Author Archives: Bitterman

Dungeons and STR+2

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I’ve been thinking about Dungeons and Dragons lately. It’s an interesting social phenomenon.

(Before I go any farther, I should make it clear that I’m not out to bash D&D. I earned my gamer cred a long time ago, and I don’t have anything to prove to anybody. I learned D&D on literally Dungeons and Dragons. None of this "Advanced" stuff. And 3rd edition? We dreamed of a third edition! We wondered if we’d ever see one the same way I imagine the ancient Norse wondered when Ragnarok would happen. Sure, it was coming. One day. Some day. But today? Nah.)

What’s most interesting to me is that when I sit down to look at D&D now, I don’t see a strong role-playing system at all. At least not in the way we typically mean role-playing. What I see is a good gaming system. There’s a subtle difference. The D&D system has very little to commend it outside of two factors: A) easy mathematical modeling and 2) modularily. The first creates the second, though the second is a legitimate boon to gamers.

Think about it. What’s the most well-known icon in D&D from a functional player’s point of view?

(I disregard an observer’s point of view because in my general experience, outsiders to the D&D experience have little to no idea how the vast majority of D&D players play the game in practice. Most seem to hold an idealized vision of D&D which does exist to some extent, but generally falls far short of the reality.)

No, not the dragon. Players rarely fight actual dragons. Not the wizard, though the fireball spell comes in the top 5 archetypal icons. The beholder, with its giant central eye and numerous eyestalks, has made impressive ground in many minds. But I think all of those fall short of D&D’s ultimate symbol.

+1 long sword.

It’s every young player’s dream. The magic sword! You get +1 to-hit on a 20-sided die, and it does +1 damage (If I recall correctly, the base is rolled on an eight-sided die, so it’s a fairly large improvement). Whee! It doesn’t sound like a lot, I know. But hey, it’s just a start. There are +2 swords, +3 swords, and… dare we dream? +4 and +5 swords out there! Right. Does anybody think anybody walked around medieval France in search of a +1 sword? Yet D&D players do so with frightening regularity.

The +1 sword has no basis in mythology. It has no basis in legend. It has no basis in any folk tradition whatsoever. It’s a sword that an engineer would love. Precisely quantified, predictable, replicatable across settings, and very easy to explain.

Dungeons and Dragons may have given the players the tools to create a role-playing game, but I believe that examining the rules shows an attitude and implied culture that doesn’t care about the role-playing whatsoever. Let’s see it for what it really was: It was the attempt to create a video game before the computer technology for actual video games existed. All of the elements were there. Easy mathematical modeling, an incremental reward system (gold, XP points, treasure), and bosses. Somewhere in our collective unconscious, we yearned for the ability to put the math to work to crunch the numbers and say, "You know… If I spent all my proficiency points on dart skill, I can throw three every turn. I get three extra damage on each… So I do more damage than a long sword! Sweet. Load me up, Scotty."

(In my limited experience, this represents the general line of thought expressed by many/most D&D players.)

Maybe we should be happy. It wasn’t enough that math could conquer our world. We had to invent whole new ones for it to conquer, too.

What is it About Bipartisan Politics?

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I tuned into a program that talks to state lawmakers and discusses various issues they’re debating. It’s interesting, because it’s so easy to forget that there are people intensely focused on the needs of a single city or county. But while I conceptually like the program, I was dismayed to see how much they talked about party politics. When they talked about a spending bill or initiative with bipartisan support, it’d always be couched in the form of, "This issue is so obvious that even that party is willing to look at what we’ve proposed," as if people were shocked–shocked! I say–that the two parties could agree on legislation.

To stop myself from rolling my eyes, I began replacing that party with "Hitler." The show became much more entertaining when I imagined them saying, "I’m working on a spending bill that will cut 50 million from this program. That’s a savings we need so desperately that even Hitler will support it!" Because really, that’s what it sounded like they wanted to say.

I’m pretty sure most people want to pass good, sound legislation. Can’t we do that without all the partisan bickering, especially when the parties agree for once?

Daylight Savings Time

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Give me back my hour! Give it back! No, I’m serious here. I want the hour, and I want it right now. We all know it was mine. It had my name on it and everything. Did you look on the bottom? Because that’s where I wrote it, in big letters.

I had big plans for that hour. Big plans. Full of… stuff. That’s right! You heard me. Stuff. And now? No stuff. There’s no time for stuff because I LOST THE HOUR GIVE IT BACK OH MY GOSH GIVE IT BACK RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I NEED IT MORE THAN YOU I SWEAR.

Clearly, I will have to make up the time by some other means. Lacking a time machine, I will use the Time Dilation Engine devised for me by the good people at Gevalia.

The Horrible Perspective that Age Brings

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For whatever reason, a lot of the people I know have been blogging about religion lately. I’m not sure why, but it reminded me of my third-grade teacher. I don’t remember much about the third grade. I don’t even remember my teacher’s name. But what I do remember is that we had "quiet moments."

My teacher explained this to us a couple of times. I think she gave us a speech at the beginning of both semesters. She said that while she couldn’t give students time that they could use to pray in the morning, nothing in any rule book or law book forbade her from setting aside "quiet moment time" that we did not have to use for prayer, but if we found the time convenient for prayer, that would be okay and she wouldn’t stop us. Not that she was suggesting we pray. Oh, no. Perish the thought. I remember she made a very big deal about explicity stating several times that she was not telling us to pray. But if we did, and if mandating a time when we had to keep quiet and bow our heads down made that convenient, well then that would be all right.

At the time, it made no sense to me or anybody else in the class. I’ll be honest; our teacher told us to do a lot of things that seemed odd. In general we just shrugged and did what we were told. It was less trouble that way all around. So if she said, "Memorize these names and dates! You’ll need to know this!" then we did it. And if she said, "Cut these shapes out of construction paper!" then we did it. And if she said, "Bow your heads down and keep quiet–and pray if you want to, not that I’m suggesting that you should!" then we did that, too.

I remember thinking that it was strange that our teacher would make such a big deal about not telling us to pray, but I didn’t care enough to say or do anything. I wonder if I should have. Maybe, or maybe not. It probably would have gotten her into big trouble. Maybe me, too!

The strangest part about it all is that though I’ve read numerous articles about school prayer and bringing Jesus into the classroom in the newspaper and online news sources over the years, I never once thought about my experience in the third grade. I’m not even sure what made me think of it today. But it’s a little weird to look back and say, "Hey, wait a minute…"

Man, What an Idea

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Who invented noodles? No, seriously, think about this for a second. Somebody at the dawn of time said, “Okay, we’ve got this wheat. Which is good. I like the wheat. But it would be better if we ground it up, added some kind of binding agent, and then formed it into long strings.”

It worked out pretty well, in my opinion. I wonder what that person would have invented if he or she were alive today? I think curly fries are perhaps one logical extension of the technology, but we already figured that one out.

It’s a conundrum.