and now fallen empire with a Master Librarian Intended we called ‘Al’, an en route to the mainland and the city-state named the City of Parasols. We had no worries on the open seas. Nothing could catch a Gnomish hydrofoil in full flight, except for a rogue wave.



The hyperactive crew kept a sharp eye out for such things, and continually kept adjusting the rigging of our sails. I could see several ways to make things easier, a lot easier for the sailors, and only sacrifice one or two percent efficiency rather than this constant readjustment. But, then, I’m a human, and a worldwalker, and I don’t need to be doing something every thirty seconds like the gnomes. Just watching them tired me out.



Most of the day passed bright and clear in the wake of the miracle I had prayed for. We came skimming into the harbor past the stone seawalls like a swiftly flung stone in a slingshot.



Stern and splendid humans waited at the bottom of the pier. Their swords were curved, and as we docked, I saw a man in a dress or robe, I should say aproach while holding a parasol above his head. He wore the twin curved swords in the style of the samurai, and my heart sank. Maneuvering in an Oriental culture could be difficult for such a Westerner as I. But then they did not necessarily have those categories here.



So we waited.



A messenger came forward.



“Honorable Gnomish Captain. Do you have any of the hated enemies of humanity on board, the Elves?” He said,and bowed.



Seeing as we had two, I loosened my gladius in its sheathe.



“No, honorable emissary, we do not.” The Captain said as Dlarion, the elf, walked out of the underdeck. I shuddered, and the deliberately disinterested gaze of the messenger passed right over him.



I suspected magic, but the messenger seemed too alert for that.



The Captain negotiated a fee, and we headed into town to find lodging, and horses for our ride tommorrow.



Considering the low level of technology, it was a remarkably clean town. Buildings were of paper screens mostly despite the geology under the city seeming very solid. Old habits die hard.



I stopped in an alchemist’s shop to get a bagful of things, and spent most of the night working on various compounds until I had just the two I wanted.



The next day on the long horse ride across the marches of the human kindogdoms, I asked Dlarion about the odd treatment accorded to the elves. He sighed.



“When the founding family of the City was exiled to this continent, the patriarch was set upon by several groups of elven pirates. He took that to mean that all elves were pirates, and so he swore an oath for himself and all descendants to destroy all the ‘Elves who are the enemies of humanity.’

I am not the enemy of humanity so I don’t count according to those of his descendants who saw better. There is one advantage to your short human lifespans. We have disagreements still festering that began on the morning that the Sun first rose over this planet.” Dlarion explained the weird behavior to me. I was glad I had not pulled out my sword.



We travelled for a fortnight across the plains, and were obliged to enter into one tournameant of jousting. Dlarion due to superior skill, and my strength and size (they asked me if I had troll blood since the average man was five and a half feet tall) brought us into the semi-finals but then the competition turned serious, and both he and I were knocked out by the real professionals at jousting.



They were hard-bitten men who could outride me even if they were falling down drunk.



Dlarion won the archery competition, and I won the hammer toss just barely beating the local blacksmith who had a cold.



Still, I recruited a score of free knights to our cause with a tale of glory, and the pearls I had held back from trading in a pawn shop many worlds ago. Here they were fantastically valuable.



Occasionally, we saw bandits, but they did not want to tangle with what looked like a small war party without a great amount of loot to compensate them for the risk. Still Dlarion and I got into a friendly competition at sniping bandits who spied on us.



He used his arrows, and I wove magic. I collected another name. A rather obvious one. “War Wizard.”



At the far edge of the Human Kingdoms, we came to a wild grassland, and a river separating the scrub we rode on, from the blowing soft green. Overlooking the city was a great rock, peculiarly shaped. This was our destination.



So we rode down. Scouts from the city raced back, and a large party of armed men and women came out of the city. You could not call it an army because it was more of a mob, but they outnumbered us a hundred to one.



A negotiating party under flag of true went forward, and we met it with our own.



They came back, and it was not good. The city had fallen to the Enemy. He promised them safety from the raids of the horse tribes, and they wanted safety so desperately that they ignored everything else. I sensed a great relief from a long born strain. They would not willingly take it back up for many years. And by then it would be too late.



I looked at my forces. Dlarion could possibly defeat me. In almost every way, I was a better fighter than him except he was so fast, so accurate that you did not see the first two arrows leave his back, or be strung, or released. And I had twenty knights.



Knights in heavy armour were effectively tanks. Each one was worth twenty-five peasants, or at least ten regulars, and that was ordinary knights. Mine were veterans.



We might be able to take them, but I had little wish to cause a slaughter of their or my side. Both sides would bleed freely this day unless I did something else.



I rode forward alone, and brought out the shadows that all men have in their soul, and wrapped them about myself in a simple spell that was risky to the state of my own mind.



Like a raven flying low over the ground, I galloped up to the opposing force. My army, they were, I decided. I owned them.



“Why do you stand in my way? What treachery is this? Shall I turn loose the tribes from my spell that they may burn your pitiful town to ashes?”



Gulps. Assessing glances, and I charged forward the last twenty feet. The impatience convinced them. They jumped off their horses, and bowed.



“Great One, we apologize. You may have my head, but spare the rest please.” Their leader warbled in what he probably thought was a sad display of fear, but I considered it one of the finest moments of courage, I’d seen.



Still, rather than applaud the bravery, I had a job to do. And I took an example from another Dark Lord.



I reached out with my telekinesis, and jerked him off his feet by the neck so that he hung in the air level with my face.



“Tell me why I should not take your soul.” I growled at him. He hung choking and nonplussed at my unfair question. If he disagreed, I’d strike him, and if he agreed that was worse. Or so he thought.

“Bah.” I tossed him aside.



“You will open your gates, and conduct me to this Night Sword immediately. My private guard will come with me, and you will not, under pain of death, cross them in any way.”



They looked perplexed, and finally one grew brave enough to point out that the Night Sword was not in the city. The butte behind the city was the hilt of the Night Sword. The hilt shot a thousand feet into the air, and I felt like sinking an equivalent distance into the ground.



“Did you think, I did not know that? Take me there at once.” I hollered, covering up my mistake by using fear.



Its fun to be the Dark Lord. Whenever you make a mistake, you kill an advisor for betraying you, but I was not that caught up in the role yet. Still, most of the people looked at my selected guide as if he were a dead man. None moved to protect him.



And my knights moved into the crowd, and not so gently pushed them back into town.



Tadeusz

  The ninth quarter of our series ends with this article; as such, we keep with our tradition of looking back over the past dozen articles and talking about a game idea built on them.  We most recently did this with Arbitrary, when we finished two years, celebrating that milestone while suggesting it lacked real meaning.

  Some time back, one of the most prolific D20 freelancers was asked how he manages to work on so many projects at once.  His answer was the same as I have often given.  He takes projects that are very different from each other.  When he is tired of one, he takes a break by working on another.

  My experience is much the same.  In the early part of the 1990′s, I was working on Multiverser, and doing so pretty much straight through.  When I tired of it, I did nothing for a while, and then I got back to it.  Today, it’s different.  I’ve got several projects in development, at different stages.  Further, I’ve learned that each of these projects has several varied tasks, and switching between tasks can help keep things going.

  This approach, this diversification of effort, may be one of the explanations for why this column has lasted so long as it has.  Each week ends with the promise that next week will bring something different, and in the main that has held true.  Just looking back over the past three months, we can see the variety presented.

105. Variations considered brushing off the old ideas to come up with new approaches.
106. Wait reminded us that you don’t always have to do something; sometimes the best choice is to see what happens next.
107. Togetherness talked about the fact that games are at their core social occasions, and should be treated as such.
108. Contingencies noted that there are no good Plan B’s, but that it’s good to have them in place whether you’re the referee or the player.
109. Levels addressed logic, and the importance of thinking a bit more deeply about things.
110. Silence considered one of the primary features of modern jurisprudence, and talked about how the right against self-incrimination might be interpreted, or what the world would be like without it.
111. Math wasn’t about math, but about the limitations we sometimes impose on ourselves, not doing what we can do because we believe we cannot.
112. Bad Ideas recalled a promise made long before, considering how to recognize whether an idea is worth investing time in it.  In the end, the question remains unanswered, but there were some valuable bits along the way.
113. Stalling was presented as a referee technique to get time to think, by throwing something at the players that will take them a bit of time before they continue.
114. Orthography considered ways to use spelling and the vagaries of written language as a game device.
115. We considered whether the changes in video games and role playing games over the past decades reflect a deeper change in our culture, a move from challenge to Entertainment in people’s preferences.
116. Last week we kicked back and relaxed with a list of Gamer Movies, and why I recommend each of them.

  It should be apparent that there is a great deal of variety in the subjects we’ve covered.  At the outset, this series took a theme that opened many possibilities, and so it’s rare that it runs short of new ideas.

  Even so, I keep the creative juices flowing by working on ideas beyond these articles.  At present, Multiverser:  The Third Book of Worlds is advancing furiously toward completion, and much of that is my writing and editing.  Even as I work on that, there are maps (more maps in this volume than ever before, but that’s because these worlds require them), so I’m shifting between writing, editing, and mapping.  The novels also require some attention; although I have not worked on them this week, I eagerly await comments from an independent editor on the second, and have started work on the fourth and fifth in the series.

  In addition to these, we have a collectible card game in development.  Much of this falls to me, and I’m working with a few people to develop the values for the cards and test the mechanics.  There are several other games in development–a couple of role playing games, three board games, and rules for a traditional card game.  So there is much to occupy my attention.

  This doesn’t mention the bulk of my online work.  Apart from the e-mail and forums that keep me rather busy, I maintain my own web site, with a couple hundred pages accumulated over several years, on everything from fantasy gaming to time travel to modern legal issues to Bible teaching, sometimes with the lines blurred between them.  I’ve got a monthly column at the Christian Gamers Guild site, Faith and Gaming, which addresses game-related subjects that are intended for a specifically Christian gaming audience.  Periodically I produce a page for another site.  The most recent, I’m Not a Lawyer, but I Play One in a Game at RPGnet, is too long for this series as it gives a framework for producing the experience of legal drama in a role playing game environment.  Before that, Applied Theory was an effort to show how an understanding of the concepts of gamism, narrativism, and simulationism as expounded by Ron Edwards could be used in practical ways to help make game design decisions.  On top of this, I try to keep up Valdron’s Game Tip of the Week site, which means every week having a new one-line game tip to post on sites around the web.

  There are times when I worry that one or another of these is falling behind; at the moment, I’m trying to catch up on these articles (I like to be a couple months ahead on drafts, and I’m not) and looking for a chance to generate a new batch of tips (which if I haven’t done so by the time you read this, I’ll have run out).  But never does it come to the point at which I can’t think of anything.  With so many different ideas to explore, there’s always something on which I can get more done.

  In fact, perhaps the biggest problem is knowing when I’ve done enough; when I’ve written enough for the night, finished enough of what lies before me that I can relax, go to bed, maybe even watch a movie or something.

  So my advice to those of you who hope to be creative is to diversify.  Start several projects.  Focus on one, but when you tire of it or run short of ideas shift to another.  You’ll find that in the time you’re working on the other project, the back burner will continue to simmer and eventually will produce answers, ways to get around your snags, fresh ideas for your story, your world, your game.  As long as there’s always something different you can do for a while, you’ll always have something you can do.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

In his latest article, Entertainment, Mark wrote:



“The new games are for entertainment; the old ones were challenging.”



I have to say I found that statement to be rather odd. For me, all games are about entertainment. I see entertainment as fun and if I’m not having fun with a game, I’m not going to play it more than once. Sure, sometimes I might get frustrated with a game like Tetris if I can’t get past level five or something like that, but I’ll come back and try it again later.



As I’ve said many times in my articles, I believe RPGs are all about fun. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if your not having fun, or if your causing others to not have fun, you are doing something wrong. That concept led me to my idea for this article – We often talk about other players and GMs as the ones who are problems in our group. However, we very rarely look to ourselves as the potential problem player/GM. Why is that?



It’s been said often that it’s easier to point out the flaws in others than it is to see our own flaws. I think this is very true when talking about a team event like RPGs. Everyone has to hold up their end or the game will not be as much fun as it could be. Most team events have coaches or trainers working to provide feedback to everyone so that they know what areas need work. One of the reasons that this needs to happen is that most people don’t see themselves as not holding up their end. It’s always the “other guy” who’s not doing his part. We need others to help us achieve a higher/better level of play.



Most gamers I know think of themselves as good gamers. They get into character, really focus on the game, are good at adding descriptions to encounters and do their best to make sure that everyone else stays on task. If, when someone brings up a issue with something they are doing during gameplay, they are certain that it is the other person’s inability to deal with them that is the problem.



I guess what I’m getting at here is that everyone needs to be able to take criticism in there games. It’s gonna happen. Maybe not like it did to me in Why did that happen?, but it’s gonna happen. Someone you game with is going to bring up an issue with your gaming style and you’re going to have to deal with it.



I’ve found that how someone deals with criticism that we can tell what kind of person they are. Criticism hurts. No two ways around it. Especially if it’s criticism about something you really love to do like gaming. No one wants to be told that all those times you thought you were being funny quoting Python you were, in fact, annoying the heck out of the GM and the other players.



When you get the criticism, you’ve got the right to be hurt, but you need to think before you speak. Don’t snap back at the person, don’t react without really thinking of what you are going to say. Tempers can flare when this type of thing happens and I’ve seen more than one game group fall apart because someone didn’t know how to deal with a critical view of their gaming style. One of those times I was the one who lost his temper and broke up the game. While that was not a proud moment for me, learned that if you feel like jumping on the person who’s giving you the criticism, say something like: “Really? I’m doing that?” or “Wow, I didn’t know that was a problem.” Don’t take your frustration or anger out on your fellow gamers. Think before you act.



It’s also a good idea to invite the others in the group to offer you suggestions on how to improve. Then, when the group sees you honestly trying to make it work they will know you are a person who means what you say and cares about your fellows. If you are trying to work on things, the group will see it support you and help you along the way. Most folks don’t want to loose friends if they can help it.



There is another option available. I personally feel it’s the most difficult option but sometimes, albeit very rarely, you’ve gotta leave the group. Maybe not forever, maybe just for this campaign, but sometimes you gotta leave. If your game style is radically different from the rest of the group’s, and if you don’t want to change to fit the group, you should leave. By staying you are only going to hurt the rest of the group and ruin their fun.



Leaving the group isn’t a “quit before they can fire me” move. This is a sign of a person who knows things aren’t working and is willing to admit it. Again, it’s not an easy thing to do, and I only suggest this as a last resort (I’ve only done this three times myself). Trying to work with the group and giving their suggestions and honest try is always preferred to leaving.



Well, that’s enough out of me. See you all in the Forums!

I walked on water making this my first miracle of the day. Three hundred feet ahead of me, a half-dozen pirate ships blocked a narrow strait between two islands on the route to Cloudshadow Mountain where we would hopefully find some information on how to get the Sword of Night, and destroy the Abyssal Gate.



Above the pirate ships, summoned grey smoke malignancies, air elementals, bound by magic crested in strength and number to a maximum that looked daunting. So the magicians aboard those boats thought they knew my strength.



They unleashed the winds which howled down on my position knocking me to the surface of the waves to bounce across the ocean surface.



Air elementals are flighty, and so instead of finishing me off, they drew back a bit to savor the moment. I could see the gnomish hydrofoil, really more of a raft now that it was not moving, that I had come her with still needed help.



I remembered another miracle. And shaking my finger at the elementals in a scolding way after I prayed, I put my own words to it.



“That’s enough out of you. Chill out, immediately.” The winds roared away leaving the day mercilessly clear.



It made it easy for the archers aboard the pirate ships to plink at me. And idea occured to me.



I pointed at the largest ship, and then I prayed aloud for my third miracle of the day.



“As Elijah dealt with those who respected not his status, so deal with those who block us.”



A gigantic lightning bolt fell from the Heavens, and hit the ship squarely amidships. One of the boats tried to make a fight of it, everyone else ran. So I prayed again remarking about the two groups that insulted Elijah. And I pointed a finger at the remainging fighting ship. It blew to splinters.



Then I turned around, and hiked back to the ship. I scrambled on board, and was brought up short.



Everyone, except the elflord Dlarion, bowed to the ground some going so far as to plunk their full body length on the decking. A discordant chorus of praise and terror reached my ears, and made me sick to the stomach as I realized they were worshipping me.



I might, just might, have an inflated opinion of my own importance, but I was not yet ready to claim status as a deity.



I started jerking people to their feet and yelling at them. For some reason, I was vastly irritated at the whole thing, I’m not sure why. But my harsh words of denial only terrified them more, and when I let go of someone, he fell back to the deck like a sack of cat food.



Turning to Dlarion, I gave him a frustrated look.

“The ordinary people are not used to see many acts of great magic in plain sight. Plus we can feel the Realm of Magic, and your power came not from the verges of it like a mage’s does, but from deep in its dazzling heart.

This is why you should allow me to lead; you understand not this world.”



I ignored his other comment, and looked up into the sky.



“A little help here would be nice.” I said speaking irritably in prayer.



A crack in the sky opened and light, harsh, brilliant, and true stabbed down like a dagger onto the ship.



“Tadeusz works for Me when he can be bothered. I’ve given him a lot of stuff, more than he deserves, but a penny with the Chairman of the Gmome Council’s head embossed on it does not make him the chairman. Frankly, if you knew how much he messed up, you would be embarrassed to be on your knees before him.” The Voice said, and the people on the ship looked up at the crack in the sky, and then at me with these horribly disillusioned eyes. It was quite depressing.



“Thanks, thanks a lot.” I said with heavy sarcasm.



“Anytime you need something, just call.” The Voice said to me alone with a quiet chuckle. I gritted my teeth, having God laugh at you is not one of my favorite things. The the Voice was heard by all again.



“Dlarion, he may be a novice, but I don’t need a longbow, I need a hammer here, and he is my chosen hammer.”



“Yes, Ancient One.” Dlarion said bowing his head in a wonderfully grave and serene manner.



“And just so you know…” And suddenly we all saw Something. Not the bottom of a foot like Moses saw, something reflected and shadowed and distorted appeared in our minds. We all spent the next span of time, I am not sure how long, banging our heads on the decking or weeping for joy or however it took each one of us.



Only the arrival of pirate ships rounding an island brought us from the state of terror and wonder we had been shoved into.



The ship set out for Cloudshadow Mountain a quiet and weirded out crew. We easily outran a few more pirate ships, and docked in the harbor of the island.



Cloudshadow Mountain loomed over us, and into the clouds. A cosmopolitan town of about ten thousand served as the port city to this last island outpost of the Pale Elven Empire.



The wickerwork pier was alive, and the golem that tied us up was as well. The bored port inspector in a thin and worn overcoat was obviously elven like Dlarion, and indeed only a slight paleness separated them. But it seemed enough for the both of them to ignore each other with a prickly intensity.



We disembarked, and the Captain to the surprise of the port official did not immediately cast off. Instead, he said he would hold his ship ready for my needs.



I had wondered why the Creator had shown us such things, and why say such things to me. Perhaps this was part of the answer here.



The status of having a gnomish boat waiting for us got me into the Lord Mayor’s office of the Port City. Unfortunately, he told me that I would have to get on the waiting list of at least half a year in order to examine their archives. No bribe (which he wanted to accept), and no name-dropping would move him. It was not in his hands. Besides, the true scholars on top of the mount did not yield pride of place to anyone.



It seemed to me that the Pale Elves still wanted to say they were masters of the world, and so stupid pride kept them from recognizing their diminished place.



I left his office with my entourage considering ways to break into the library at the top of the mountain. The next client for the governor began speaking before we were out of earshot.



“I simply must have a fast ship to get to the mainland. This is a pressing matter.”



“We are truly sorry, Master Librarian Intended, but the funds are not there to hire such a ship.” The Lord Mayor’s voice soothing voice broke a heart, and uplifted mine.



A scholarly looking pale elf walked out in a huff.



I attempted to stop him. He stepped around me without acknowledging my presence.



“I have a very fast boat.”



He stopped, and I could see the strain in his shoulders as he forced himself to converse with me.



He turned.



“I have a matter of utmost importance. I need a ship, and my government will not provide one for me. I hardly think you, a human can do better.”



The first mate of the gnomes laughed and opined that the Dawn Dancer could not be bested by any ship on any sea let alone one of the tubby elven galleys. We had hooked him.



So he came with us. I won’t inflict his full name on the indigenous scholar that may happen on this scroll buried under some rock on a distant world, but it went on for nearly a minute. We called him “Al”.



“I am a researcher attempting to get my doctorate degree in the Prolific Races from the University.”



“In what field? And what do you mean, Prolific?” I inquired with a feigned politeness.



“Humans, dwarves, goblins, they breed like cockroaches. You understand. But I am doing a research paper on “adventurers”. This is a phenomenon new to the world, only a couple centuries old so the Colonial Elves say. Cultural Anthropology is the field.”



He dropped the big words into his speech like I could not be expected to understand them, and possibly I was one of the few humans on the planet who did. I looked over at the Colonial Elf Dlarion who rolled his eyes, and I felt a sudden sympathy for the poor fellow having these arrogant idiots as neighbours.



“Master Librarian, we need your help to find the Sword of Night, and in return we can offer you two favors. One, we are adventurers, I guess, and two, well I have my doctorate in that same field so maybe I can offer you some help.” I had picked up the degree in a world much like my homeworld where I had the opportunity to be Staying for longer than a week.



His face twisted from denial of help on general principles to interest to shock.



“I do know where it is. I read a book about it just last decade.” He said in a very small voice. And I hoped two things 1)That he kept his attitude quiet for the rest of the trip, and 2) That the sword had not been moved in the last century since the book was published.



“Excellent.” I said with a false heartiness. And we made our way back to the harbor and cast off for the Four Kingdoms of Men south of the Elven Greenwood forrest and south of the Pirate Gulf. We would travel first to the City of the Parasols.



Tadeusz

  This series is nothing if not eclectic; it’s about game ideas–where to find them, how to develop them, how to use them.  A lot of our columns have been directly about the creative process, but we’ve also addressed puzzle solving, referee technique, adventure ideas, and more.  Some of the ideas are new; but some are not so new.  So I hope you’ll stay with me while I do something with this entry that’s probably been done more times by more people than I’ve written web pages.  I’m going to suggest a few gamer movies.

  By gamer movies, I mean that these are films I think every gamer should see.  They contain and present ideas, characters, stories, or something that is of particular interest to those of us who are trying, in essence, to create adventure stories on the fly.  I know that it often happens that I’ll mention a film, and say it’s one of the great gamer movies; but I’ve never made a list.  So I’m going to attempt to recall a few of these to your minds, explain why I think they’re gamer movies, and recommend that you see them if you have not done so.  These aren’t in any particular order, that is, no order in which I’d say make them important; they’re sort of subjectively sequenced such that those you might not have recognized as gamer movies are toward the end.

  Part of the impetus for this is that I recently saw Pirates of the Caribbean:  The Curse of the Black Pearl.  It’s too soon to say whether this is a gamer movie or not, but I’m inclined to think so.  Captain Jack Sparrow is an incredibly fun character, extremely competent and yet apparently blundering at the same time.  I think it’s a bit laser-sharky; but that’s an idea for another article.  It brings the swashbuckler back to the screen in a wonderful way, and has a few lessons in adventure to share.

  It also sports one of my favorite elements in gamer movies:  the ordinary person who becomes the heroic adventurer.  I’ve been asked whether I prefer the pirate captain or the grown up boy, and I don’t actually know which I do prefer.  There is something appealing about the boy who becomes the hero, even when he begins with some skills and a mysterious background.

  Thus it will not surprise anyone that Star Wars is on my list; but I limit my recommendation to the first episodes, numbered four, five, and six.  Although billed as the redemption of Anakin Skywalker by the creator, they focus on the story of the rise of young Luke from promising farm hand to most powerful hero in the galaxy.  This is the crowning achievement in science fantasy.  The newer episodes don’t impress me so much, feeling much more like their inspirational source, old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, although the story is still good.

What Star Wars is to science fantasy, Lord of the Rings is to swords and sorcery.  Often it is said of films that the book is better than the movie, but in this case I’m not so sure that’s true.  I think every fan of fantasy should read the books, but I also think every gamer should see the movie.  The fight scenes alone bring a vividness to our imagined recreations that should be part of every gamer’s visual storehouse.  The thorough integration of magic into the world is certainly to be considered.  The third of this series is not yet out, but already I can recommend it:  the unbeatable source material has been wonderfully realized on film.  Still unseen, rumors already are spreading that it is going to sweep the Oscars.

  As I said, I’m not working from best to worst, or number one down, or up to number one.  I started with those films because they were the most obvious.  The next one is less so.  True Lies is not your typical Schwartzenegger action film (although there’s something to be said for those).  It’s very much in the genre of heroic action comedy.  Someone once told me that there are some films that are worth seeing for one scene, and this has got one of those scenes.  Jamie Lee Curtis, playing the displaced housewife in the midst of the worst trouble in her life, drops one of the automatic weapons taken from the terrorists; as it tumbles down the wooden steps in front of her, it randomly fires, killing at least a dozen terrorists.  Every time it plays, one of my kids says that’s a General Effects roll of 3–the absolute best way it could go, beyond anything you could hope.  Getting moments like that into the game can be a big plus; seeing it happen can help make it work.

  The person who spoke of those movies with one must-see scene was at the time referring to FX, the Brian Dennehey/Bryan Brown action film.  The misdirection in this, the uncertainty about who is on what side, the chances both of the main characters take, all play to make this a great gamer movie.  The theme song sings of illusion, and everyone in this story creates an illusion of one sort or another.  One of the important things is to let your heroes be smart, and that means sometimes the villains have to be played at least a bit dumb.  Outsmarting the villains is a big part of great adventures.

  The Last Action Hero is another Schwartzenegger picture, with a wonderful twist.  A real kid winds up inside an action movie, and starts telling the hero about the rules of the world.  Some of that translates directly to many of our games:  the hero has plot immunity; the villains ultimately can’t win.  Not all games are like that (nor all movies), but seeing the way it works, and particularly the way the characters in the world are oblivious to it, is a great example of how to make such things work in games.

  Not so long ago, our forum started several regulars in playing a Multiverser game based directly on The Postman (the Costner film, not the foreign romance also known as Il Postino); only one of the players had not seen the film before the game started, but all took it in very different directions.  There have been a number of post-apocalyptic games and settings published over the years, but this one works as a believable short-term future following a catastrophe.  It also gives a lot of insight into heroes, particularly as the central character is never named despite becoming famous.

  Although I’m not much generally for thrillers, I have to say that The Game was a great film for gamers.  Michael Douglas (who should be mentioned for Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile, both of which would be on this list were it longer, for their wonderful modern adventures and quirky situations and characters) is the unwitting victim of the game.  I’m afraid to say more, because if you have not seen it I could easily spoil it.  However, you’ve read my suggestions in previous articles that sometimes the referee can manipulate his players, and this is an incredible example of that.

  While I have Romancing the Stone in mind, I must thank my wife for introducing me to another Kathleen Turner film, Undercover Blues.  She teams with Dennis Quaid as a couple of spies on vacation with their baby daughter in New Orleans who become embroiled in preventing a certain enemy spy from selling a new explosive.  It’s light-hearted, very much a caper picture, but has many clever bits in it.  One that I particularly would highlight is the way they work together:  “Remember Paris?”  Of course, he doesn’t always get the right city for the ruse he wants to use, but they manage anyway.

  On spy pictures, you could name quite a few that are worth seeing.  The double-oh-seven series is filled with great ideas, Jack Ryan has made his mark, and there are others more serious out there.  Yet I’m always taken by a rather silly Richard Greico piece, If Looks Could Kill.  It’s got that recurring theme of mine, the nobody who becomes somebody, in this case through mistaken identity.  I enjoy this film so much, I’ve run it more than once as a Multiverser game.  If you pull out the French Club and replace it with friends of the player character, it works extremely well.

  Staying with the young kid who takes the place of the expert, Dragonslayer moves back to the fantasy genre.  Perhaps there’s something nostalgic about this for me; but I love the way the magic works, and particularly the fact that Galen doesn’t always have so much control over it as he thinks.  There’s a lot to be said about magic in this film, but I’ll leave it to you to consider.

  No list of gamer movies could be complete without mentioning one of the great fantasies of all time, Ladyhawke.  Clerics, fighters, and thieves all play their parts in this, with magic and curses and mystical transformations all just part of the scenery.  The mysterious answer to breaking the curse is a wonderful touch, as no one knows what it means; and Philippe Gaston has to be one of the best thieves ever put to film, right up there with Villa Reston, for his wonderful blend of competence, cowardice, and repartee.

  I’m nearing the end of my list, but my favorite film, listed next, is not the last one here; I’ve one more after it.  The Last Starfighter has that wonderful idea that the ordinary nobody who believes in himself becomes the hero who saves the universe.  Somehow I think that’s part of the dream that brings many of us to the gaming table, and I like to let my players realize that as much as I can manage during play.  Roger Ebert once listed this as one of his guilty pleasures, a sci-fi movie that came out in the wake of the Star Wars phenomenon that was actually a good story worth watching.  I also love the beta unit, and would like to have one to help out around here sometimes–but not with my wife.

  The last film struck me immediately as a gamer movie; I told a fellow gamer who had not seen it, and he watched it and was so taken with it that he adopted the name of the central character for his own use.  It is a film in which a character has created an image of who he is, and then created a separate persona through which he projects this image.  No one knows who the villain really is; the police are closing in on the wrong guy, a guy who is dead, but whom they believe has slipped through their fingers and faked his death.  Everyone is convinced that this villain is one of the most dangerous and elusive men in the world, and no one knows where he is.  Yet he is right in front of us the entire time.  I am of course talking about The Usual Suspects, a film every gamer should see to remind them that their characters are who they want them to be, that whatever a person projects is who they are seen to be.  The villain in that movie is an illusion he projects; no one knows the truth about him, because he spins his own truth and makes them believe it.

This list of movies could be much longer; but hopefully there are at least one or two here you have not seen, and I have not spoiled them for you.  I’m sure that we’ll see more must-see movies on the forums in the coming days; undoubtedly I’ll be asking how I could forget this film or that film.  Even now, great moments from movies come to mind–The Gump saying “You’ll do” when Tom Cruise’ forest boy asks where they can find a hero in Legend; watching Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven character climb back from worthless to priceless; nearly all of The Last Unicorn, and particularly that great moment,

What good is all the magic in the world if it can’t save one unicorn?
No, I can’t save her, because that’s not what magic is for.  That’s what heroes are for.
He’s right.  That’s exactly what heroes are for.

So many moments in so many action pictures, from Conan to Alien; the spy who lost her memories in The Long Kiss Goodnight; Tom Hanks’ still wonderful The Man with One Red Shoe; so many Bruce Willis flicks, but what of Unbreakable?  I would not be able to produce a top ten list from these.  But I’m sure I’ll come up with more that I’ve forgotten even before you start reminding me.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

We walked in our seven-league boots toward the rising sun and the Gulf of Pirates. My companions were an elflord Dlarion, and his bodyguard of human warriors, pixie aerial scouts, and walking saplings who served as archers.



This was a typical elflord going into known danger. The elves were brave and kind and gracious, and they lived at least a millenium, so to them it made sense that each elf in war had a bodyguard of “lesser species”. The Human Kingdoms to the South disagreed, but the elves felt that the one hundred fifty year old rebellion was merely “a long sulk”.



We arrived at a pier on a stormy gulf. Flashing lights to the North glittered like a promise of love, but I had already been warned to turn away. It was not that the Sidhe were evil, it was acording to Dlarion that “As we Elven kind are to you, so the Sidhe are to us. Perilous to meet for such as you.”



It hurt to turn away; the lights for no reason that I could decipher reminded me of my lost homeworld and family and friends who I would find a way back to. The lights changed slightly seeming to agree with me, or maybe I was merely deluding myself. They were only a tower of flickering lights in the sky. I turned away, and the lights seemed to laugh at me before disappearing.



The ship waited impatiently for us.



Ten gnomes, short people with uncanny balance, and a super-abundance of energy, leapt off the boat at the end of the floating pier, and ran up to us snatching luggage from our hands, and shoving us along.



The saplings, so similiar to my conjured twiglings in the way an Old Master painting is similiar to a child’s sketch, and sentient had to stay behind. They were bound to the forrest and the Land, worshipping some ancient deity they would not speak of.



We clambered onto the flat deck of the sailboat, and the gnomes who were thigh-high on me, made us sit down, and tie down on the deck so we would not be decapitated by the boom of the sail.



They ran out a long spinnaker sail with a lot of holes in it, and we began to smoothly move away from the dock with the kind of acceleration that a car has. The sky looked rough, and I pointed this out to a passing sailor.



“It’s good, sir. Lots of wind, and Terracyl won’t be flying today.”

“Terracyl?”

“The Queen Dragon. Probably wouldn’t eat us. We’re too small. This is her favorite hunting grounds, tho’.” He cackled. “No worries, you’ll get to your destination one way or another.”

I looked up and down the length of the sixty foot ship and wondered what was the right size snack for a dragon.



They started closing the holes in the spinnaker sail with drawstrings, and I saw the gnomes running on tightropes high above the deck without any protection other than their skill if the ship lurched.



The speed became such that the other’s eyes were tearing, and the gnomes passed around goggles of glass and leather. I did not need it, another minor body modification I’d forgotten about. A second eyelid kicked into use to my surprise.



We wobbled, and everyone hung onto something, and then we rose into the air about ten feet. The ride smoothed to a rock-steady ride, and the gnomes cheered and began an awesome display of acrobatics in the rigging for the next ten minutes.



Then the captain came out of his bridge which was one of the few buildings on the flat deck, and bellowed.

“You lazy slackers. Quit the clowning. Work.”



They mocked him until he threatened to do horrible things to them, and I wondered if I had fallen into a mutiny. But my companions were laughing, and I relaxed.



Then I saw the real captain come out, and reclaim his coat, and the clowning stopped and they got to fine-tuning the sail, and re-fitting for running on hydrofoil rather than on hull.



The captain came over to us.



“Well a sweet transition means a good run… I hope. We have a choice gentlemen. I can go through the deep waters or skirt the islands. Either way its pirates.”



“We shall go the deep waters.” Dlarion announced.



“‘Scuse me, Elflord, but this is my mission.”



“You are a human, yes?” Dlarion said with complacency thinking he had finished the arguement.



“One I’m a lot older than any human you may have met. Two, you know nothing of my capabilities so how are you going to best use me?”



“I’ve met some very old human archmages, and you know nothing of this world.”



“I’m willing to accept your advice as a guide, but …”



He paled and bright spots appeared on his cheeks.



“Still your tongue, human until I give you permission to speak.” The compulsion spell fell on me, and I could not ward it off in time because my hands were wrapped in ropes to keep me steady. So I fought back with willpower alone, and pushed it aside. Still it was an effort to speak.



“When I want your opinion, elfywelfy, I’ll give it to you.” See, I could be as snotty as an elf.



“Master, let me cut his throat.” A human warrior asked the elflord who glared at me. I returned the glare with interest. The people of this world had some learning to do on the proper limits of tossing around compulsion spells.



“There will be no fighting, magic or steel on my boat.” The captain said. A crowd of gnomes behind him fingering short swords backed up his words.



The situation calmed, but Dlarion hated me now.



“As I was saying before those so tall that the breath of sense does not reach their brains, the Deep exposes you to pirates who rise from the undersea cities, and the shallows near the Islands are very bad for human pirates. Even gnomes to my shame. The reefs and water currents are very tricky, and only known to locals in the center of the Islands Archipelago. Many have tried to discipline these varmints, but the heavy warships cannot go into the shallow waters. Only during the very height of the Pale Elven Empire did those waters know peace.”



“And yet your hydrofoils can go in such waters. An effort to solve the problem?”



The captain looked at me with an approving smile.



“Clever indeed for a human.”



“Which is faster?” Came out of my lips without my willing it. The Pale Elves mountain island, Cloudshadow, was at the ocean end of the Islands Archipelago, and faster it seemed to skirt the Islands.



“Islands.” I said as I fought against the geas. Pain lay me out shrieking, and I passed out.



I woked to see a cute as a teddy bear, gnomish maid washing my face with a cloth.



“We go by the path of the Islands.” Dlarion said softly. “I did not know the burden you faced.”



I bit my lip, not wanting to tell him my arguement with him had been of my own free will without coercion.



The great advantage of the gnomish hydrofoil was its awesome speed. We zipped past islands and arrows chased us, but only a few. The pirates could not rouse themselves from bed in time to give us a thorough pin-cushioning.



Still the resistance got heavier, but we swept by it, until we saw Cloudshadow rising in the distance, and in the narrow strait between two islands we saw a half-dozen pirate ships lined up. They were all slower by far than we, but also far heavier in construction. The hydrofoil would shatter like glass on rock if we rammed one.



Already ballista bolts came our way, and I saw the beginnings of malignant clouds forming over the ships. Someone was summoning air elementals.



“They would not be so strong unless they were hired to wait for us.” The captain told us, and we all shared a look. The Enemy had made his first move.



“Why don’t you fix this, O Mighty Archmage?” I asked the air.



“I cannot; my strength goes to keep him from doing worse. We are stalemated in a contest of wills and power. He in his tower by his Gate, and me in the Lonely Tower.” The wind above the riggings answered me, and all heard the Archmage Valastin’s reply.



“Magic.” I said looking at the blockade.



“I cannot.” Dlarion said. “I have not the magic to defeat this.”



I looked at the captain, and he nodded. They dropped sail, and the hydrofoil sank to become a rocking boat that was too close to a raft for comfort.



I got up and walked to the edge. Never tried this before, I told myself, but it seems a good idea.



Something bothered me, and a bit ashamed, I turned to Dlarion.



“I’m sorry for insulting you. Not that I’m giving you your way, but there was no call for that.”



He looked blankly back at me, and then nodded.



Its better to not sin at all, but especially so when you are going to try for a miracle.



“He walked on the sea, calmed the waves, and enabled Simon Peter to do likewise. Thus He demonstrated his mastery over the element of water. Give me such mastery for the while, Lord God. Let me use it to protect those who need protecting, and to free myself eventually from this vile spell layed on me.” I prayed kneeling by the edge of the boat, and then without another word leapt over the side to bounce on the water’s surface. It was rather like walking on a trampoline.



I resolutely set out toward the pirate ships, keeping in mind the example both good and bad of Simon Peter who did walk on the waves, but also when his faith failed sank into them as well.



I still did not know how to defeat the ships, but I’d figure something out, I hoped in the five hundred yard hike.



Tadeusz

  Those of us who have put on a few years are often heard to say that things were different when we were younger.  That’s true; it is difficult to argue against it.  Change happens, and no one can stop it.  Talking about how things once were is not a bad thing.

  Of course, the problem is that most of us speak as if things were better then; and that means that they’re not so good now.  This is a simple problem of perspective, really.  There are many things that are better now.  I can write books, typing them myself very quickly on a touch sensitive electronic keyboard, nearly as fast as a professional typist could have done when I was a child, and, thanks to spell checkers and auto-corrections and the other wonders of word processing, I can catch and fix the errors before they waste paper.  There are thousands of things that have changed.  Some certainly were better before, but as many are better now.  To want things to be exactly as they were is to want the impossible; to want some things to change and others to stay the same is to misunderstand the nature of the world, a place where nothing is permanent.

  I heard the words in the mouth of my eldest son today.  That was why it caught my ear.  A twenty year old was talking to his teenaged brothers about video games, as they played on an emulator that reproduced some of what to them are the older games, those from the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the Atari, and my personal favorite electronic game system, the Intellivision.  They were talking about how challenging the games proved to be, and it was in this context that the older boy made his comment.  Specifically he said that the new games are for entertainment, but the old ones were challenges.

  I was not part of the conversation, and did not ask what he meant until much later.  However, as the father of boys I have watched video games evolve over the past quarter century from Pong and Tank into Final Fantasy.  I remember when it became highly desirable to have a Game Genie for every game system you owned, so that you could disable features of the games and make them easier to play.  Now it seems that the designers of the consoles and games have co-opted this market for themselves, building cheat codes into the system and publishing books for each game which line the pockets of the game designers and give players the ability to change the difficulty level, enter secret areas, find special items.

  The old-timer in me reacts very negatively to all this.  It strikes me as cheating; in fact, these are generally called cheat codes.  My wife, on the other hand, tells me it’s expected.  She’s right; it’s not cheating.  It’s a marketing strategy which sells the game with stripped rules and then sells the full strategy rule book separately for those who actually want to play the game.  It is the evolution of video game marketing.  I might not like it, but it’s not going to change back to the way it was to please me.

  Yet the words of my son echo in my ears.  The new games are for entertainment; the old ones were challenging.

  It’s not too difficult to see how that came about.  After all, when Pong and Tank first came out, the systems on which they ran were limited, and the games could only do so much.  You played against an opponent, usually, another player whose skill provided the challenge.  As the systems became more sophisticated, games like Asteroids and Space Invaders let you play against the computer, and greater complexity and better graphics made the games more challenging, and thus more rewarding to beat.  At the same time, there were always those who couldn’t beat the game, whether because they were younger or less skilled or merely for lack of patience, and something of a social prestige became attached to having beaten the games.  In the midst of this, the cheats came out, the Game Sharks and Game Genies and whatever else, so that you could still beat the game even if you weren’t good enough.  If you got killed too often, you could make yourself invulnerable; if it took you too long to beat the enemy, you could give yourself fatal attacks.  Infinite lives, invisibility, maximum damage values–there were many ways you could make the game easier.

  However, once the game was easy, anyone could beat it, and there was no longer the same prestige from winning.  Now when a game came out, it was only a few days before the codes to beat it were being passed around from player to player, and people who could hardly control a controller were cranking out high scores.  In games that are supposed to challenge you, the loss of that challenge is the loss of their value.  They become boring.  No one plays a boring game.

  To save the market, perhaps, an effort was made to make them interesting again.  There were still player on player games, in which codes and cheats didn’t really make the game easier because it was still your skill against that of your opponent; but for one-player games, something had to be done that would keep them attractive.

  There might have been another answer; but the answer that seems to have emerged is to use the power of the game system to tell stories–interactive stories, but stories nonetheless.  The players are told what to do, and they do that, and the story unfolds around them.  Moving the characters through the adventure becomes a sort of high-tech page turning that lets the story continue.

  Ryan, who made the original statement, says he sees it as a sort of marketing strategy.  The market is perhaps splintered into the really good players who can beat any challenge fairly quickly, average players who will stay at a game until they succeed, and others who really just want something to entertain them for a bit.  If you make a game catering to players who can play well, you overly limit your appeal.  For a game to be successful, it has to be attractive to people with only limited video game skill.  Otherwise it won’t sell broadly enough.  Thus it’s necessary to produce a large number of games of mediocre challenge; and games with mediocre challenge need some other hook to sell them.  Hence, they become electronic stories.

  Maybe I’m entirely wrong about this; I don’t play these games, not since I tired of Tetris and couldn’t get anyone interested in a round of Lunar Pool.  Yet I see a parallel development in the role playing game world.  Many people speculate as to why the earliest games were so very challenge-oriented and the most recent ones are so much more focused on story.  You will read (depending where you read) that those early games were really war games with fantasy elements, the characters merely tokens through which combats were won and lost.  You will read that there have always been players who wanted story, and were frustrated by what those games seemed to promise but failed to deliver.  Perhaps, though, it is something more subtle, more basic, more hidden by the fact that it is so thoroughly revealed.  Perhaps there has been a real shift in our culture, away from games that challenge and toward those that tell stories.  People who once watched baseball, football, basketball, tennis, and even golf, where skill and luck helped players overcome challenges, are today watching professional wrestling, where they at least suspect the bouts are fixed, and the real show is the soap opera of challenges, banter, blather, and emotion that is thrown around outside the ring.  Mysteries, that genre in which the audience is invited to try to solve the puzzle before the story reveals it, have faded from books and televisions to be replaced by police procedurals and crime stories, in which there are no clues for the audience but merely the gradual unfolding of the plot.  We’re in an age in which challenge is not so popular as it was, even less than twenty years ago.

  That’s not to say no one wants a good challenge anymore.  Cultures are never so monolithic that the old cannot continue beside the new.  It is to say that things change, and being sensitive to that change and able to adapt to it is an important part of staying relevant.  Zaxxon was a great game in its day, and still a challenge now, but the world isn’t waiting for another game like it.  We are entertained by something else now.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.