Conan and Jem: Christy Marx on Geekerati

What do CONAN: THE ADVENTURER

and JEM

have in common?

Christy Marx was a Writer and Story Editor on both of these animated series (and a whole host of others. Listen to last week's Geekerati episode as she talks about these shows and her career as a television, animation, comic book, and video game writer. You can also visit her website to find some great advice if you are looking to become a writer in the television, animation, comic book, or video game fields.

A Small Defense of 4th Edition D&D...in Theory

I haven't seen a copy of the 4th Edition rules. I only know what I've read in the various hints on EnWorld and on the Wizards site about what 4th Edition will look like. But there is one thing I know, and it is that I am sick of hearing on various boards that 4th Edition is a game made for children or those of a childish mentality. I am bored with those who write, "this is D&D for 10 year-olds" or "if I was 10 I'd like this version."

Why? I'll give you one guess.

I started playing D&D when I was 10, thanks to the first Red Box Basic set (the red box with Erol Otis art), and haven't turned back from playing the game in each subsequent edition for 25 years.

Has anyone really gone back after years of playing later editions and read the 1st edition rulebooks? I'm talking the AD&D rulebooks here. Go ahead, read the combat section regarding initiative...all of it. How many attacks per round does a Magic User with a dagger get against a Fighter with a two-handed sword? Nope, not one. You'd better check out that chapter in the DMG again.

Worse yet, try reading the white box with the three booklets? Those are almost unplayable. In fact, if I hadn't played so much Warhammer Fantasy Battle over the past few decades, I wouldn't even be able to make heads or tails of this game. At least I wouldn't if I was using the core combat mechanic based on the Chainmail miniatures rulebook. I've read Chainmail several times, and it is only my experience as a WFB player that makes them sensible. Not to mention how confusing the "alternate combat rules" are. These seem to require that I already know how to play D&D. Thankfully, I do. How much damage does a weapon do in the three booklets again? (hint -- less than you think)

In fact, without either ignoring a lot of rules, or making up your own stuff, these games are pretty much are unplayable unless you already know how to play. The books don't teach you how to play, rather they provide the reminders for those who already know how to play. Back in the day people learned to play D&D from people who already knew how to play.

To quote John Eric Holmes in Dragon 52 (you know the guy who wrote the very first blue box Basic set):

When Tactical Studies Rules published the first DUNGEONS & DRAGONS rule sets, the three little books in brown covers, they were intended to guide people who were already playing the game. As a guide to learning the game, they were incomprehensible. There was no description of the use of the combat table. Magic spells were listed, but there was no mention of what we all now know is a vital aspect of the rules: that as the magic user says his spell, the words and gestures for it fade from his memory and he cannot say it again.
When I edited the rules prior to the first edition of the D&D Basic Set, it was to help the thousands (now millions) of people who wanted to play the game and didn’t know how to get started. Gary Gygax acknowledged that some sort of beginner’s book was badly needed, and he encouraged me to go ahead with it.

The fact is that Hasbro, and WotC (as well as TSR back in the day), want new players to play the game. They don't want people to have to "learn" from other people who are already playing. They also want to increase the amount of mechanical balance (maybe to satisfy some of us old timers who like games like Hero that are internally consistent).

There are changes, to be sure, and the game is being aimed at being more accessible, to be sure, but don't you all remember what it was like when you first played the game?

I remember my first D&D gaming experience, in fact I'll never forget.

I was at my friend Sean McPhail's house and his older brothers had been talking about this new fangled game called Dungeons and Dragons that lets you play out adventures like those that you read in fantasy novels or watch in films like THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER and KRULL. From the initial description, I knew that this was the game for me.

So on a blustery Saturday when Sean's older brothers brought over someone who claimed to be an experienced "Dungeon Master." I was thrilled that I would get my first taste of this groundbreaking new game.

I was ten at the time and didn't bat an eye when the "DM" said he didn't need the rulebooks (which I had been perusing for the past few weeks) or any prepared materials to run his dungeon adventure...all he needed was his mind.

He had his "dungeon" memorized you see. I was wide eyed with with anticipation. The first character I played (not my first character), borrowed from the characters Sean had already designed, was a first level Magic-User named, uncreatively enough, Gandalf. Sean, Gandalf, and I were ready for adventure and action. You know, all the stuff I'd read and seen in various fantasy adventures.

That's not what I experienced though. Instead, I was turned into an Axebeak during the first 10 minutes of play after I tried to read a scroll to see if it was magical. The "DM" made me make a Petrification and Polymorph save and I rolled poorly. I missed my saving throw on this "save or get hosed roll." Not that I couldn't have lied, the "DM" had no idea what roll I needed, but that's meaningless. What is meaningful is that my "great and powerful wizard" was now a weird looking bird with no intelligence. I was out of the game and useless.

That's my first memory as a player.

Since that day, I have hated save or die effects. I also don't tend to like "killer dungeons" or things that take individual players out of the "action" for long periods of time. Sure, I've played through brutal Ken St. Andre solo adventures, and those are mean, but those were for distraction when I was alone. Speaking of those, they tend to remind me of my first adventure experience. I wonder if that "DM's" name was Ken.

When it comes to RPGs, I like cinematic action . D&D has always advertised, but rarely delivered (at low levels especially), cinematic action. It is my hope that 4th Edition will finally capture the feel that has been advertised for so long, and I have high hopes. Don't get me wrong, I don't want D&D to become Feng Shui (though I do like that game), I just want it to be more balanced, better able to simulate cinematic action, and I want it to be fun.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith to Release in June

Okay, here's the quick and dirty.

According to a Press release celebrating the June release of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith,
"Guitar Hero® III: Legends of Rock fans will have the opportunity to download and jam to Aerosmith's "Dream On." The song will be available for free from February 16-18 on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PLAYSTATION®Store for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system."

I'll take the free song, but I think I'll pass on buying the whole disk.

Sure the game promises to "put players in the shoes of Perry (guitar), Whitford (guitar) and Hamilton (bass), as they rock out alongside frontman Tyler and drummer Kramer." It even claims that, "Gamers will experience Aerosmith's GRAMMY® winning career, from their first gig to becoming rock royalty, in a way that no other entertainment vehicle offers."

But who wants to spend a couple of weeks pretending to be Aerosmith? Do we get to rock through the stages of addiction?

Thankfully, no. The game will lack that level of verisimilitude. There will be no wireless syringe controller which triggers psychedelic imagery on the screen.

As much as I might mock the thought of buying an entire game devoted to the music of Aerosmith and the bands they have influence, which shouldn't be taken as me saying I don't like the music of the band, I have to admit that when it comes to new technologies Aerosmith is usually one of the first bands to jump on board.

Do you remember the old Aerosmith arcade shooter (Revolution X) where you shot compact disks at the dreaded forces of the PMRC (I mean the NON)? I do.

I was stickin' it to Tipper Gore (I mean Mistress Helga) daily...ewww...not that kind of stickin', I was shooting her lapdogs with cds and rockin' out to the Aerosmith soundtrack.

Mmmm...Mistress Helga.



On a side note, the formal press release has a great quote from Joe Perry about how games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are revitalizing the music industry. He states, "On a larger scale, it's cool for us to be pioneers helping to rebuild the music industry through a format like video games. It's great for rock since the record companies are struggling to make sense of how things are changing. Fans want to get and experience music in new formats--and there are going to be some of them who will play the game, then pick up the guitar for real and start bands. It's what's happening now, and it's only going to build more momentum in the future. It's a massive change for the music business."

Gore Verbinski on Films and Games

Today's Gamasutra has an article covering some comments that Gore Verbinski made during a speech at the DICE Summit about the film and video game industry. There's a good deal of the type of comment one would expect at any conference dealing with entertainment. You know, the "be original," "hire talented people," and "find your own artistic voice" kinds of comments.

Not that these comments are not true, they are, it's just that they are a little cliché.

What isn't cliché is one of the final comments by Verbinski in the Gamasutra article. Verbinski states:

"This is not a debate between active and passive engagement," he added. "A novel requires active participation by imagination... a film used to do that, but now it just reminds people of that other film. Let's not do the same thing with games. You haven't even scratched the surface of what is possible."

I am absolutely in love with this passage. Lately, I have been doing a good deal of reading regarding game design theory and there are those who are dismissive of other media because they believe non-video game media are non-interactive. I usually find myself with a desire to murder these people and remove their faces to make masks I can where during speeches I give (as them of course) recanting "their" previous position. Not really, but I do find the pretense of these people as annoying as those who deny narrative elements in many modern video games. Sorry, but I believe you have to be intentionally obtuse to think that Fable or Mass Effect aren't narratives.

Verbinski gets it. He sees that novels are an interactive an immersive experience that requires "user participation." Interactivity isn't exclusive to the video game world. He is also asserting, and I'm not entirely in agreement with this part of his argument, that films don't do it as much, anymore, as books or video games. I think that whether watching a film is a passive or active experience depends upon the individual film and how that film balances Boorstin's "three viewing eyes," which he writes about in Making Movies Work: Thinking Like a Filmmaker.

Arguably one could use his three eyes theory of viewing and combine it with whether a film is passive or active to create a kind of film review matrix. Such a matrix might look something like this:

Voyeuristic/Active	Voyeuristic/Passive
Vicarious/Active	Vicarious/Passive
Visceral/Active	Visceral/Passive

In fact, I might try and elaborate on this theory later when I have a copy of the Boorstin book in front of me. Like when I'm at home.

Midweek Miscellany of Geekdom

Following in the footsteps of one of my favorite Medievalist bloggers, I have decided to include a weekly feature which highlights oddities and exciting news I have read about on a given day. Naturally, all such information will be some how related to geekdom in general.

• Though it's a year late for my tastes, last year was Robert Howard's 100th Birthday, Fantasy Flight games will be releasing the Age of Conan boardgame this summer. The game will be designed by Nexus games and will use mechanics similar to those used in their excellent War of the Ring boardgame. They have yet to post pictures of any of the game's components online. Given the track record of Fantasy Flight Games and Nexus, I expect the components will be of very high quality.
  
  
  
  As Thulsa doom might say, "Contemplate this on the tree of woe."



• Gamasutra has an excellent, and long -- 10 pages, article covering the history of the first video game console roleplaying game I ever played. The article, "The History of Dragon Quest," discusses the success of the franchise and also finally explained to me my unnatural enjoyment of Dragonball Z. You see, Dragon Quest had character design art created by Akira Toriyama, the man behind the Dragonball mask. And that jem came on the first page of the article. When it comes to the Dragon Quest series, I have never had so much fun "killing" smiling slimes than the first time I loaded Dragon Warrior into my Nintendo Entertaiment System.
  
  
  
  Isn't he cute? Shh...don't alert him. I need to bash his brains in with my longsword.
  
  Do slimes have brains? What about smiling slimes?



• Media Tie-In Author extraordinaire, Lee Goldberg, informs us that media tie-in authors now include the snooty and artsy fartsy literati. Dave Eggers, of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius fame, is writing the novelization of the upcoming Where the Wild Thing Are film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's picture book. Thanks Dave. Now I'll have to get into fist fights with people about how the new novelization, of a movie based on a 300 word work, has now elevated the form. Add to this all the fist fights I get into with people explaining that Blankets is a graphic novel, but Watchmen is a "trade paperback collection," I'll be spending so much time brawling, I won't be able to blog anymore.



• Apparently, the basic Risk boardgame is being revamped so as to no longer end marriages and friendships. For years, I have tried to explain to people that the Risk variants, which limit game length and add "objectives" to the victory resolution system aren't as bile causing as the basic Risk game. For years, my friends have continued to play the basic game, only to have long lasting friendships lost in the process. I don't know what it is about Risk that causes this. Games like Diplomacy and Junta are all about betraying your friends, but when the game is over everyone still likes one another. It only takes a couple hours of Risk to create hatreds that last generations.
  
  This image from the article over atGamers with Jobs, shows the "playtest" edition Hasbro is releasing to create buzz.
  
  
  
  You wanna create buzz? How about giving me a copy to promote on Geekerati Radio? I'll even schedule an interview where fans can call in. Sheesh!

A Call for Writers

Despite the fact that I have been pretty lax in my posts the past few weeks, this is not a post soliciting writers for this blog. I have enough co-writers, who don't do enough co-writing, at this time.

What this is is a call for writers who want to write for a new online magazine designed to support the Geekerati webcast radio show my co-hosts and I air each week. Essentially, I am looking for writers who are willing to work for no-pay now, hopefully pay in the future, who will write quality articles about some area of geek culture which will be published in a Monthly online magazine via the Issuu service. Here's what I'm looking for.

1. A reliable illustrator or two: b/w line art is dandy as is someone who can do cover designs.
2. A video game reviewer: we'll need 2 to 3 video games reviewed each month.
3. 2 to 3 book reviewers of various genres: do you want to write about mystery, fantasy, children's lit, comic books?
4. A television reviewer: Shawna...I'm looking at you. We need 2-3 television show reviews a month.
5. Games reviews: We need someone who can write 1 or 2 table top game reviews a month.
6. A film reviewer: (David Chute and LYT, I'm looking at you guys) Are your reviews not published in enough places? Try our magazine
7. A tech writer who knows a thing or two about the gadgets out there.

Any writers/illustrators will be invited to participate in our online radio show on a fairly regular basis.

As I wrote earlier, these positions will be unpaid until we can build an advertiser base, but when/if we do that we will pay a fair rate.

Gaming History and Piracy

Today's Gamasutra has a great article about the Apple II and its role in the history of video game development.

Actually, it's a great article about the early history of Apple with some minor notes about Apple's impact as a game console, even though the article is supposed to be devoted to the Apple II as a gaming platform.

When it comes to my early memories of video games, there are two systems that dominated my early gaming -- and thus my long term gaming habits.

I owned an Atari 2600 and played its games obsessively. Many times I played Asteroids on "flip" mode until I rolled over the score, not to mention the many hours devoted to Yar's Revenge. In fact, my modern love of "actioners" like Assassin's Creed can be directly mapped back to Pitfall and my love of "action rpgs" can be mapped back to the excellent Raiders of the Lost Ark licensed game (not everyone agrees with me that RotLA was excellent, but I'm sticking to my guns).

But many of my favorite gaming moments can be traced back to "all nighters" spent mapping the levels of Bard's Tale as my friend Sean fought against hordes of "99 Barbarians, 99 Barbarians, 99 Barbarians, and 99 Barbarians." Ah, those were the days. If memory serves, Sean owned the PC version, but the computer I learned BASIC on at school (and used all those maps made during the all nighters on at lunch while playing Bard's Tale) was an Apple II. In fact, after finishing the Bard's Tale trilogy, I wandered through the many levels of "Wizardry." For five years, and to be honest to the present day, computer gaming was synonymous with computer roleplaying for me. I wasn't much, and still am not much, for fight games and sports games on the PC, those games belong on consoles. But a "boring map game," as my wife likes to call PC RPGs, those are heavenly on the computer. And when it came to these games, during the late 80's -- and for a blink in the early 90s when Apple still had games manufactured for it -- the Apple II was the system. "Platformers" were the purview of the Commodore 64, but that is another story.

I loved RPGs on the Apple II and I always bought mine. Which brings me to the reason I actually decided to post today, sorry that I have been lax of late. Barton and Loquidice (the authors of the Gamasutra piece) briefly mention the "role" that piracy had on early Apple game development and for the most part they are dismissive of the issue. They mention at least one game, only in the text beneath an image, that went under "due to piracy's affect on sales," but they state dismissively that, "In short, the precise impact of piracy is difficult to determine, though it likely had advantages and disadvantages for the longevity of the platform."

Really? Could the fact that when it came to the Apple II, "the inner workings of the hardware was made public," have been one of the reasons Apple moved from the "open" II series to the closed and proprietary Macintosh series. To this day Apple is obsessively proprietary about their hardware and software, whether it is the iPod or the Mac. In fact, the Mac was notorious for having almost no viable gaming software (other than Marathon which eventually became Microsoft's Halo) for most of the 90s.

Maybe those businesses that claim they "went under" due to piracy should be taken at their word. Certainly, it is nice to be able to emulate games Apple (and the original companies) have "abandoned." And certainly piracy expanded the exposure of computer gaming, likely creating the modern obsession with playing video games. Free is a great way to grow a market after all. Piracy might have helped the industry develop, but it also killed some businesses along the way. I know the positive effects of freeware and "hacked games" and how they helped create demand among a less technically savvy, and more willing to pay, population. What I would have liked to see would be a little research into the real numbers.

The article dug deep into the history of Apple, and Woz, but it makes claims about piracy without ever backing up any claims with numbers. Instead, like piracy advocates (and I am not claiming the authors are piracy advocates -- I doubt that to be the case), the authors use vague language rooted in sentiments which doesn't help anyone in any discussion.