My Generation Was Ripped Off!

In a non-media related post today over at Cathy's World, Cathy Seipp finished her piece with a paragraph that reminded me how much Generation X (among others) was cheated out of all the "muckety-muck" we were due.

He suggested I have my dad, who turns 77 next month, handle it: "Have him show up in a raccoon coat, holding a pennant, saying, 'Back off -- Maia and I have been dating for six months!"

I know, the quote is out of context and doesn't really make any sense. So what, within this quote, triggered my ire? Thanks for asking.

The description of Cathy's father "in a raccoon coat, holding a pennant" reminded me of what I thought college was going to be.



Between Goofy and Warner Bros. cartoons I was certain that my college days would be filled with raccoon coats, pennants, model T Hot Rods, the works. I spent a great deal of my childhood dreaming of these trivialities as if they represented a fantasy world of wonder, success, and contentment. And for someone whose parents had to live in a motel or in another family's RV, among other struggles, visions of such petty bourgeoisie were what made doing homework possible.

I don't know if you have ever imagined what it would be like to live with a "kitchenette" in your motel room, and have that be a step up from the crazy free-base addict who rented your family a room before, is like. Motel rooms aren't exactly the best study environment, especially given the "creative project" focus that a lot of Elementary and Middle School education contains. "I'm sorry Ms. A, but I was unable to build a ginger bread version of the Walls of Troy because we don't have a baking tray at home" isn't something your average 5th grader is ready to admit openly.

So the raccoon coat wearing, happy go lucky, whimsical view of college that Disney shorts displayed, and the struggling "poor" college student of the Kurt Russell films, gave me hope that there was a better world. Sure Animal House came out when I was a child, but it didn't refute that college had these things, it just made fun of them. I could handle that. Little did I know that my visions of college had been tossed into the dustbin of history, abandoned by those who found them trivial and demeaning. As Samuel Blum describes...

SB: Oh, they were phenomenal. Tremendous. For one thing, all the freshman junk went out the window. The dinks. You don't remember that. Freshmen wore a dink. He wore a green tie and he tucked it in. He wore white hose and he tucked his trousers into his socks. He had to carry matches should an upperclassman stopped him for a light. And if whistled at on Queen's campus, he had to run. You carried your stuff in a shopping bag. You wore a button with your name. With these G.I.s coming back after the war, in '46, '47, do you think they were going to do any of these things? They'd laugh at you. You couldn't do it. It went out the window. It just was completely different. And the new guys that came in, ... many of them were guys who in '38 ... couldn't afford to go to college. And that was good. The G.I. Bill was a great leveler and a great thing. I can't say anything bad about it. And I think it was a great thing for the country ... It gave men who never before would have had an opportunity a chance to go to college. Now, college was also something very different. The '20s and early '30s, things like the raccoon coat kind of baloney, and the proms and all was passe.

KP: But a lot of that went out. You could see, that went out.

SB: Right away it went out. Even when I was an undergraduate Rutgers wasn't that kind of a school, they had the freshman
silliness, but I didn't sense anything like the raccoon coat Ivy League stuff. It just wasn't that kind, because it was a more
plebeian school. People came from ordinary circumstances. Look at all the guys you're interviewing. How many of these guys come from rich people? Very few. Ordinary. In that sense, ordinary. But not ordinary in another sense. I'm sure that ...
anybody that sent his kid to school in the '30s had to sacrifice to do it. And that was a commitment and something they believed in and it was good.

Before I was even born, the beanie, hazing of Freshmen, and graduating Seniors carving their names in the belltower had all gone the way of the dinosaur. Gone was the possibility of my dream of "burying the hatchet," and thus ending the war between the Freshmen and Sophomore class, at the end of my first year of college.

In fact, the things that gave me motivation to go to college weren't a part of college at all. I wanted to read Chaucer and was given Bakhtin before I ever saw a page of Chaucer. I wanted to read The Federalist Papers and I was given a standardized Introduction to Politics text. I wanted to go to an "introductory dance" only to endure a formal and processed orientation which discussed the dangers of alcohol and notified us of what constituted sexual harassment.

My Freshman year was a disappointment and a shock. It was no wonder that, for many reasons, I left school for a period of time before returning to college with the desire for learning as my only motivation. The "college culture" I had desired didn't exist, but at least I found out that good professors weren't abandoned like so many of the things I had expected.

Number One...No More!!!!

For the time being I will be posting under my real name rather than under my classified program name. There are a couple of possible reasons for this...

1. I have escaped the village.
2. I have gone insane.
3. I have a huge ego and want full credit for all words I write.
4. I have joined a blog related to my work and the administrator still has the settings set to publish the nickname of the author rather than the real name.

Please forgive any confusion and understand that there NEVER WAS A NUMBER ONE any memory you have of one is a fiction. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. The computer is your friend and your friend wants you to be happy.

Any future changes back to Number One, followed by remembering this post, are a sign of your own mental illness.

An Opportunity to Meet an Icon

As everyone may have guessed, I am a big-time William Shatner fan. So this announcement is big news to me. The History Channel is offering a chance to "meet" William Shatner at the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas. I, naturally, entered the sweepstakes, but I must say that I am less than excited for more than one reason.

• First, the "meeting" is at a Star Trek convention. I have never and will never go to a Star Trek Convention...Comic Book and Gaming Conventions only please.

• Second, since the meeting is at a convention the likelihood of it being "intimate" is unlikely. If I want to meet with Shatner, I want it to be a casual meeting over coffee and not some wierd public deal.

• Third, the event is in Las Vegas. I know everybody thinks Vegas is cool. But like Rob, who posts here, I was a 21/craps dealer as an undergrad in Reno. Gambling has about as much appeal to me as going on a vacation to fill potholes does for a Caltrans worker.

• Fourth, meeting William Shatner should be about more than Star Trek. It should be about meeting someone who has entertained you in a variety of media, and who became more endearing when he finally presented himself in a more human light.

Still, I applied and so should you. Just click on the picture below.

Contentment and Loving in Glendale

As you all know, my wife and I moved from Crenshaw to Glendale at the first of this month. What you may not know is that we had somewhere in the realm of 100 boxes of books accompany us. Needless to say this made our move slightly backbreaking, and given my aging knees we had to have a large amount of assistance bringing our stuff up to our second story apartment. In all honesty, my wife an I had to stop and hire some movers to finish the job. We did 70%, but that last 30% was too much. Being a bibliophile-boardgame lover who owns 400+ DVDs and who was a catcher/soccer player when they were young is not a combination that is nice to the knees, especially when both your apartments are upstairs.

So we are in our new, 2-bedroom, apartment and have begun unpacking our boxes of stuff, and boy is it a lot of stuff. I can't believe that we still have this much, especially considering how much we gave away to libraries/used bookstores/local kids/(insert recipient here). My wife has kindly purchased three more bookcases for the second bedroom, now termed "the office." Though I have to admit "den of distractions" would be a better name. The room is filled with board games, comic books, fantasy/SciFi novels, role-playing games, and RPG related magazines. As an aside, I now hate myself for keeping 6 years worth of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. That high quality stock paper they use makes for quite a load, but I do like to go back and review the articles from time to time.

At least now I can segregate our books so that the living room contains all the books we want people to know we read. So all our Political Science, Philosophy, English Literature, and Film related books are in the living room and all the guilty pleasure stuff is in "the office."

It's nice to live a place that can fit all our stuff and still feel roomy, and that describes our new place accurately. It's very comfortable. In fact, my experience in Glendale has been somewhat "dreamy" to be honest. Most of my childhood was spent in poorer neighborhoods, and as a college student I lived in places that struggling students can afford. From houses shared with 5 roommates to Crenshaw with my wife (had to be close to USC and still have affordable housing) my adult residences have left something to be desired.

So far Glendale has been a land of chocolate rivers and marshmallow trees. I am certain I have seen little orange men running around singing. I know, I know, Glendale is just another suburb/town, but so far I love it. My wife and I even saw a squirrel eating nuts outside our front door this morning, a far cry from the crows who welcomed me home in other places.

I am still waiting for my new place to feel like home. I still feel like I am visiting someone else's apartment.

Who knows...maybe when we are finished unpacking I will invite you all over for a game of Killer Bunnies, Britannia (review to be posted on Monday), Kingmaker, or Scene It?

Fantasy Films For the Compleat Gamer Part 1

Hawk the Slayer-- Game Grene has a review of this quintessential cheeseball fantasy film. No one who played roleplaying games in the 1980s hasn't seen this movie. Flying swords, machine gun crossbows, rapid fire arrows, "giants", elves named Crow, and Jack Palance. Need I say more? Two, very generous, stars. A must see for roleplayers.

Best Quote: "I am no messenger, but I will give you a message. The message of death!" --Crow

Krull-- A world lightyears beyond your imagination. Like Hawk the Slayer this film is another of the roleplayer must see fantasy films. Also like Hawk this film comes from the vast fantasy wasteland that is the 1980s. I don't know what it was about the 80s and cheeseball, low-budget, fantasy films, but it seems a mainstay of the decade. Earlier decades got classics like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the 80s gets Krull. Liam Neeson, kidnapped princesses, teleporting fortresses, magic vs. technology, and the Glaive! After watching this film, I wanted all my D&D characters to have Glaives, but then I read what a real glaive was and changed my mind.





Memorable Quote" "I am Ergo the Magnificent! Short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose, and wide of vision and I do not travel with peasants and beggars, good bye!"--Ergo the Magnificent.

When Was the Golden Age of Baseball Again?

Young baseball fans growing up in today's America know one thing for certain, in the past there was a golden age of baseball. During this golden age the players were all gentlemen, there was no cheating, and the game was pure and beautiful. After all, the newsstands are filled with books and newspaper articles about how Barry Bonds is a veritable pharmaceutical factory. We are in an era without heroes and love a sport better forgotten until it becomes more like it once was.

It is with this backdrop that baseball historian Harvey Frommer wrote his newest book Old Time Baseball. His introduction hints at the sports need of a return to a "better" time:

In 1975, my appreciation of the game of baseball deepened and
expanded...that year made me acutely aware of the hold of the game on America, of its roots, its idiosyncrasies, its magic...
Baseball in 2005...[T]he blaring rock music, the private boxes filled with people who too often have scant knowledge of and even less feeling for the game...crass commercialism fueled by print and electronic media...

Frommer's introduction is filled with the lament of the scholarly lover of baseball. It seems as if Frommer began his book looking for a lost, better, more innocent era than the one today. But if that was his goal, he failed. He succeeded instead to show how baseball has always been a sport with its scandals, lies, and artificial pageantry.

Old-Time Baseball is a brief, but detailed, look at baseball's growth from an amateur game to a professional sport during 19th century America. The book is the story of a game that went from idle recreation to national pastime. The story is one of false mythology, collusion with gamblers, and ruthless businessmen. It is a great story and one that puts the modern controversies of the game into context. This doesn't mean that the current controversies aren't legitimate, they are, but it does mean that controversy, conspiracy, and eventual correction are mainstays of the wonderful game that is baseball.

Frommer's book is useful both as entertainment and as a future reference which collects an abundance of baseball information into its mere 188 pages. You can read the book in a few hours, but to truly soak in the information takes repeated visits.

The first chapter is a simple timeline of baseball's history. It provides a list of important dates in the development of America's pastime and is thus a chapter readers will find themselves returning to again and again. Do you want to find out when the first recorded triple was hit? According to Frommer, that would be April 24, 1876 by Levi Meyerle. Though more interesting is the fact that on July 18, 1882, Tony Mullane pitched both right- and left-handed during a game. The second through fourth chapters are a narrative description of the development of the game throughout the century and the fifth chapter is a collection of biographical sketches of many of the great players of the gilded age. All of the information in the book is useful, even if it is dryly written.

While the book begins with what appears to be despair at the modern game, it ends on a high note. It is as if the author has regained faith in the modern game by looking honestly at the game's past. I can remember how reading The Southpaw and The Natural put into perspective some of my own worries that the game was less than it once was. An honest look at the past is tonic to this wonderful game, a game which has rules friendlier than most who play it.

Frommer closes:

Despite the naysayers that have surfaced through the decades, baseball is still our national pastime...Baseball is still comforting regularity, a sport played and viewed from childhood on.

Frommer's book was a pleasant addition to my readings during the Void between the World Series and the World Baseball Classic.

Genera vs. Generic and the Paladin

WARNING GEEKDOM POST BELOW...DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE OVERWHELMED WITH GEEKITUDE

Matt Forbeck posted a link to an excellent article by Greg Stafford discussing game design decisions in roleplaying game design. In the article, Stafford discusses two underlying philosophies regarding what to include or leave out in a specific game's mechanics. To quote:

A genera game player wishes to imaginatively experience a limited and specific setting, within its own context and rules. Basic Pendragon is this kind of setting. It is about knights in a pseudo-medieval setting that includes the fantasy and legend that is (more or less) appropriate to that setting.

A generic game may use a specific genera as a basis, but the players want to expand it with the modern experience of open, freewheeling experimentation. Not just knights, but druids and wizards and thieves and ninjas in a King Arthur-like setting. Not just traditional knights, but women knights, Beowulf-era warriors, and Sigurd and Theoderic and El Cid too. Not just native British folklore, but kobolds and nagas and deep ones too.

His article is the beginning to a wonderful discussion, and one at the core of game design. When Matt Forbeck designed the Brave New World game system (based on Greg Gorden and Shane Lacy Hensley's system for Deadlands ) he had to decide whether to make his game a generic superhero game with the ability to capture all superhero types or whether he wanted to limit the types of heroes and the scope of powers to fit the genera his fictional narrative provided. He chose the latter. Because Forbeck's fictional history of the United States was one in which Alphas, or almost limitlessly powered superheroes, no longer existed. The only "supers" who remained in Brave New World were the lesser powered Deltas who primarily fit into easily defined archtypes.

Given the high level of competition in superhero RPGs, Forbeck's decision was a brave one and a necessary one. In the end, Forbeck produced an internally consistant game that was largely free of the "power creep" often associated with more generic settings.

But what does this have to do with Fantasy games, and the Paladin in particular? One of the big reasons people play Fantasy roleplaying games (big F because I am referring to the genre and not the game type) is to, for a brief moment, imagine and act as if they are one of their favorite characters from fantasy literature.

Games like Dungeons and Dragons allow players from a broad array of fantasy traditions to play the same game with only slight limitations. If you want to be Aragorn you can. If you want to be Belgarath you can. If you want to be Fafhrd and the Grey Mauser you can. The Dungeons and Dragons system is fairly generic and has become more so under the design influences of Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds. Certainly more so than Pendragon. But Dungeons and Dragons isn't a completely generic fantasy RPG.

In fact, Dungeons and Dragons has some very specific limitations resulting from the interpretation of fantasy that its initial game designers had. Gary Gygax's vision of fantasy was one inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Lieber, and Robert E. Howard (among a few others). As a result, the game does a wonderful job in simulating the source material. The magic system is rooted in a "Vancian" system heavily influenced by the Dying Earth stories of Jack Vance. The thieve's abilities, including the ability to read/use magic scrolls, is heavily influenced by Lieber's Fafhrd and Grey Mauser. Rangers come from Tolkien. The strict alignment system comes from Moorcock (among others). And the dreaded Temple of the Frog comes from Lovecraft, Smith, and Howard (Tsathoqqua arguably makes an appearance in Howard's Scarlet Citadel). The combination of influences lead to an interesting kaleidoscope rules set where Vancian magicians battled Hyperborian warriors.

This made for an inspirational and cutting edge game, one that spawned an entirely new game type. But fans soon found that they might need other rules sets if they wanted to play their vision of fantasy. Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds are among those for whom the kaleidoscope of earlier versions of Dungeons and Dragons were insufficient and some of their opinions can be seen in the current rules of the game. I say some because there are a couple of choices that Cook and Reynolds were pressured into by playtesters that Cook and Reynolds are less than satisfied with. One of these choices is the limiting of the Paladin class to Lawful Good alignment. The Paladin, you see, is a chosen defender/crusader for a god and couldn't an evil or not lawful and good god have defender/crusader's?

The answer is a simple one...yes and no. In a completely generic fantasy simulation, ti would certainly be reasonable, but in one where each character class comes from a different inspiration it isn't. The Paladin, like the Thief, in Dungeons and Dragons have very particular archtypes it is modelling. Why do all Thieve's have to worry about "thieve's guilds" in D&D? Because they did in Lieber. Why are all Paladins lawful good? Because Lancelot and Galahad are. The Paladin may exist in a roleplaying game with polytheistic pantheons in abundance, but it was inspired by mythology from a monotheistic society. Genre convention is the reason for the choice. It may not be a reason that satisfies Cook and Reynolds, because in many ways it is an arbitrary choice, but it is a creation of the understanding behind the creation of the class.

J. Eric Holmes, author of Dungeons and Dragons first basic set, gives another reason that Gygax may have which is behind the requirement. To quote his book on Fantasy Role Playing Games:

I don't mean to imply that the designers of games set out to teach us little moral lessons about everyday life -- except Gygax. In the D&D world fighters can do no magic, but magicians are so weak that they need to be protected by fighters. Clerics can heal wounds and do a lot of fighting but are no good at long distance offensives because they can not shoot arrows or throw offensive spells. The constraints of the rules practically dictate cooperation and mutual respect for the talents and weaknesses of each class, and I find it hard to believe that Gygax was not fully conscious of the principle when he wrote them.

Gygax calls this "play balance" and insists that it is not good for one character to grow too powerful with respect to the others. It is just this principle that some designers of other games have objected to and tried to write out of their own rules.

From a "moral education" standpoint, it makes sense to give additional powers and abilities to players willing to make sacrifices. If you create a game where some mechanics and goals feed "greedy" behavior, a class that accepts limits but gets benefits in return is an educational tool.

This is not to say that more generic games are less moral, that depends on the players involved. But what is certain is that in my experience those who want to play the Paladin with all the abilities and none of the restrictions have yet to give me a compelling argument not based on self-interest. At least within the context of D&D, in the campaigns I run. It is easier to defend the Paladin if you limit the Pantheon(s) available to the players. Easier still if your "universe" is monotheistic. Mine isn't, I play in Eberron, but I limit Paladins to the Silver Flame.