Archive

Dungeons and Dragons

   I know that it is totally un-hip, and it never really has been hip, but I love role-playing games. For more than half my life I have been playing one type of role-playing game (RPG) or another.

   Like a lot of people in this hobby, I started off playing Dungeons and Dragons. I quickly moved from D&D to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and played that through most of high school. At no time did I end up worshipping the devil, I have never taped my glasses and I did okay in the sex department for the fat-kid-warped-by-catholic-dogma-who-was-waiting-for-love. Yeah, I broke all the stereotypes.

   I went off to college. I took my AD&D books with me, but I was tired of it. I began looking at other games. I tried bunches of things, finally settling on GURPS as being one of the best things around. In the mean time, TSR had become a shadow of it's former glory, D&D in all it's forms had suffered at the hands of the media and the sways of public opinion. Like Apple, TSR fired Gary Gygax, the creator of D&D and god-father to all we dice heads. TSR had had it and I felt D&D might just die out.

   After college, I kept trying out new RPGs and found that I liked many of them. But, always, the spectre of D&D hung over head. Most if not all of us had played it at one time or another. Most of my friends had played games that I ran, or "Dungeon Mastered". I kept waiting to hear that D&D would be gone, and we would all shed a tear for the by-gone era.

   That day came in a very odd way, and gave very unexpected results. Wizards of the Coast had made a ton of money on a card game called Magic the Gathering. Simply everyone, but me, was playing it. I was so beyond that stuff! (Ha!) But, as we all know, money is power. Power often brings success. WotC brought out another game, a license from Nintendo of all companies, a little card game called Pokemon. Well, every ten year old kid had so many of these cards they couldn't walk!

   Then, it happened. Wizard's bought TSR. Bought the whole thing, moved them from Lake Geneva, WI to Renton, WA - just a mile or so from where I am writing this blog. I had been here in the Seattle area not very long when it happened. I remember thinking, man, what a dumb waste of time and money - a fatal error. Sure, there was a ton of intellectual property to be had. There were several games, countless novels and D&D itself - but the market is all but beyond all of that.

   Not long after that, Hasbro bought Wizards. It changed my mind, maybe WotC was onto something - certainly Hasbro wouldn't care about a company unless they saw potential future profit. Maybe D&D wasn't dead.

   In the past several weeks, I seem to be surrounded by D&D. I am now involved in two monthly D&D sessions. One began a little more than a week ago and we will have our first official seesion on the 8th of Feb. Once a month was all we silly adults could hope to carve out of our schedules. Yesterday at work, I got into a discussion with some co-workers that ended with me running a game every first tuesday of the month - like, next week. I have been buying 2nd Ed. AD&D books used at Half Price books, and I need to buy a few more. This is more roleplaying than I have done in quite a while - I couldn't be happier! Glee!!!

   It's no wonder, all these thirty somethings trying to capture something out of their youth. Two successful Lord of the Rings movies out. WotC has Dungeons and Dragons in a 3rd edition and they have released the core-rules as an "open source" gaming system called D20. I guess I'm pretty glad I was wrong.

   Long live D&D! Huzzah!

Posted by: Jericho - 1/29/03 - 9:02 pm -

State Of The Union (Condensed Version)

Shrub: Blow 'em all up and let our christian God sort 'em out. Oh, and tax cuts for the rich will really, really help those not rich type people. Really.

Jericho's Governor: Ummmm... I'd really like to disagree, but I'm a Democrat and had to have my backbone removed before they would let me join the party.

Token Right Wing Pundit: Shrub is right. How can he not be right? He's a Republican. Republicans are always right.

Token Center Left Pundit: No Shrub is wrong. He's a Republican. Republicans are always wrong.

Max: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Posted by: Max - 01/28/03 - 9:42pm CST -

It's a Barbie World ...

   Some days, the world just seems to go right for all the wrong reasons.

   Okay, as someone who hopes to someday be an actual writer that people actually read and want to steal shit from - I'm all about intellectual property law. There needs to be laws to protect the creations of artists. All the artist has is his creation. There needs to be laws to protect the creations of corporations - if you make something unique and just anyone can come along and make a rip off, then what's the point of trying to make a quality product?

   But, if you take your lawyering so seriously that you lose your sense of humor - then you deserve whatever you get! Take this waste of my tax dollars for example. Go read the article - we'll wait.

   Look, Mattel, if you are going to create a toy like Barbie, and market it for fifty years in the most ruthless way I can think of, short of McDonalds, what do you expect to happen? Let's start with the history of this little gem. First, the creators copied it from a german made doll that, the creators admitted, was a little sexy. So, that's a bad start for a kids toy.

   Now, keep pushing this over exagerated lass (have you seen the new one with the big lips? Yeek!) at young girls. Make them want to emulate her, and who wouldn't want to be Barbie? She has a great house, cool car, her boyfriend is gorgeous (we're not sure he's hetero, but he's buff!) and she has zero body fat! Push this at three or four generations of girls, make her a cultural icon, and then not expect people to write songs about the doll? Whatever!

   The really funny thing about this, as far as I'm concerned, is that the band in question is gone. Sure, the song was a top 40 hit, for about a week! Kinda like "Walk the Dinosaur", it didn't even have the staying power of "The Safety Dance". No one remembers this bit of drek. If Mattel had never filed the suit - I'm betting society would deny it ever existed. Way to perpetuate your own problems, Mattel! Do you have nothing better for your lawyers to do?

   In short, yes, Mattel, stop playing with dolls and grow up!

Posted by: Jericho - 1/27/03 - 9:22 pm -

Hot Max Action

Since we have been down for a while, I know our legions of fans have been jonesing for some hot Max action. You all need to know the latest and the greatest that has been going on in your future king's life.

Since my last major post, I quit my security job. I am now selling drums at a major national purveyor of musical instruments. For the first time in my life, I have a job that I don't hate entirely hate. It is an odd experience. Of course, being my life there must be a downside somewhere. The pay is shit. So, I am going to be taking a second job doing tax returns. If that doesn't help out enough, I may just have to make a return to the less fun, but marginally more profitable IT field.

After all, I have responsibilities.

That is the other major change in my life. Come July, Laura and I will be be giving birth to a whole new generation of Dobbersteins. Thankfully we live in one of the few countries that doesn't consider such an act a crime against humanity.

This whole fatherhood thing is pretty weirdly intense yet coolish in a scary sort of way. So far, most of my experience of the pregnancy has been making trips to the grocery store to satisfy Laura's cravings. But every now and then, I get to see a little blob on an ultrasound screen, or hear the whoosh whooshing of a little heart on a fetal heart monitor. At those times, we run into one of those occasions when my good friends, words, go out for some coffee and maybe for a walk around the block, leaving me a gibbering wreck.

Who needs drugs?

Of course, there is always that little hope in the back of my mind that I can somehow make it as a writer/musician/lottery winner. My renewed discipline on my bass has been showing results. My once clumsy fingers are starting to show glimmers of grace. I still have a long way to go. But I have come such a way already. Even if I don't manage to make a living at it, I at least want my kid to grow up in a musical household. If I can't give him or her the financial advantages my parents gave me, I at least want it to have some creative/intellectual advantages.

Well, I am off to watch Super Bowl commercials. See ya.

Posted by: Max - 01/26/03 - 12:15pm CST -

Changes keep changing.

   I wanted to put this up these changes a little closer to the 16th of February - our anniversary. But, since I've made the major cuts, that leaves me time to add some content before the Irate Birthday - function over form!

   So, what do you think? Too sparse? Is the animated title too odd? The tool I used didn't speak my language and we had a couple of false starts - but I like the end result. And, it's small, it should load up pretty quick. You'll notice I removed a lot of the junk to make room for just the content. If I do put up a strip, I think this will help a lot.

   I tried to make it feel less cluttered over-all. You'll notice the pared down adverts. Frankly they aren't making us any money. We haven't made a dime off most of them. The only one that has given us any profit is the Doteasy link there on the left. Two people have signed up through that link. Okay, One person and myself for Orbitalmag.com. If eight more people sign up we'll get a check! Sure, and monkeys will come flying out of ... nevermind!

   Anyway, y'all let me know what you think. This is just the first step - a spring cleaning come early.

Posted by: Jericho - 1/25/03 - 11:54 pm -

We're baaaack!

   It's been several months, but we are back on the 'Net.

   And, we aren't going anywhere for quite a while. The site is again reserved until 2004. We'll be here bringing you exactly whatever it was we brought you before - maybe even more!

   I could give you all kinds of excuses and explanations of what happened. But, why? It happened, we're back, and so are you. I just want to go on and forget I ever left.

   Right now I am diligently working on a new look for the site. It will be brighter, cleaner and easy to read. We are bouncing ideas for new content and rehashing our old ideas as well.

   All I can say is that it feels good to be back. I've missed IWDC and I hope you've missed us, too.

Posted by: Jericho - 1/22/03 - 9:16 pm -

BTW

© 2002 by the Gentlemen known as Max and Jericho