One thing that always bugged me about some long running MMOs, such as WoW, is the underestimation by the game creators for the impact of war on society.
If you've played WoW long enough, you know the basics of some aspects of the game: 90% of the Blood Elves were wiped out by Arthas' invasion of Quel'thas, and a similar number of Draenei were killed in Outland by the Legion-enhanced Orcs.* Even not taking into account the Forsaken, many of the human kingdoms of the North were wiped out by a combination of the Second War and the Plague/Third War. And that doesn't even take into account the impact of years of fighting the various Troll tribes, the persecution of the Tauren by the Centaur, and that the current Horde --centered around the Frostwolf Clan-- is but a small fraction of the Orcs.
All of this constant fighting does add up over time.
As I'd mentioned back when I was examining the timeline for the pre-WoW Azeroth, this constant state of war is akin to the Thirty Years' War, when entire regions of Europe were depopulated. And believe me, when Blizzard tosses about "90% of the Blood Elves/Draenei were killed", we're talking depopulation.
So where is the population to continue the "war" part of World of Warcraft coming from?
***
I'm pretty sure I know how sex and child rearing work --I can at least claim some experience in this area-- so I know how long it takes for you to first have kids and then get them to adulthood. When you factor in the differences between modern society and, say, a part-steampunk part-high fantasy world, you're still going to have to wait an average of about 15-16 years between generations. And really, you need a time of (relative) peace in order for populations to even start to rebound.
So when I saw the video by Michael "Belluar" Bell about some suppositions about how Retail WoW in the Lordaeron areas could pan out, I was... skeptical, to say the least.
The suppositions, among them the return of the Scarlets from Northrend and who will the Humans in the Plaguelands support raise an eyebrow to begin with, but when Michael starts talking about the Blood Elves from Quel'thalas marching south (starting roughly at 19:30) into Lordaeron, my first reaction is "Oh? Exactly what army is freaking left for them to do that?"
I mean, has anybody been paying attention to all of the death and attrition since WoW was created?
For historical precedent, look at Henry V's campaign into France that ended at the Battle of Agincourt.** Henry has roughly 12,000 men with him when he began the campaign, and lost at least a quarter of them besieging Harfleur. As the campaign came to a head at Agincourt, Henry's army of roughly 8000 was confronted by a French army that outnumbered him by anywhere from 2:1 to 5:1. (Accounts vary, and at least Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges that.)
The thing to remember here is that neither England nor France had standing armies, so they had to levy their armies every time they wanted to fight. That means any leader wanting to fight would be drawing from the populace that would ordinarily be the engine of your economy and the heart of your people. If you fight long enough, you stunt the growth of both through attrition.
Now, take those population and army numbers and slash them by 90%, which is what happened to the Blood Elves and Draenei. (And likely any Humans still left in the North.) That's far more than what the Black Death did in Europe, mind you, although in spots entire villages were wiped out by the Plague.
The thing is, constant warfare is a net drain on your population. You need periods of peace to rebuild and your population to recover. And really, a few years here and there ain't gonna cut it. So call me skeptical when I hear about all these grand campaigns that Blizz has prepared for Azeroth. Unless you want Azeroth to turn into the equivalent of Easter Island, that is.
#Blaugust2023
*Obviously, these percentages have no impact on toon population, given the popularity of both races in-game.
**For reference, The UK's National Archives article on it is similar in numbers to what I'd found at other places.
Here’s an interesting thought exercise: is a game world obligated to have everything solved?
That’s probably not the best way of putting it, but I’m thinking of scenarios in a game world where the development staff knows the answer, but isn’t obligated to provide an explanation to the player.*
I was thinking of this when I began running into the “Beloved of Elune?” questlines in WoW Classic Era (or pre-Wrath WoW, your choice.)
If you’re like me, I don’t often run into the conclusion of this particular questline, because it begins somewhere in the L40s and ends when your toon is close to the L60 level cap. To be honest, I have absolutely no clue whether this quest chain was ever modified/followed-up-on in the post-Cataclysm reworking of the Old World, and to be perfectly honest I don’t think I’d like to know. Like a lot of quests in the post-Cataclysm reworking of Azeroth, so little is left to the player’s imagination** that I don’t think it’d be worth it to find out.
The brief synopsis is this: there’s a curious Kaldorei in Rutheran Village who has heard a rumor that the Wildkin (aka the “owlbears” or “boomkin”) in Azeroth are actually Elune’s favored creatures, and he sends you to a few distant locales to collect Wildkin feathers looking for evidence of the same. NOTE: If you’re like me, you automatically think “Oh, kill them and take their feathers”, but no, you’re supposed to pick the feathers off the ground.*** Anyway, the end of the questline takes you to Winterspring, where you end up on an escort quest up into the mountains where you get some exposition as to the 'why' behind the Wildkin. (Of course, in traditional WoW fashion, you return to the person who started you on this questline, who says “Wow! This is so cool! Go tell the Archdruid!” who then tells you “We knew all this, now stop bothering me.” FWIW, Azshandra HATES that asshole Staghelm with a passion.)
In case you're wondering, this particular screenshot dates from when I leveled my Draenei Shaman right when TBC Classic launched. I pulled Card out of the garage to help one of the leveling shamans complete the quest. And before you ask, that person stopped playing shortly after reaching Outland, another casualty of the meta.
It’s a nice questline, and it tells you a bit about the world, but are all the secrets of Azeroth expected to end with an exposition like this? And more importantly, should they end all tied up in a bow like that?
In my opinion, the answer is 'no'.
If everything were able to be 'solved' or 'explained away' as part of the game, what does that say about the game? That there is no mystery to anything? That the development staff expect you to find everything, and that all game mysteries are supposed to be solved?
I personally believe that mindset reflects the expectation that everything about a topic can be known, when in real life that is not the case.
Okay, let me back up here a moment.
Not the greatest resolution, but this old
PBS Nova episode from 2000 will do.
I’m not talking about whether we can solve topics such as how to build a trebuchet, because there’s enough evidence and practical engineering involved from original sources that we can figure this sort of thing out, but whether we can solve topics such as why NPCs do what they do, or more existential questions such as “solving the afterlife” in a game.
And yes, that last one is a direct poke in the eye at the WoW devs for their Shadowlands expansion.
Maybe it’s the hubris involved in real life that’s a factor here because enough people around the globe seem to absolutely know what happens after death. Frequently those beliefs can be contradictory, so not everybody can be correct about this. But hey, that never stopped people from believing what they want to believe, but in a game world that assuredness (or hubris) translates into certainty about how the afterlife must operate.
Or why wildkin are the way they are.
Or why the Old Gods do what they do.
I mean, the hard baseline of the existential horror behind HP Lovecraft’s vision of what Blizzard used as a template for the Old Gods was simple: Cthulhu and Company’s motivations were unknowable and that attempting to understand them would drive you insane.
“Watch out for the crazy Elf lady” is a byline that anybody who remembers questing in OG Silithus in Vanilla WoW (or Classic WoW) should be all you need to know about the Old Gods. If anything, that particular questline still exposed more than necessary, but looking at it in hindsight the crazy elf lady questline struck a better cadence in terms of what was unknowable versus the exposition of the wildkin questline.
But still, people want to know everything about a game world, and for a subset of the same the concept of not figuring everything out can drive them nuts.
Well, welcome to the real world.
#Blaugust2023
*Or the Player Characters in a pencil and paper RPG.
**In a relative sense, of course. You might not have all the answers from a particular quest chain, but if you perform a similar quest chain on the other faction's side, you'll figure things out between the combination of the two. I'm looking at you, Worgen questlines in Silverpine Forest.
***Free hint: if you’re like me and have trouble seeing the feathers with your graphics, you may have to dial your graphics settings back to what they would have been in Vanilla WoW to see the feathers easily. Kind of sucks gaming the system like this, but if you don’t want to look like an idiot with your questing buddy trying to find feathers when they are jumping up and down on top of them –not that I’d know anything about this-- you’ll want to do this.
Our Gen Con trip began with a surprise road closure.
I was heading to pick up my son and his SO when I encountered a highway shutdown for road crews to work at precisely the interchange I was about to use, so I had to go past that interchange, get off the highway at the next exit, and then swing around and head north instead of south.
So... Although I began my trip earlier than in past years, we arrived at Indianapolis about 1/2 hour later than usual.
"Slight chance of rain" my ass.
This year was going to be a bit of a throwback to years past, when I had to tightly control my budget due to unforeseen costs.* If I hadn't already bought tickets for this years' Gen Con, I would have likely had to beg off. Still, we had already committed to the trip and arrived at the Indianapolis Convention Center with a half an hour before the Main Hall opened up, and all we had to do was pick up our badges from Will Call and head inside.
Uh, about that Will Call line...
That line on the left? That's the Will Call line behind us. Our line snaked to the doors at the end then doubled back where we were going. Yikes.
From that pic, the Will Call line in front of us stretched the entire length of this hallway, turned right and across a busy intersection, and then entered the "official" Will Call line. Although original estimates posted online were for a 2 hour wait, traversing the line took slightly less than an hour. Or, for people who ride roller coasters, the equivalent of one length of time to wait to get onto The Beast at Kings Island.
My occasional plug for The Beast, the world's longest wooden roller coaster. It is still the best coaster I've ever ridden on. Photo from Kings Island.
In the meantime, I became "acquainted" with the fact that there's apparently an RPG based on Avatar: The Last Airbender:
The signs were everywhere. Really.
Eventually, we made it through, got our badges, and then set forth to go to the Main Hall. I asked the other two if they were planning on heading off their own way, and he said, "Yeah, I'm gonna take a few pics and then we'll do our thing."
"Okay." I saw the big balloon display, this time with an Apollo Moon Landing theme:
Human Not Included. (She was posing, but for who I don't know.)
After I snapped a pic or two, I turned back to my son and.... They were gone.
Okay, that's fine. Time to enter the Main Hall.
Looking left....
...center...
...and right.
Hoo boy.
***
I decided early on to limit myself to two items. I didn't have much choice in the matter, and I seriously considered reducing that to one, but I figured I should aim for something that's not easily found at my Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS)**.
The first area I spent some time in was Studio 2 Publishing, where RPGs such as Savage Worlds and Traveller could be found. And yes, because it's Traveller, that's where I stopped first.
Traveller isn't nearly as popular as Savage Worlds --hmm, I should do an "RPG From the Past" about Savage Worlds-- so when I showed up at the Traveller section one of the Mongoose Publishing people was happy to find another Traveller fan. We chatted a bit about the game and the new revised High Guard sourcebook that was published over the past year, and what campaigns he liked to play.
Yes, this was one of my two purchases.
Among the ships inside is the iconic Far Trader, the Empress Marava class. It may not look like much, like some Scoundrel I know likes to say, but it's got it where it counts.
The Mongoose team was going to leave at 1 PM that day, but Studio 2 was planning on being there until the Main Hall closed, which was 4 PM, so I didn't have to purchase right then and there, but that didn't stop the salesperson from trying. I did resist at that point --barely-- because I did want to peruse more sections first before circling around and buying the splatbook.
***
As I wandered the booths, I recalled another goal I had: to visit the Art Show area and provide some artists for my old WoW Classic friend/raid leader, Jesup, to peruse. She is unable to attend Gen Con, but is on the lookout for art for her house. So I spent spent some time talking to the artists at the show and taking some photos of their art to send back to Jes.
I really liked the whimsy behind these drawings.
Jesup, for her part, was appreciative, and getting a chance to speak to the artists was fun as well. One thing that stood out to me during my chats was that a lot of the artists really liked to paint women. It didn't matter what gender the artists themselves were, that just seemed to be a universal constant. A lot of them got into art through reading Fantasy and Science Fiction, and naturally RPGs had an influence on them as well. Watercolors as a medium were very popular, as was digital. The one term I did NOT hear --and I dreaded bringing it up-- was AI.
The colors absolutely pop here.
One of the artists I spoke to at length admitted he was here to determine the viability of a store. He paints a lot of contract work, but he wants to branch out and reach people for direct sales, and he said that the reaction he's been getting at Gen Con has been very encouraging.
The stylized designs are fantastic in person.
I spent a bit of time asking this artist about her inspiration, and she was happy to 'talk shop' for a bit. She also enjoyed getting a chance to be at the con to talk with her friends and fellow artists.
If there was one place that was going to test my resolve to limit my purchases, the Art Show was it. I survived, but oh was I tempted. I think the thing that kept me from pulling the trigger here wasn't so much a lack of desire, but in the back of my head I kept saying "Just where would you put this artwork, anyway?" And to that, I had no answer. (Yet.)
***
We reconnected for lunch, which for us typically means hitting the food court at the nearby mall. Given my dietary requirements, I tend to choose the least problematic path and get a few tacos from Taco Bell, although the food from the couple dozen food trucks outside the Convention Center looks far more appealing. I know that Taco Bell and 'least problematic' aren't what you typically put together, but I know the nutritional data for the crunchy taco and can fit it into my dietary restrictions without much effort. Almost all of the other options, while potentially better tasting for me, have a lot of carbs or sodium (frequently both), and I can't really risk that.
During lunch, I asked my son if he went to the Warhammer area first, and he sheepishly grinned and admitted they made a beeline for there as soon as my back was turned. I then noticed the rather large bag with "Warhammer" designs all over it. He'd acquired a pack of Aeldari, which he informed me is one of the least popular factions in Warhammer. Apparently they weren't even in stock at the game store near Lancaster University, which he attended when he was studying abroad, so when he found it at Gen Con he quickly snapped it up.
"Do you want to drop it off at the car?" I asked.
"No, because I can use the bag to carry other stuff as well."
His SO was in the process of tracking down a pair of ears --bunny ears, wolf ears, or something of that sort-- so they were plotting out their path to success. But that's one of the things about the con: you'd think it was strictly gamer related, but in spots it's just purely a geek hangout. Sure, it's as if Hot Topic had been dunked in a gamer vat, but that's fine. 'You be you' is what I'd say.
One thing I did see coming back from the food court was --ironically enough-- MMO related:
Who knew that World of Warcraft players had an entire garage devoted to them?
***
When we returned the Main Hall, I encountered more evidence of Airbending:
Did I mention there was an Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG out?
I made a point of picking up that Traveller book and then focusing on games that I found interesting.
Such as The Plot Thickens by Bright Eye Games.
Yes, the box for each version is cleverly designed to look like a book.
The Plot Thickens is a card game with three different yet compatible editions: Sci-Fi, Detective, and Romance. The game revolves around your ability to string together plot elements to create a story, and after the first round, you can begin to use cards that the other players have played to "thicken the plot" as it were from your own plot. For example, I held the cards Time Traveler, Undersea Base, Portal, Derelict Spaceship, and the profession "Engineer". I then had to string together the cards into a plot, such as "I'm an Engineer, and while exploring we came across a Derelict Spaceship, so we towed it back to our Underwater Base, and once we did so a Portal opened up and a Time Traveler stepped through." I'd have gotten 4 or so points for that work. Now, on the next round, another player could use one of the cards I played to incorporate it into their story, placing a marker on it, and gaining extra points for using the already played card.
I'm a bit hazy on final scoring, but the game played well enough, and even if you're not into playing the game the potential for writing prompts are pretty broad. The three published versions can be integrated with each other, so you could mesh Sci-Fi and Romance together, for instance. Apparently the "Loins" card in the Romance version has been used to hilarious effect in this fashion. The designer is working on new genres of the game, so watch this space for future iterations.
I eventually made it over to the Modiphius Entertainment area, where I was hoping to see a copy of the Star Trek Adventures RPG splatbook Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide.
The graphic is from Gizmodo.
Yes, the cartoon has come to life. So to speak.
Modiphius had the book ready for release just in time for Gen Con, and given that I've been a fan of meshing Star Trek with humor ever since the Original Series' Harry Mudd stories, I've been hoping to get a glimpse of how the splatbook worked.
Alas for me, they had none left on display by Sunday afternoon. I mean, if they sold out the copies they brought to Gen Con then that's a good thing, but I was kind of hoping to check it out.
Modiphius was also leaning heavily into their Dune RPG, which I still find... puzzling. It's not that the Dune universe couldn't be mined for RPG material, but that the novels focused so much on factional plotting that you don't get nearly as much of a glimpse of the universe as you'd expect. Or as my son put it, "the book focuses so much on Paul that I'm not sure what you can do for an RPG." The Dune boardgame has been rereleased after a long hiatus, and the factional nature of that game fits perfectly with the Dune universe, but still, I'm not sold on a Dune RPG. But apparently I'm in the minority, as Modiphius was doing some brisk business with the game.
Finally, there's a new RPG that Modiphius had a Starter Set available for sale: Dreams and Machines.
If you can imagine an RPG that scratches the itch that video games such as Anthem and Horizon: Zero Dawn, in a post apocalyptic world with sleeping gigantic terraforming robots littering the landscape, waiting to come back to life to finish their "programming" of destroying humanity.
It looks really well done, but what especially interests me is the card-based character creation. I picked up the Quickstart available on Free RPG Day (because of course I did) and I came really close to pulling the trigger on this Starter Set. I decided to wait until later, however, while I perused other game companies' work.
Such as, oh, What Steve Jackson Games has for Munchkin these days:
WARHAMMER Munchkin?? And Age of Sigmar at that.
But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that an old classic was back for another drive around the block:
Oh wow.
Yes, Car Wars is back.
I remember playing the Commodore 64 equivalent of the game back in the day, so seeing the game back on the market makes me smile.
***
At one point I passed by a rather uniquely closed off booth with the entry guarded by a couple of people. "18+ Only" were the signs.
"What the--" I began, then I saw who it was.
Ah. That explains a lot.
I knew of Cosplay Deviants, so I understood why it was protected that way.
Good thing too, because after I took that photo and kept on going, less than a minute later my son caught up and surprised me from behind. Yeah, that would have been awkward.
***
The Modiphius Entertainment booth was on one corner of the Main Hall, and on the other end, diagonally, was Chaosium. Okay, Paizo was nearby, but there was a big crowd there already and I didn't feel like sticking my nose in there at the time. After working my way through a metric ton of people, and some with that characteristic "gamer funk" smell, I was happy to be away from the crowds for a bit.
So I got to pick the brains of a Chaosium rep, talking about a game I'd known about for a long time: Runequest.
I remembered Runequest from the days when Avalon Hill --yes, the same Avalon Hill that is now owned by Hasbro-- owned the rights to publish the RPG. The Avalon Hill edition was nominally based on the world of Glorantha --a Bronze Age fantasy world created by the late Greg Stafford that actually predates Runequest itself-- but it was also generic enough that you could plug other sorts of homebrewed campaigns into the system. However, the current edition of Runequest is tightly integrated into the world of Glorantha, and the sourcebooks and whatnot are of very high quality. The rep strongly suggested I pick up the Runequest Starter Set to play, because it would do a much better job of explaining the world than he could.
While I was considering that, I found a new version of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur come to life:
Holy crap.
"I'd heard that a new version of Pendragon was coming out," I confessed to the Chaosium rep. "I just had no idea it was going to come out so soon."
The Chaosium rep told me that they started planning on a new version when they got the license back, but Greg Stafford had passed away before they could finish the job. So they spent a lot of time looking over the editions and Greg's sketches/notes, and have been steadily assembling a new edition.*** The new core rulebook is due out this Fall or Winter, so given the quality of the work that Chaosium has been putting out recently, it should be well worth the wait.
And yes, they had me at "Pendragon Starter Set".
I'll have to do "An RPG from the Past" on both Pendragon and Runequest. For now, here's what's inside the box for the Pendragon Starter Set. And yes, unlike the early editions, you can have female knights in the game. Score one for Linnawyn!
So I hit my two item limit and spent the rest of my time wandering around, enjoying the Main Hall without buying anything. I won't say I wasn't tempted, because I sure as hell was, but I set a hard budget and I stuck to it.
I did see some designs for games that I've already played in video game form, and while they look pretty I do have to wonder how they'll play out.
Such as Stellaris:
Yes, it does look pretty.
There was one item I was definitely curious about, which was the Ravensburger Limited Edition Gen Con 2023 jigsaw puzzle:
From comicbook.com.
I was at least curious as to whether it was still around and how much it cost. If it cost $20 or less, I could probably make it fit in my budget. When I arrived at the Ravensburger booth, however, their sign up on a door behind the counter had a lot of "Sold Out" all over it.
I began to maneuver for a better look to see what was exactly sold out and I was stopped by one of their personnel.
"This is the exit," they said. "You go around that way to the front."
"Okay," I replied, and stepped back.
Luckily for me, someone opened that door and the full sign swung into view, so I could get a good look.
"Sold Out, Sold Out, Sold Out, Sold Out. Got it. Thanks."
So yes, I embarrassed myself by not realizing the one location was the exit (it wasn't marked as such, btw), but I got over it. The puzzle was long gone.
***
Getting out of the parking garage was an adventure in patience, as we were on the fifth floor, but after about 20 minutes or so we finally got out and on the road home.
Unlike prior years, I actually got enough sleep the night before that I wasn't konking out on the drive back home. And believe me, that's a pretty rare event for me at Gen Con.
The crowd was significantly larger this year at Gen Con than last year, and today I saw the press release that over 70,000 attendees were at the con, up from 50,000 the year before. That explains the crowds and sweat and gamer funk in spots.
As I told my son and his SO on the drive back, "Next year we're getting our badges early enough so that we don't have to stand in Will Call." That does have the additional advantage of being able to relax a bit before the Main Hall opened at 10 AM. And believe me, not standing in line for an hour does have its advantages.
We did miss my sister-in-law's husband this year, as he was unable to attend due to a family matter. And hopefully, next year we won't have all sorts of money tied up with car repairs. (Or anything else, for that matter.)
#Blaugust2023
*This year it was the cars. All three cars required hefty repairs over the past 12 months, and 2 of them required major repairs in the past 2 months. And two weeks before the con, the A/C on the oldest car started misbehaving, so I know that I have to get that fixed this week. Oh yay.
Well, this is the easy way out of having to think about how things went on Sunday up at Gen Con. That's not to say that things sucked --they rarely do at Gen Con-- it's that I wanted to keep up with my Meme Monday theme.
I suppose a lot of these memes could be stand ins for just about any gamer/nerd convention, but since I went to Gen Con, here goes...
Yeah, it's kind of like that. From imgflip.
Uh, yeah. I kind of have to watch out for this. From imgflip again.
I'm not so sure that's as much of a thing at Gen Con as it is, say, DragonCon. I've heard that if you can't get hooked up with someone at DragonCon, you're actively avoiding it. From diy.despair.com.
There are people who go hog wild at Gen Con. So yes, I've seen this sort of thing before. When you pull into a parking space and get out, and the people next to you have bags as big as a coffin carrying all sorts of stuff.... Yeah. From Gen Con's FB page.
I'm setting this up ahead of time because I'll likely be too exhausted to remember to post it later in the day.
Gen Con Indy started on August 3rd*, but we usually make a point of driving up to Indianapolis to visit on Sunday, which is "Family Fun Day". Back when the mini-Reds were a lot younger, it was a very cheap way of paying to see the con: one price for a family of four. Even paying for the extra mini-Red, it was far cheaper than individual tickets on a Saturday. Today, with the mini-Reds anything but mini, it's still cheaper for an individual Sunday ticket than any of the other days.
So my son, his SO, and I are presently en route up to Gen Con as this is posted.
Hey look, a Redbeard! No, it's not me, but it is 'a redbeard'. It's @diceandautism from TikTok.
I shall report back afterwards. Probably Tuesday.
#Blaugust2023
*Okay, the party really started on the 2nd, but the con officially opens on the 3rd.
As much as MMOs are driven by so-called Big Bads, the top enemy of whom people have united against, it's kind of funny how few times that plot device has worked in the real world.
The most obvious example is ol' Adolph Hitler, with folks such as Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and other great conquerors as other examples, but for the most part conflicts and wars have little to do with opposition to a specific leader. If you made a list of the top reasons why people go to war, there's race, territory, resources, and history*, but the one bugaboo that almost never gets brought up in MMOs is the one I was wondering about: religion.
Most MMOs out there don't have religion as a primary motivating factor in warfare or conflict like we do in the real world. Hell, even in a lot of RPG campaigns I've been in, religion has hardly been a motivating factor. More frequently I see a "orcs hate the elves and the dwarves hate the goblins" dynamic but you rarely see an "our gods hate your gods" motivator. If such a motivator exists, it's kind of a secondary thing, where "yeah, the gods dislike each other" motivation tacked on to the primary ones.
In a world where the gods actively intervene on behalf of their adherents, you don't get a lot of "Our gods are real, and yours don't exist" assertions. Neither do you see the "we worship the same gods, but ours is the correct way to worship them!" argument.
Ah, Life of Brian. I love that movie. From Yarn.
***
I was put into this frame of mind when I remembered a story that my sister-in-law once told me about when she was in Vet school in the Deep South. This first year she was there, they were coming up on the end of the semester and the Winter Break. Conversation with some of her classmates devolved into what they were going to do for Christmas.
Knowing that she was Catholic, one of her classmates asked my sister-in-law what she was going to do instead of Christmas.
"Uh, celebrate Christmas," my sister-in-law replied.
"Oh," her classmate responded, "well, we know that Catholics aren't Christian, so when we celebrate Christmas, you celebrate...."
"Christmas. Catholics are Christian."
"No they're not."
My sister-in-law was flummoxed. This was the first time she'd encountered anybody who didn't think that Catholics aren't even Christian, which would be a bit of a surprise to the Pope.
Then again, I've met people whose version of Christianity is such that they believe the Pope is the Anti-Christ, so... Yeah.
***
I guess we kind of tend to sweep these sort of conflicts under the rug when we play MMOs or RPGs, because the concept of "nobody is correct" and "everybody is correct" with regards to religion touches a raw nerve with people. Besides, religion in the real world comprises a large amount of a person's identity --whether we realize it or not-- and that's kind of hard to replicate in a fictional world where you don't have any real personal stakes. At most, you tend to get what I call the "Exorcist" type of religious interaction. As in the book and movie, the "Exorcist" references the temptation to worship and devote yourself to evil, as opposed to merely worshiping somebody else's gods.
Once in a while religion does come up in an MMO in a way that is relatable. But you know, it could be worse. From Knowyourmeme.
This conflict is comfortable --if you want to call dealing with evil comfortable-- because we're familiar with the tropes involved. It's much harder to drop, say, the Wars of the Reformation into an MMO or RPG because it forces us to look harder at why religion makes us do what we do. That's not a path toward a successful and popular game.
But what do you think? I've talked enough, and danced around certain aspects of this topic enough.
#Blaugust2023
*The "you started a fight with us years ago, so now it's our turn to get back at you!" reason.
My son challenged me the other week, saying that I just buy games and never play them.
He's not wrong, given the number of paper and pencil RPGs and board games I own that I've never played. Gotten out of the box and devoured, yes, but actually played? No.*
The ironic thing is that prior to his challenge I had actually begun playing some of the video games I'd bought and sat in my inventory.
None of the RPGs that would likely suck me in for hours at a time, mind you, but some of the other games that scratch that building itch. Such as Old World, Surviving Mars, or the reimagining of Master of Orion.
This is the MOO I know, as I never played the subsequent iterations of the game. And yes, I know that MOO2 was supposedly better than the first game. From Steamcommunity.
These three --and others-- can be as nit picky and as complex as you want them to be, but I can also step back and play them with only one eye on the details while I do other things. (Like listen to some of the meetings I'm required to attend but am only peripherally involved with at best.)
But still, I want to get a chance to play those long running single player RPGs.
***
Back when I played Ultima V I used to keep a notebook of all sorts of game info for easy reference. It helped me to know those details as there wasn't a quest system like that found in modern games, so a player had to keep track of everything to give them a chance at completing the story. Even before I formalized notebook usage I scribbled down info from Ultima IV and the original Bards Tale on scrap paper from my dorm room, because a busy college student needed this so they could get their coursework done and keep up with playing the game on an occasional basis.
I was taught how to take notes during a seminar on studying we all had to take in 8th Grade, but really it was the old Colossal Cave adventure that got me started on this path. From DOSGames.com.
Today, a lot of that bookkeeping is done for you by the games themselves. If the info isn't there, you can also find it on a wiki or somewhere else around the internet. That makes it easy to find answers, I suppose, but for me it also means it's harder to re-engage after being away for a while. I find this lack of direct participation in the note-taking and bookkeeping makes me sloppy, and it leads to me wanting to keep playing a game more so I won't forget what I've been doing.
This isn't exactly a new phenomenon for me, because I experienced it firsthand in a few classes I had in college.
A lot of my classwork while attending college revolved around how good I was at taking notes. Or copying equations down from the whiteboard or blackboard (yes, I'm old school), and the subsequent discussion surrounding the problem solving process. Some of those processes, such as solving for the Hydrogen atom in Atomic and Nuclear Physics class**, took about half of the semester. That meant that if you weren't keeping up on your notes, you were going to fall far behind very very fast.
Here's the proof I actually took A&N 30+ years ago. (!) From Modern Physics, by Paul A Tipler of Oakland University. (My copy says 1978, not 1977 that Goodreads says.)
However, there were a few classes that I had that the notes were passed out prior to each session, and then we discussed the notes in the lecture itself. At first, I thought this was absolutely great, because I wasn't spending my entire class writing so fast that my hand began cramping. I could focus on the concepts and not worry about missing anything. What ended up happening, however, was that I had less retention in those classes than the others.
Back when I was in high school, my teacher in my Physics class allowed us to create a "cheat sheet" on a 3"x 5" index card for use in our mid-term exam; we could cram as many formulas into the card as humanly possible, as long as it was on a 3x5 index card that he handed out a week prior to the exam. The nights before the exam I feverishly shoehorned every formula that I thought I might need into the card without requiring a magnifying glass, and on the day of the exam showed up --card in hand-- ready to go. What I discovered, however, was the act of me writing everything down as I reviewed what might or might not be important meant I committed to memory all of them, so I didn't need the cheat sheet at all.***
I am apparently one of those people who have to actively participate in the writing down of notes for me to retain them better.
***
Why is this so critically important? Because if I'm going to play one of these single player RPGs, I'm going to have to ration my game time.
I have multiple demands on my time, and while I thought that once the kids grew up and left for college I'd have more free time, I've found that my time has simply been filled up with other things that demand a slice of the pie. Therefore, unless I suddenly enter an alternate dimension --hey, don't laugh, because if the Cincinnati Bengals went to the Super Bowl in 2022 anything can happen-- I won't have a ton of free time to devote to playing these games to my heart's content.
As you can see, keeping up with the games doesn't mean "more automated processes" for me at all, because that won't help nearly as much as me actually writing stuff down. I need that act of writing and note taking to make things stick, and therefore it's time to invest in a few notebooks of my own. I am going to play some of these games, and doing so will take discipline on my part; I guess I'm going to suck a bit of the fun out of those games by doing so, but I have to acknowledge reality.
And oh look, Back to School sales are going on right now, with plenty of notebooks to choose from...
Imagine that! A partial snapshot of the Target website on August 3rd, 2023.
#Blaugust2023
*There's actually a method to my madness with the pencil and paper RPGs, but that'll have to be on another post. Let's say that it has to do with worldbuilding and leave it at that for now.
**Hi, Dr. Craver! I'm almost 100% certain you don't cruise the net looking for where your name might show up, but if you do, it's great to see ya! Just wanted to let you know I've very fond memories of A&N as well as Physics 206, and I miss those times when you'd slyly sing the Hail Purdue fight song when we were talking Big Ten football after the Friday seminars. And I see that A&N has mutated into a "Physics IV: Modern Physics" class, which is fine by me. Times change, you know.
***Before you ask, yes, I got a really good grade on the exam. No, I'm not going to tell you what it was.
