Guest Post: Wesley Chu (THE LIVES OF TAO) on Playing Games with Kids

[Editor's Note] A couple of months ago, Shawna and I discussed Wesley Chu's new book THE LIVES OF TAO on our Geekerati Podcast. In addition to asking Wesley to join us on the podcast, I asked him if he would be willing to write a guest post for my Advanced Dungeons and Parenting blog and he agreed. Below is the article he wrote for the site. Before you read, I'd like to point out that reading his ADP guest article gave me a great deal of pleasure. It isn't often that I meet a fellow Mystara fan. So read on and enjoy.[End Editor's Note]

In honor of Advanced Dungeons & Parenting, I wanted to get on my soapbox and tell parents to force their kids to learn to become responsible adults by leveling characters in Dungeons and Dragons and/or Pathfinder.

My main poison from grades one through eight was Dungeons and Dragons, the non-advanced version. This is back in the eighties and nineties back to those old school TSR days when we had those red, blue, teal, and finally gold manuals. Back then, rules weren’t nearly as complicated and there weren’t a bazillion books to have to buy.

I have fond memories of the land of Mystara. My old stomping grounds were the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, the mage kingdom of Glantri, and the merchants Republic of Darokin. Sometimes, we’d venture as far out as the Ethengar Khanate. Now, Mystara, or The Known World, at the time was a fantastic sandbox. I had leveled my mage Kraven (before I knew what that name meant) up to the point he became a baron in Karameikos. What does this have anything to do with being a responsible adult? Well, I decided to build my first keep. Now, my memory of all this is a little fuzzy, but I distinctly remember thinking to my fourth grade self that “damn, I need a big frigging castle with a moat! And a huge stable! And a very high tower!”

I didn’t take into consideration for materials, defenses, garrison size…etc. I just wanted a big castle. I remember begging my parents for grid paper so I could map the entire thing out. I believe I had a dozen blue prints before I settled on a design. And boy, was it a beautiful, poorly conceived, audacious castle. Note to self: not becoming an architect was a good thing. In my defense, I had enough gold to build the damn thing. Sure I basically had to hire myself out as a high level mercenary and do some rather unpleasant things (that’s what happens when you have a mean older brother DM) and basically taxed my poor peasants to near death. But at the end of the day, the castle was built with all its needless additional towers and silly additions only a kid with too many legos could imagine.

However, I was so poor and in so much debt that I couldn’t maintain my garrison and ended up losing the castle to a marauding Dwarven army. Actually, it wasn’t even very marauding, just like 50 dwarves who snuck in from a really ill-conceived part of my defenses. I had hardly garrison and it seems my amateur architectural planning had more than a few fatal flaws. In the end, poor Kraven was left broke and destitute, and had to spend the rest of his days guarding caravans in Darokin. But, like those wise lessons learned by watching Monty Python:

"That [castle] burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.” 

I had learned some lessons that I carry with me to this day:  

1.       Don’t spend more gold than you got. 
2.       Hire a proper architect or someone who is an expert on what you need done. 
3.       Never be house poor. 
4.       Castles are expensive as hell to build, and even more expensive to maintain. 
5.       Wizards should just get a nice tower in downtown Glantri.

So parents, do your kids a favor. Play games with them, and sneak in those life lessons that will help them when they get older. After all, if you don’t, a bunch of rampaging dwarves might end up sacking their castle.

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Geekerati Radio Flashback Friday -- Susan Palwick Discusses SHELTER

Susan Palwick is an award winning Science Fiction and Fantasy author who currently teaches English at the University of Nevada Reno. Many of her novels and stories deal with emotional trauma or questions of identity, and that includes her novel SHELTER. Susan kindly discussed her book with me and the other Geekerati hosts back in 2007.

It was a special moment in the Geekerati history as it was one of our first author interviews. We've done many more over the past six years, but this one was quite special. It isn't special solely for its place as an early episode, it is also special because Susan was one of my mentoring professors as an undergraduate. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to complete my degree if it hadn't been for her compassion - and the compassion of a couple of other wonderful academics.

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THE GRANDMASTER: Tony Leung and Wong Kar Wai's Take on Ip Man Looks Amazing

I've already discussed how excited I am about the upcoming Wong Kar Wai film THE GRANDMASTER. That excitement increases with every new preview. THE GRANDMASTER a new addition to what has become a large catalog of films about Ip Man, a catalog that includes one of the most entertaining martial arts films ever made. In fact, the Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip entry into that catalog is so good that it makes one wonder why anyone would even try to tell another Ip Man story.

But then I look at the trailer and I see Tony Leung bringing all of his charisma to bear, Wong Kar Wai's insanely beautiful cinematography and style, and Zhang Ziyi.

Good grief, this looks amazing.

Just Showing Off My Wife Jody Lindke

From time to time, I like to add some of my wife's artwork to the website. She's a pretty fantastic illustrator and I am blessed to have her in my life.

Jody designed the above logo for use with some children's books we are working on. She wants "Underfut" to be the brand name, and I like it. The dog "Underfut" was a regular character in her Schulz award winning cartoon strip "Nicnup," and the character was based on Jody's real dog Oreo. Both Jody and I miss her very much. Oreo lived to be 20 years old and died the day I was leaving to go to my first Gen Con. We both wish that History and Mystery could have had a chance to meet her.

This is Jody's Steampulp rendition of our marriage. After seeing this, I have been very tempted to walk around with a tophat.

Jody drew this one for a book at work. I work at a non-profit dedicated to youth civic engagement, and this is one of my favorite exaggerated effect of campaign ads images ever.

An Open Letter to Danica Patrick, Jennifer Jo Cobb, Annabeth Barnes, and Many Others

Father's Day may be this weekend, but I received a great Father's Day gift a few days early. I was chatting with my five year old daughter History the other day about what she would like to be when she grows up.

"Daddy," she said.

"Yes."

"I think I'd like to be a race car driver when I grow up."

I smiled down at her with fantasies of her driving aggressively at 180+ mph flashing through my mind - alternating with random visuals of motor sport crashes - and said, "What kind of race car do you want to drive? Do you want to drive a car like Francesco Bernoulli or a car like Lightning McQueen?"

Her answer was swift and unsurprising, "Lightning McQueen!"

It wasn't unsurprising because Jody and I are regular viewers of NASCAR, we aren't. Ever since the twins - History and Mystery - were born, we've been devoted followers of Formula 1 racing. In the early days of the twins' lives when Jody and I were up at seemingly random times for late night feedings, we found something magical on the television. That something magical was Formula 1. Depending on where the race happened to be in a given week, the practice, qualifying, and race might be on at 2am or 3am. This was perfect for late night feeding. And I swear that the sound of the high RPM, high speed engines of those open wheel marvels was one of the reasons we were able to get the girls back to sleep at night. Nothing against NASCAR, but those drivers tend to race at reasonable hours US time.

It was unsurprising because History and Mystery love the Disney movie CARS. They love Lightning McQueen, Mater, and Sally - but they have a special place for Lightning.

Yes, they have Lightning McQueen stuffed pillows to sleep with.

After my imagination stopped flickering between excitement and panic, History asked me a question.

"Daddy? Can girls race cars?" she said.

"Yes!" I answered quickly - a slew of names came to mind, starting with Shirley Muldowney
and including many others.

My answer wasn't enough to steer her away from her own observations though.

"Daddy? Why don't I ever see any girl drivers then?" she asked.

At that moment, I became one of the world's biggest Danica Patrick, Jennifer Jo Cobb, and Annabeth Barnes fans - and I'll be a fan for life. I knew all of their names already. Danica and Jennifer are known to most motorsport fans, and Danica is one of the biggest names in sports period. And I knew Annabeth Barnes name from the motorsport documentary RACING DREAMS.

I became a life long fan because with one single action, I was able to dispel all of the powerful doubt and skepticism that a 5 year old imagination can muster. My daughter had never seen a woman race and she was starting to believe that they weren't allowed to, regardless of what her dad said. With a wave of my hand - we had been looking at a Disney Princess ebook on my iPad - I brought up Danica Patrick's homepage. Clio's eyes widened with awe, I could hear her gasp with excitement.

"Is that her race car?" she asked. She was pointing at the car Danica was standing next to.

"Yes," I answered and as I did so, the slideshow scrolled to show Danica behind the wheel. I proceeded to talk with History about Danica, Jennifer, and Annabeth and visited each of their websites, and a couple more as well (like Katherine Legge).

It was a wonderful moment, and a great early Father's Day gift.

I don't know if History will continue to want to be a race car driver when she grows up. People's dream jobs do change as they grow up. But I do know that after History went to her room for her nap, I began looking up local Kart circuits, availability, and costs. If she has an interest, I will work to provide her the opportunity. I would have done so whether there were currently any women in motorsport, or whether there ever had been, but I am so thankful that there were so many examples I could show my daughter. I have no idea how hard it would have been to fight against the preconceptions my daughter was building up from her own observations, if there weren't footsteps to follow. 

I am glad there were.

So, I'd just like to take the time to thank every woman currently racing in motor sport for doing what they love. My daughter may never join you in the ranks, but you made her dream a believable one and I first hand saw how important that was to her. I have always rooted for drivers like Danica and Annabeth, but it had always been in an abstract "American's love the underdog" kind of way. I am now a devoted fan of any woman brave enough to sit behind the wheel, because you are physical proof of a child's dream.

RIP: Iain M. Banks

I first encountered the brilliant writing of Iain M. Banks when I was an undergraduate at the University of Nevada, Reno. I was working in a computer lab and, having read Heinlein/Asimov/Farmer,  claimed to be a science fiction fan while in conversation with one of the technicians. The technician started asking me, and not in a gotcha way, my opinions on a wide range of authors - authors who had names I was completely unfamiliar with. One of these names was Iain M. Banks. From the conversations I had with the tech, Banks' writing seemed something both new and old. It combined the Space Opera grand tapestry background of Herbert or Asimov (I hadn't heard of Niven yet, but would soon) with stylistic prose that captured the imagination.

The first Banks book I read was Consider Phlebas, the first in the splendid series of "Culture" novels. The book describes a "small action" that takes place within a grand interstellar war between the Culture and a race of aliens called the Idirans. The story was - in some ways - an argument against "Death Star" moments and against "super kid" style SF. At the same time, it was deeply human and evocative of emotion. It was a book that made me think and ask for more, and Banks delivered a great deal more. I consider the Culture novels to be the best collective works in all of science fiction. There may be better individual stories, but as a body of work they are canonical and magnificent.

I read earlier today that Banks, who had been revealed his cancer earlier this year, has died. I am filled with the selfish sorrow of the fan. For now I know that the amount of new experiences that this talented writer will bring into my life has hit its termination. I can only read his final work and reread all that he wrote that has brought me joy - time and again. I cannot imagine the sorrow of his family and newlywed wife - who he asked if she would do him the honor of being his widow earlier this year - I can only know the self-centered sorrow that I feel. I never met the man, neither at a con or a signing, but his work has affected me deeply. It will be shared with my children. I would like to thank him for the gift he gave me.

In memoriam of Banks, I'd like to do two things. First, I'd like to share an excerpt from the poem The Wasteland from which the novel Consider Phlebas acquired its title. Then I'd like to present a quote from the book itself.

IV. DEATH BY WATER Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea	315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,	320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

One of the reasons Banks impressed me as a writer was his ability to capture human struggle in a post-scarcity society. He had a much better grasp on such things than most writers. His economics were not as confused as Star Trek's, which as much as I love the show meander from post-scarcity to smuggling/black market. He understood one of the drives that makes us human. He sums up nicely the human spirit in post-scarcity societies with the following:

The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines they had (at however great remove) brought into being: the urge not to feel useless. The Culture's sole justification for the relatively unworried, hedonistic life its population enjoyed was its good works; the secular evangelism of the Contact Section, not simply finding, cataloguing, investigating and analyzing other, less advanced civilizations but - where circumstances appeared to Contact to justify so doing - actually interfering (overtly or covertly) in the historical processes of those other cultures.

The human spirit is inherently anti-Prime Directive, as Kirk and crew so often demonstrate, because we wish to matter. We want to make things better. This is a wonderful impulse, it can lead us to beautiful acts or base ones, but it is a quintessentially human impulse.

Banks mattered.

Cancelling AD&D? RPG Rumors Circa 1986 -- Different Worlds #44

I'm a big fan of Tadashi Ehara's now defunct gaming magazine DIFFERENT WORLDS. Over its tenure, the magazine was published by a couple of companies including Chaosium and Sleuth Publications. According to a pre-publication solicitation letter (available here), the magazine was originally slated to be entitled DM. The change was likely due to concerns over TSR's trademark of DM/Dungeon Master. Regardless of the reason for the change in title, I think that DIFFERENT WORLDS better suited the content of the magazine than DM ever would have. The magazine was a gem. Like Steve Jackson Games' magazine SPACE GAMER, Ehara's magazine covered the entire roleplaying game hobby. As I've written before, issue #23 of the magazine is maybe one of the most important magazines ever written about the origins of Superhero Roleplaying games. For those who want to understand the history of RPGs, DIFFERENT WORLDS, SPACE GAMER, and ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS are three of the most valuable resources that the aspiring historian can find. They really help to cut through a lot of the community gossip about a transitional era in the hobby.

Speaking of Gossip, DIFFERENT WORLDS featured an excellent gossip column written by the pseudonymous Gigi D'arn (clearly a Gary Gygax/David Arneson reference). I've written speculation about the identity of this columnist before, and I'm still pretty sure that she was a real person and that the Chaosium staff added to her actual letters. There are just too many little tidbits of SoCal culture, which was booming at the time as an RPG hub, for me to believe otherwise. The column was filled with a great deal of speculation, some true, some pure fiction, and all fun to read.

There are a couple of pieces of gossip/rumors in issue 44 that stand out and need attention. In fact, they are rumors that I'd like to hear more from the gaming community at large about, and I'll be asking around to see if there is any merit to them.

First and foremost - actually quite shocking - really is a claim about ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. According to Gigi, "Rumour thinks TSR is unhappy with the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game line and is considering dropping it. GARY GYGAX meanwhile is starting his own company, Infinity Games, in New Jersey. Will he take the license with him?"

I wonder if this is true. 1985 saw the publication of UNEARTHED ARCANA and ORIENTAL ADVENTURES for the AD&D game, but the mid-80s was also the era of the publication of the Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals rules for D&D. It was a time when the D&D brand was divided among two sub-brands and a time when there was great potential that one brand was cannibalizing the other. From my experience, the D&D brand was putting out a lot of great material at this time. According to GROGNARDIA 1986 saw the release of a number of BECMI products and 1987 saw the production of the first Gazetteer products for the D&D brand - some of the best products ever released for D&D.

If I were to guess, I'd say the rumor was true and that core rule book sales for AD&D had dropped. I would argue that this is why we saw a 2nd edition of AD&D released in 1989. An edition that may not have happened at all if not for the success of the Forgotten Realms Setting. My thought is that the Forgotten Realms setting, written for AD&D, was so successful that management decided to do a new edition of the game for increased sales. I'd like to know if this is correct or not though.

The second interesting piece of gossip/rumors is that J.D. Webster, the creator of the Finieous Fingers cartoon strip, was a carrier fighter pilot. This is apparently true.