Playing Games

I like to play games. Mostly, I like to play video games and RPGs, though I will certainly play the occasional trivia game or board game when given the chance. This isn't a new thing, nor is it particularly unusual; I've been interested in video games since the original Nintendo came out, and in RPGs since I first picked up my 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook about 20 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, this pretty much dates me. Yes, I got a Nintendo when they first came out, and I remember playing the original Super Mario Bros. game for hours on end, though I can't quite recall whether I ever beat it. And it was fun, but only to a certain extent. It was when I invited other people over so that we could take turns playing games, or even simply watch each other play, that I began to really enjoy myself.

Of course, the early Nintendo games weren't much for multiplayer action; you could only have two players, and more often than not you were playing against the other person rather than in cooperation with him. I never found that much fun; I wanted to play with my friends, not against them. I'm not the most competitive person in the world, obviously; I don't like the kinds of feelings that intense competition bring on, and so I tend to avoid them. So I looked, mostly, for single-player games, or cooperative-play games. Contra (yet another massively dated game) was one of the few that allowed people to play together, and I remember a number of very enjoyable afternoons spent playing that with friends.

After moving around several times (and having to find new friends each time), eventually, when I was around 12, I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. Well, 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, to be precise. I was fascinated by the idea, because it told me that, without a video game system or something similar, I could get a group of friends together and play a game with a story like a video game, but with a lot more freedom and capability to include more players. Since I was the one who discovered the books, I ended up being the first Dungeon Master; I still have some reminders from those very early days. Eventually, I ended up moving again, and playing more, and moved on to different games.

Eventually, I went to college, and while I was there, 3rd Edition D&D came out, as well as the Gamecube (though that was near the end of my undergraduate years). I wasn't a very sociable person in college; for the first year or two, the only person I regularly spoke to and did things with was my roommate. It was having some much-needed friends, and gaming (through a club at school), that helped me to widen my social circle there. Eventually my social group grew to around a dozen or so people, among them my roommate, several people from my junior year dorm floor, the other guys in my senior year apartment, and people met through various advertisements on campus for gaming, as well as a few people who showed similar interests in class. By the end of my stay at college, I felt like I belonged there, which is something I had been lacking.

After college, I felt listless, unmotivated, uninspired. I moved back in with my parents, and tried a number of things, but nothing seemed to hold my interest. I made few social contacts, and the few I made were fleeting at best. Eventually, my family got a dog, Merlin, and while he was a constant companion, his interest in games was a little less complex than mine. Eventually, after some severe issues (which I won't go into here), I was diagnosed with, and treated for, severe clinical depression. I ended up going back to school, but the connections I made in my undergrad years were gone; I didn't live with, or really work with, my fellow graduate students, and so never got to know any of them, at least not really. My half-hearted attempts to reach out to other students never quite seemed to make an impact, and they still don't. Lest anyone think I am blaming others for this; I'm not; I'm just very bad at making friends and other social connections

So, I play games. Mostly, these days I play online games; after a number of years playing World of Warcraft, I stopped playing that; nowadays, I'm into other things, like Star Wars: The Old Republic (at least for the time being), though I am looking into other games like Guild Wars 2, or maybe A Secret World. These games are the main way that I connect to my friends across the country, who I get very few chances to see in person. They allow me to connect with people I care about, and have fun with them. I wish I could find a group, either online or in the area, to play RPGs with, but my luck there hasn't been so good.

Games are fun. They are one of the ways we connect with other people, and have fun with them. Games can have meaning, as well, even if that meaning is entirely fictional; playing a rebel in a game world conquered by bad guys feels like it has meaning, even if that meaning isn't in the real world. They give us a sense of accomplishment; being the one to deal the last blow to a dragon, or solve the last piece of a complex puzzle, is a great feeling. Games are, in some ways, more appealing than real life, because games have clear objectives: Do this quest. Save that princess. Bankrupt the other players. So is it any real shock that I often find games to be more interesting and enjoyable than real life?

After all, I can't slay a dragon in real life.

The Return of the Mass Effect

After Mass Effect 3, I have again had Mass Effect on my mind; with
that in mind, I whipped up the following, though I doubt anything will
ever come of it.
The year is 2186.
In 2185, rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, along with his allies the geth
and the entity Sovereign, assaulted the Citadel; only the brave
sacrifice of the first human Spectre, Commander Shepard, defeated
them.
The threat of the Reapers has been lessened by Shepard’s sacrifice and
the efforts of the Normandy’s crew. But the galaxy is still
threatened, from without and within. From the separatists of Cerberus
to the mysterious alien Collectors, from the synthetic geth to the
strange vegetative intelligence of the Thorian, many things lurk just
beyond the galaxy’s horizon.
You and your team have been called upon. Can you hold the line?
This is a game set in the Mass Effect universe, in a timeline that
diverges from that of the games after Mass Effect 1. It will use the
Mass: the Effecting conversion of the New World of darkness system
(this can be found at http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Mass:_the_Effecting).
The characters the players provide should form a team, whether that is
a small mercenary company, a planetary exploration crew, a team of
galactic scouts, or anything else that seems to fit in. For those
unfamiliar with the Mass Effect universe, a helpful source of
information is the wiki, which can be found at
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_Wiki. Let me know if
you’re interested.

Mass-ive Effect

Note to any possible readers: I plan on discussing the Mass Effect series of video games in detail; if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read.

I have been a Bioware fan for about as long as is possible, and the Mass Effect series may be my favorite series of theirs. From the very beginning in 2007, I followed and played along with the story of Commander Shepard. I slogged through planets in the cumbersome Mako APC, fought off Thresher Maws with the (entirely too small) gun suite, and traveled the galaxy trying to avert a galactic catastrophe. Then I came back from the dead, searched for crewmates (and minerals) while working for a rogue organization, and in a masterful suicide mission, saved the galaxy again from the threat of the Reapers. And now, for the third time, I fight to bring together the squabbling races of the galaxy into a unified front against a terrifying enemy that could still kill everyone, starting with Earth.

The characters have been my favorite part of the games. In Mass Effect, you collected such a strange group for your crew: Kaidan, the biotic soldier bitter about his treatment by the government; Ashley, the gung-ho marine who dislikes aliens and worries about the place of humans in galactic society; Garrus, the ex-cop alien who wants to get back at the worst criminal he can; Tali, the young Quarian on pilgrimage looking for information to help her people and falls into a conspiracy; Liara, the absent-minded scholar researching a long-dead race who has crucial information and ties; and Wrex,the angry mercenary without a home, looking for a cause to believe in. Along with Joker, the fragile-boned, sarcastic pilot who flies your ship across the galaxy, this strange team unites to stop a disaster that could potentially destroy galactic civilization. And along the way, your Shepard, male or female, black or white, Renegade or Paragon, forms relationships with each of them. Garrus, though he is a Turian, an alien race noted for their military and harsh demeanor, becomes a close friend. Kaidan, untrusting of authority, begins to trust his commander, while Ashley slowly starts to realize that not all aliens are trying to bring humanity down. Tali and Liara, both somewhat naive and innocent, learn about the nature of the galaxy they live in, and those they can trust. Wrex finds a companion in battle to follow, and a cause he can believe in - the salvation of his people. And it is all because of your character; without your Shepard acting, none of this happens. Even then, you face difficult decisions; eventually, you must not only be forced with the possibility of shooting Wrex to save your mission, but you are forced to leave a crew member behind to detonate a bomb to save a world. You, as a player, begin to form relationships of your own with this crew.

this continues with Mass Effect 2. You are raised from the dead (after an unfortunate encounter with a much stronger foe) in a gruesome science experiment by a fringe group that claims to be working in humanity's best interests. They claim that your death was no accident, but the first act of the main body of the foe you fought off in the first game. They want you to travel the galaxy, recruiting a crew of strange bedfellows, criminals, and former associates, for a mission to stop the Collectors (the enemy that killed you) that has almost no chance for your survival.

We start with Miranda, the cold-as-ice contact for your new quasi-masters, genetically engineered for perfection but with little experience with real social life. Then there is Jacob, the human former soldier, disillusioned by his old job and brought in by Cerberus (the organization that raised you from the dead) as a reliable gun for hire. As we progress, we find Garrus, an old friend who has become a vigilante hunting the scum of the galaxy, and been scarred in the process, and then Mordin, the Salarian scientist reaching the end of his life with some interesting life experience and a great deal of secrets. The crew grows with 'Jack' (or Subject Zero), an unhinged biotic who has been in and out of prisons all her life after escaping a secret project experimenting to increase her abilities, and then Grunt, a Krogan (like Wrex), born in a vat, with the memories and genes of the greatest Krogan warlords in history, but no experiences of his own. Tali is brought back into the fold, saving her from danger and recruiting her for her technical expertise. We are introduced to Samara, an Asari biotic who follows the hardcore code of the Justicar, and Thane, the assassin looking for redemption and willing to join a suicide mission. Legion, a synthetic life-form looking to redeem his people in Shepard's eyes, joins near the end, while Joker still takes the helm, and an artificial intelligence, EDI, helps him run the show.

Throughout the game, as we (as Shepard) go on missions with these people, we get to know them and we can win each of their loyalty; each as a 'loyalty mission' that will make them more devoted to the mission and to you.You help Miranda save her little sister from the father who made her as perfect (and cold) as she is; you help Jacob to find out what happened to the father who abandoned him as a child. You help Garrus find closure (or revenge) with the man who helped kill Garrus' vigilante crew. You help Mordin stop terrible medical experiments being done by a well-meaning but somewhat crazed former student. You help Jack to let go of her past by destroying the facility where she was imprisoned and experimented on, while Grunt you help by helping him to discover how to really be Krogan, rather than just the memory of one. Tali you save from exile from her people because of mistakes her father made; with Samara you help her find the dangerous target she has hunted for centuries; with Thane, you help him keep his son from following his path; and with Legion, you help him keep some of his people from continuing along a destructive past. You can even meet some old friends, like Wrex, who (if alive) is running the show on the Krogan homeworld, and Liara, who has become an information broker, and even Kaiden/Ashley, who disavow you for working with Cerberus. You can bring your crew together, make them tight-knit and loyal and put aside old arguments and rivalries, and in the final accounting, you can do anything from lose everyone (including Shepard) in a glorious last stand or bring everyone out of your 'suicide mission' alive.

And now, in Mass Effect 3, you must again assemble a crew to bring the galaxy together in a final, desperate stand against a fleet of horrible alien ships, in the tiny hope that you can stop, or at least slow down, their extinction of all sentient organic life - something they have done every 50,ooo years for at least 30 million years. First is James Vega, a young lieutenant with anger issues who wants to live to be old enough to have his own ship; second is Ashley or Kaiden, grudgingly returned to your side now that you have returned to the military. Third is Liara, whose research may lead to the breakthrough find that saves galactic civilization. Next we find EDI, the AI from the previous game, who has found a robotic body to install herself in and wants to prove her worth both on and off the ship, as well as start a relationship with Joker, who is still your (wiseass) pilot. Then Garrus, serving reluctantly in the military because, since he has spent two games with you, he is the Turian's greatest expert on the Reapers, and is glad to reunite with an old friend. And finally is Tali, who has risen to a position of authority among her people, but joins Shepard in her desperation to keep her own people from extinction.

As the games progress, each builds on the one before; a Wrex who died in Mass Effect is not present in Mass Effect 2, and his absence is noted. Liara or Tali hating (or loving) your Shepard in one game will still hate (or love) Shepard in the next. Even minor characters recur, depending on how you affected their lives; you can help a slightly obsessive fan of Shepard become a crime-fighter of his own, albeit a somewhat scatterbrained one. The choices you make from game to game matter in how the next game progresses; while you can simply pick Mass Effect 3 up without playing the previous two, the events of the game will be missing many characters, and will lack a great deal of emotional effect. The characters from your previous games that you reunite with in Mass Effect 3 who are fighting, bleeding, and dying for a cause (or just for you) are like old friends, whose lives you have to risk to save everyone. This is a series where gamers have been told that their choices will matter, and that the end will all come down to the choices you have made in the past.

And yet, that is not the ending given. Once you fight your way to the end of the game, watching your companions, friends, and possibly even lovers suffer, fight, and even die, you are walked into a room with the Starchild (also known as Catalyst), who identifies itself as the controlling influence behind the Reapers. After controlling them to kill every sentient organic society in the galaxy every 50,000 years for 30 million years, he is responsible for deaths and murders that even Hitler could not possibly conceive of (30 million/50,000 = 600, so 600 cycles times, conservatively, 3 trillion lives per cycle = more zeroes that I can think of). It tells you that it knows that synthetic life and organic life will always try to exterminate each other, and so its Reapers must periodically kill off all sentient organic life in order to save it. There is no discussion about this; you can't yell at Catalyst, argue with it, try to reason with it, or anything else you have been able to do in an important conversation for the 3 games up to this point. You must simply accept that it is doing this all for what it sees as the greater galactic good, even though it makes no sense. And then, you are given three choices about what to do about the Reapers - you can destroy them all (and, along with them, all other synthetic life, including EDI), you can sacrifice yourself to control them, or you can create a synthesis of organic and synthetic life, thus eliminating the need for periodic galactic cleansing. Nothing you have done before this in any of the games makes any difference in your choices. You are simply forced to trust the greatest mass murderer in galactic history without the slightest argument and make a choice, all of which, regardless of your choice, essentially demolish galactic civilization as it is known. No giant battle scene where the combined forces of the galaxy face off against the Reapers in a stirring last stand; no touching scene where you have to say goodbye to your friends to save the galaxy. You aren't even told what happens after your choice, whether your friends live or die, how it all turns out.

This is not the ending I signed up for. In a series that has, as one of its greatest strengths, the relationships forged between characters, to finish the game without showing us what happens to our crew and the other companions makes it nearly meaningless. To finish a game about choices with a choice that you aren't given any real information on, from a being you have no reason to trust, robs the player of any meaningful decision. I wouldn't mind if it ended with Shepard doing everything right and still not being able to stop the Reapers (though I'd prefer a more Babylon 5-style ending, telling the Reapers to 'get the hell out of our galaxy' after smacking them around), but I want the time I spent playing the first two games, and the rest of the third game, to have meant something. The characters have become like friends, and I want to know what happens to them. I want to have choice. I don't want to be presented with three 'choices' which are all virtually the same and which have nothing to do with what came before.

I want to be Shepard the galactic hero, dammit, not Button Pusher #3.

Gaming in the Imperium of Man

I don't know why, but recently I've been looking through the books I own for the three Warhammer 40,000 RPGs I own - Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch. They're very different games, all taking place in the same universe, and they interact - when they interact at all - on very different wavelengths.

In Dark Heresy - my least favorite of the three - you start out playing as the lowest rung on the totem pole, gofers, errand boys, and expendable help working, indirectly, for one of the powers of the Imperium of Man - an Inquisitor. An Inquisitor is a power unto himself - he ( or she) is empowered to do everything he deems necessary to hunt down heretics, aliens, or Chaos-tainted individuals. There are few people in the Imperium - which spans thousands of worlds - with the power to stand up to an Inquisitor. But they are all very busy, and so they trust their minions to deal with minor issues. This is where a Dark Heresy character comes in - you are the newest recruits, and you get the worst jobs, as you claw your way up the ranks towards the Inquisitor. You deal with the smallest, least dangerous threats - but when you are a minion of an Inquisitor, the smallest threats are still enough to endanger a city - or an entire world. You may end up being why an Inquisitor ends up declaring Exterminatus on a world - being the reason why the Imperium kills all life on an entire planet, billions of people, because some aliens - or ideas - are too dangerous to be allowed to spread to other planets. Working your way up from the lowest of the low to be an Inquisitor's right hand - or even an Inquisitor yourself - sounds like a long, hard slog, but could be fun to try.

Rogue Trader is vastly different in power level and scope. As a Rogue trader and retinue, you are empowered to go beyond the bounds of the Imperium, finding new life and new worlds - and make profit from them. You have your own ship, a vast crew - numbering int he tens of thousands - and you can go where you like and do what you please, as long as you pay lip service to the goals of the Imperium of Man. You are a peer even to an Inquisitor - though your power lays beyond the bounds of the Imperium, while an Inquisitor's is within, and you are both nearly untouchable in your realms of influence. You travel through space, going from planet to planet, finding new routes of trade, new worlds to colonize, and sometimes new threats to fight against. You are not entirely unlike a privateer, but your oceans are exponentially bigger, the riches you seek massively greater, and the things which lurk in the dark far more dangerous. Your freedom is unrivaled in the Imperium, and there are almost no bounds you cannot cross. So, given that - what do you do? The freedom that Rogue Traders have is great - it's a little like Star Trek, but with no humanitarian mandate, no Prime Directive, just picking a star, grabbing the horizon, and making what profit you can.

Deathwatch is probably the RPG with the most familiarity to anyone who has played the Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame. In Deathwatch, you play a Space Marine - the most elite fighting force of the Imperium of Man. While the vast legions of the Imperial Guard and the starfleets of the Imperial Navy may guard and serve as the bulk of the Imperium's military, it is the Space Marines that are called when a threat is too great, or too dangerous, for mere men. Space Marines are genetically enhanced, superhuman warrior-monks, trained and altered since puberty to be the greatest fighting force of men. Amongst the billions - perhaps trillions - of humans, there are 1 million Space Marines to serve as protectors. Where a regiment of normal troops, or perhaps even an entire army, might not succeed, 5 Space Marines might. Encased in power armor, armed with great and terrible weaponry, and with the knowledge that you are man's best hope against the aliens and evil gods of Chaos, you devote your life to killing the enemies of man. Space Marines are righteous in their fury, and certain of their cause, and that's something I find fascinating, even when they are tasked with exterminating an alien race that may very well be harmless.

All three games use the same system, but with different power levels - Dark Heresy being the lowest, Deathwatch the highest. And yet, with the same system, these games do vastly different things, all in the same universe - which, granted, is vast; if each game is run in the area the books lay out, the three games will never cross paths - and they seem to do it well. I say seems, becuase I've never played any of them, though I would love to. If you're reading this, and you're interested, let me know - I'll loan you the books.

4th Edition D&D Design Decisions

This is a few years out of date, but I felt like talking about D&D, and since I'm not currently running game, I thought I'd talk about some of the stuff that changed between 3rd Edition D&D and 4th Edition. While all editions of D&D seem to draw inspiration from a standard set of sources, different editions use different basic ideas when designing the basic parts of the system. 4th Edition was designed to be a more transparent edition, one where players would be able to see the workings of the system as they created their characters, and do the designers looked for inspiration from more modern, popular sources; in some cases, this meant video games.

One of the key ideas for creating characters in 4th Edition is the choice of role. There are four roles, roles that will likely seem familiar to players, current or former, of games like World of Warcraft: Controller, Defender, Leader, and Striker. These roles, in a very loose sense, correspond to the roles of Crowd Control, Tank, Healer, and DPS. While they appear similar, and their general ideas are similar, they serve different roles.

• The Controller role (which may be the role with the least, or at least most confusing, definition) is about battlefield control - characters with the Controller role can alter a battlefield, lighting things on fire or freezing them with ice, forcing enemies to face the player characters (PCs) on the Controller's terms. They can also inflict a wide variety of status effects on targets, making enemies more vulnerable to other attacks, stunning them temporarily, or preventing them from moving. the Wizard class falls into this role, using walls of fire and bolts of lighting to redefine the battlefield.
  

• The Defender role is about defending the other characters in the party. While there are a number of Defender classes, they accomplish this by generally targeting one (or several) enemies, and making them choose between targeting the Defender (and thus avoiding the other characters) and targeting other characters at a penalty to attack - the Swordmage, for example, can mark an opponent, and if that opponent attacks a character who is not the Swordmage, the Swordmage, regardless of where he is, can either teleport himself to the enemy, or the enemy to him.

• The Leader fills what is traditionally seen as the healer's role, but healing is only part of what a Leader can do. The Leader can give bonuses to allies, penalties to enemies, let allies take additional actions, heal, and generally do all he or she can to assist the party - while also contributing to defeating enemies. The Cleric has long been a Leader sort in a healing role, though the new Warlord class from 4th Edition tends more towards increasing the combat ability of fellow party members, thus ensuring the party's battles end sooner.

• The Striker is, like the MMO role of DPS, a damage-dealer. Their job is to inflict as much damage to enemies as possible, whether up close or from a distance. While they can also inflict status effects on enemies, these tend to be things that make inflicting more damage easier, rather than things that stun or immobilize an enemy. The Barbarian is a good example of a Striker; the Barbarian charges into battle, relying on a high amount of hit points to protect her while she rages, causing her to hit enemies harder than normal.

All classes in 4th Edition fall into one of these four roles, though they also tend to have a secondary role, as well; something they are good at, but not as good as their primary role. This gives everyone something to fall back on if they are having difficulty performing their primary role, or just feel like switching things up during battle. Fighters, while primarily Defenders, can also perform adequately in the Striker role, while Warlocks, who are primarily Strikers, can also inflict a number of status effects on enemies, giving them some ability as Controllers.

Each class each has a power source - something that tells you where his or her ability comes from. The power source tends to give some indication of how a character's power will work, and what they might do. A class with the Martial power source, for example, is not a student of the arcane, or a devotee of the divine, but rather gains its ability from intense exercise, practice, and study; there is nothing truly supernatural about Martial characters, they are just near-superhumanly good at their jobs, whether Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, or Warlord.

The current power sources are Martial, Arcane (wizardly magic), Divine (power from the gods), Primal (power coming from spirits of the land), Psionic (power from mentally-derived abilities, like telekinesis), and Shadow (abilities derived from a connection to a shadow plane). The power sources help to differentiate between classes of the same role; the Martial Defender (the Fighter) performs the duties of his role in a different way than an Arcane Defender (Swordmage), Divine Defender (Paladin), Primal Defender (Warden), or Psionic Defender (Battlemind). Almost every power source tends to have at least one - and sometimes several - classes that fall into each of the four roles.

These two things together - the role and power source - help prospective players to determine which class will best fit the sort of character they want to play, and avoid a character choice that will make them unhappy with their character later. And, despite the standard class names, there is no reason why a character could not choose a class - say, the Fighter - and call himself a Ranger, Swashbuckler, Guardian, or something else instead. Essentially, these things help to show the player what the designers of the game intended when they created the class, so that it is easier to find a better fit.

Getting Back Into the Dm's Chair

It's been some time since I've DMed a full game of D&D - that is, a game with a full party, rather than just a couple of people. I started DMing not too long after I started playing D&D, way back in the early 90s; I was 12 or 13 years old, and, if my players from back then remember much about our time playing, they probably remember a lot of power fantasies; vorpal swords and hammers of thunderbolts, fighting dragons and demons, in a group known as the Savage Seven. I still have an illustration of the characters of the group sitting with all my gaming books; it's one of the few stray pieces of paper I have kept since those days.

After playing with that group, I moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and slowly, I found a new group, composed of friends from school and Boy Scouts. We played D&D, for a while, as well as games like Marvel Super Heroes and, for a short time, Rifts. My longest-running game then, though, was as the Storyteller for a game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse that spanned several of my high school years. My character in that game still inspires my e-mail address. I wasn't the only DM for the group, but I was the most constant. At least one of my players in my Werewolf game still considers it one of their favorite games ever.

After that, I moved on to college. For a while, I was just a player with the college's gaming group, even attending a few RPGA events. But when the 3rd Edition of D&D came out, I started DMing again, this time with a group composed, mostly, of the few friends I had at college. Lagos the half-elf ranger, Gr'b Ngk the half-orc barbarian, Braghmin the halfling cleric, Rafe the human thief, Varandel the elven monk, and Kaeiri the elven paladin went on a number of adventures during those years; I still have my notes from some of them. I ran a short-lived Werewolf game, too, though D&D was my game of choice; I was still fascinated by the new 3rd Edition.

After that, I spent several years away from gaming, watching 3rd Edition turn into 3.5. I played little in those years, mostly from lack of players and motivation. Then, in 2008, 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons came out, and I became far more interested in finding games to play in. Mostly, I've played in short-lived games with a few friends, and most recently as a player in a game that lasted about 6 months. And now I'm looking to get back into DMing.

I am hoping to recruit most, if not all, of my players from school, and so I imagine I'll get a mix of players with a variety of skill levels; some will have played D&D, some not, and they may or may not know 4th Edition. I've been trying to bone up on my introductory materials, just in case; thankfully, Wizards of the Coast helpfully provides a set of Quick-Start Rules on their website. 4th Edition is a big change from previous editions, but has made some big, and I think much-needed, steps in balancing things out between classes

My game is going to be pretty simple in concept; while I hope for some experienced players, I'm not assuming anyone has any great deal of knowledge (or experience) with 4th Edition. The game I plan to run is going to be based around a series of modules I've picked up, all of which I've enjoyed reading; I'll start with them, and see where players want to go. I like 4th Edition's combat system, but I'm also a fan of getting the players to develop their own stories, so while I have modules ready to use, I'm ready to run right off the rails if that's the direction they decide to go. No fancy house rules, no themes to complicate things; just a group of 1st-level adventurers, of various races and classes, getting together in a town called Fallcrest in the Nentir Vale to go out in search of fame, fortune and adventure.

Should be a good time.

Why Do I Read Fantasy?

The question of why I read fantasy literature has been on my mind a lot lately. This may have something to do with my curent grad school situation; much of the time I feel like, for whatever reason, I should be reading more of the works in my field of academic interest than fantasy. Why read the new Brandon Sanderson novel when I should be reading Chaucer? Why read A Dance With Dragons when I should be trying to figure out how to get the Song of Roland on my reading list for my exams? Why do I spend so much time on a genre of literature that is only just barely acknowledged by the average English department?

I think a lot of it has to do with my personality and the way that I grew up. When I was a young boy, my family moved around a lot; by the time I was 13, I had lived in 3 U.S. states and 3 European countries. This sounds great, for those of you who envy my European travels, but when I first moved to England, I was all of 8 years old, and we lived no more than a year or so per country. By age 11, I had moved four times, and would move again in two years. Now, many readers know me (yes, it is foolish to hope that I have many readers, but I can hope), but if you don't know me, I am quiet, bookish, and painfully shy. I've lived in St. Louis for almost ten years now, and I don't think I have done anything with fellow grad students that was not part of a school activity. Now, imagine someone that shy at 8 years old, knowing nobody in a new country, then repeating the process for several years.

For a lot of that time, books were my only friends - sadly, there was no internet yet in 1987, at least not for the general public. I think my first fantasy novels were the original Dragonlance trilogy, and for a long time, those characters felt like close friends. I felt a kinship with lonely Tanis, sickly Raistlin, the honorable Sturm. Their successes and failures were real to me, moreso than most real people were. I felt proud whe they did well, sad when they failed, pain when they hurt.

A few years and moves later, there were the Dark Elf book by R.A. Salvatore, with Drizzt the loner elf, outcast from his people, alone in a world that hated him. I identified with him, because I felt the same; I was a smart kid just hitting that time when smart kids become the enemy in school, when more assertive boys pick on nerds to show how cool they are. Sooner or later, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and wondered how we could make a world where evil no longer existed.

Now, years later, I have a small, close circle of friends, but I live near none of them. I try to get close to my felow grad students, but I have never been very good at it, so I find myself turning to old friends in the form of books. Not the books I read for class, but the fantasy and science fiction books I read to relax and enjoy myself. I no longer read Salvatore, but now I read Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, Steven Erikson and Jim Butcher, but the idea is the same; each good book is a new old friend, one I can unshelf when I feel lonely, stressed, depressed, or just out of sorts.

I wish sometimes that I could make fantasy literature a greater part of my academic career, but that seems unlikely to happen, so it will remain a guilty pleasure amidst discussions of Old English verse, Greek epics, and other medieval literature.