The Dresden Files rulebook surprised me almost from the first page.  It was all in character from the perspective of one of the novel characters.  Billy the werewolf was writing an RPG for the sole purpose of informing people about the dangers they could face in the world.  He is following in the foot steps of Bram Stroker who in the Dresden world wrote his book as a veiled way to spread the methods of killing a specific type of vampire.  Harry and Bob the Skull serve as his proofreaders and leave frequently humorous post-it note style comments throughout the book.  I found myself drawn into the rulebook like I were reading a novel instead of jumping around like I usually do.  This book just had a different feel than other rule set I had seen and it was this feel and the short story written by Jim Butcher that finally drew me into the world enough to give the books another try.  It was less about the rules themselves but how they were being presented.  I was very short on time and didn’t think I could muster the focus needed for reading a series with so much going on.  I can always listen to an audiobook while working though and our local libraries do stock them.

Over the next two weeks I listened to all 12 Dresden Files novels as audiobooks on my ipod.  The world was so engrossing that I wanted to jump right to the next book as each one finished and all other podiobooks\podcasts took a backseat.  I was also building more and more game ideas from the books.  The further I got into them the more I wanted to run not just a one-shot, but a whole campaign.  The rules for city building and tying characters together seemed to be the perfect foundation for a strong game and would allow the players to have a big part of the world that is their own creation.  I just kept getting more and more excited about the system.

Then disaster struck.  Chad got sick with a nasty bug that lasted two week and generously shared it with the rest of us.  I caught the sickness and when I finally recovered I passed it on to my wife.  The other players we were expecting decided that they didn’t want to game as World of Warcraft was their current priority.  I had a few volunteers, but they were not new gamers and the sickness left me dragging and not in the mood to organize a game.  With each day the idea of a beginner’s game slipped further and further away.

I approached the Dresden Files RPG from the perspective of using it to change fans of the book into gamers.  What happened instead was the opposite.  I found a captivating world and the book changed me as a gamer into a fan.  I regret to say that as of writing this I have still not actually played the game, and I hope to rectify that someday soon and come back to share my experiences.  I can’t say for certain if the system is as new player friendly as I believe it is.  I know it was very easy to understand while reading it from a GMs perspective, but I don’t actually know how easy it is to run.  What I can say at this point is that for the first time I am a fan of a game system that I have not played and that to me is a very strange concept.

* Atomic Array: Episode 047: Dresden Files, Vol 1: Your Story

* d20 Source: Welcome to The Dresden Files

* Dice Monkey: The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game

* 3.5 Private Sanctuary: PS0 140- Flavour – Backstories

* Emerson’s Bookshelf: City Creation and Cooperative Play

* Gnome Stew: Werewolves and Harpies, oh my!

* Atomic Array: Episode048: Dresden Files, Vol 2: Our World

When people travel to Mexico the most common warning given is not to drink the water.  This is because we are used to much cleaner water that has been heavily filtered.  There are regulations regarding how food is prepared to ensure that everything eaten is safe for consumption.  There are still places in the world where these standards are not followed.  For the most part the citizens there do not have any issues with their food, because they are accustomed to it and have the needed bacteria in their stomachs to handle it.  Travelers, however, are not prepared for the parasites and bacteria contained by the food and water.  The human body can adjust in about 6 months, but until that time it would be unpleasant.

A Time Traveler would be used to the food and water standards of their home time.  If they were to travel into the past these standards would be much lower and thus the food and water would likely cause them similar distress as to what I am feeling when cheating on my diet or travelers experience when they drink the water in Mexico.  It is possible to die from improperly cooked food, but much more likely that these wayward travelers would simply fall ill.

A larger concern would be the diseases that are carried into the past or future timeline.  Much like traveling to less developed countries, a trip through time would require inoculations to ensure that the traveler does not come down with the diseases of the time.  Long extinct diseases could easily wipe out a traveler who is unprepared for them.  There is nothing, however, that can protect the other time from the Traveler.  Viruses and diseases would be a concern both ways.  A Traveler would be at risk of contracting something, but they are equally at risk of releasing a virus that has mutated into a much stronger strain by having been fought for years.  A Time Traveler could very easily release a plague that could cause irreparable damage to the time they are visiting.

These concerns are generally overlooked in Time Travel stories.  I suspect the reasoning is that bathroom trips are not major plot points outside of comedic value, though certainly the traveler wouldn’t find it particularly funny.  The virus outbreak is a particularly difficult concern to deal with so it is generally glossed over.  These are concerns and not necessarily major plot points.  There are easier ways to tell these stories with factory created viruses than to introduce the potentially confusing aspect of time travel.  The easiest way to deal with these concerns is heavy testing of the individuals traveling, a strong round of inoculations, and a period of adjustment to the food preparation methods present in the destination time.

Throughout history the tides of war have often shifted due to single decisions or unforeseen events.  If these events could be manipulated, a loss could be turned into a victory.  What would happen if both sides were trying to modify these events?  This could lead to a loop where each side constantly undid the work of the other.  It would only take a cycle or two of this before both sides became aware of the other’s temporal meddling.

With a true time war started, escalation would come quickly.  It would start small with weapons from the future being brought back.  Each side would progressively jump farther into the future to get better and better weapons or armor.  If this escalation were allowed to continue it could lead to weapons capable of large scale destruction being deployed; it is more likely though that both sides would realize that future tech could not win the war.

With future tech proving useless both sides might look to the past for their victory.  With teams being sent into the past it would become a high priority to develop technology that could track temporal energies or at least put spies in place to determine where operatives were being sent.  Strategic strikes against location capable of time travel would be launched in the current timeline while missions to the past would be aimed at preventing the enemy from discovering time travel in the first place.

Whether time travel was being used to bring technology back or to make strikes in the past, it would become the ultimate weapon.  Each side would have to be aware that its use would lead to a retaliatory use and that escalation could place the whole time stream in danger.  This has the potential of creating a temporal cold war.  Both sides of the conflict would be watching the other for signs of an attempt to wipe them from time itself and any indication of temporal activity could lead to mutual destruction.

A temporal Cold War is a concept I have yet to see done well in any media.  Enterprise played with the concept throughout their first three seasons, but it was less of a cold war than one side making strategic strikes while the other side tried to stop them.  Time Travel brings with it an inherent risk of convolution, inconsistency, and decisions being made without proper thought, because they can be redone.  With a temporal cold war added to a story, every action taken in time would have to be a balancing act because it would be risking further escalation.  This endless loop of escalation and how to overcome it has great potential when added to a story involving temporal war, and a temporal cold war is a logical extension of that.

The most common supporting fact used in the argument that Superheroes should kill is that police and soldiers kill.  I would like to point out that killing is a last resort for police, and they are trained to wound.  Every shot fired has to be accounted for and paperwork has to be filed.  In these cases the position comes with jurisdiction and accountability.  Superheroes typically don’t have either of these.  They appoint themselves and by killing would be saying that they know who should live or die.  I do concede, though, that it does not make much sense for a government sanctioned team that is part of the military to not kill unless it is a PR decision.

Would anybody accuse a doctor of being immature?  Doctors take an oath to do no harm, and this concept constantly comes up on TV shows.  Every medical show on the air has dealt with doctors getting a questionable patient and having to make the hard decision of whether or not to save them.  I have never heard anyone call these stories immature for exploring that concept.  Is ER immature because its doctors don’t kill?  If a firefighter were to save the life of a murderer would they then be called immature?  I would argue that these two professions are more closely related to Superhero, because their primary function is to save lives. Still in both cases there is an authority and accountability that Superheroes lack.

While I feel that killing your enemies when you have the power to do otherwise is taking the easy way out, I do enjoy these darker stories as well.  These stories explore concepts that would taint long standing characters.  Superman for example should never kill, but Hyperion can give you those stories while Superman remains untouched.  Killing, though, seems to be a throwaway action for these types of characters.  The slippery slope of who and what have earned death is very rarely explored.  Even rarer is dealing with the psychological turmoil that killing could cause a person.

I personally read just as many stories about heroes that kill as I do about those that don’t.  There is a distinctly different feel between the two, but neither is inherently more mature than the other, and both types have their merits.  Too often titles that call themselves mature focus less on the story and more on the nudity and foul language.  They essentially become shock titles.  Murder is never a requirement for a story to be mature, but it could be a strong component in exploring the psychology of a hero.

With time travel all the greatest questions about history could be answered.  Scientist could research and catalog extinct species of plants and animals.  In our world paleontologists have done their best to determine what Dinosaurs looked like and how they behaved.  These are still mostly theories though.  In a world with time travel we would know exactly how dinosaurs looked and be able to study their behavioral patterns.  Quite possibly the most important thing we would learn about Dinosaurs though is exactly how and why they died.

Any event in history that is disputed could be viewed, studied, and documented.  Documentaries could contain actual video of the events they are describing instead of recreations, though the recreations may be more detailed and entertaining than the actual events.  The great mysteries of the world like the original use of Stonehenge or the method used to build the pyramids would move from the category of mystery to a documented process.  The exact location of Atlantis would be added to historical maps.  Suddenly the skills needed to uncover history would drastically change and the need to keep the subjects from realizing that they are being studied would be far more important as they are now living breathing specimens.

Knowledge of most past events would not have a major impact on a society, but knowledge of certain key events could.  Certain events that touch on subjects that we do not discuss here could be viewed and would have dramatic impact on society as details were clarified or collaborated.  It is hard to believe that events of religious significance would not be some of the first to be witnessed.

There would be many temptations to use time travel in seemingly beneficial ways.  Trips to the future could cure diseases or bring back medical technology to save lives.  With the technology already available there would be no need for the research to actually develop it.  Both this and the survivors would change the future that the technology had come from.  If future technology were to be banned in an effort to avoid this, then patients with enough money would be tempted to travel to a time when they could receive better treatment.  Petitions would likely be drawn up to restore extinct species or to perhaps intervene in tragedies throughout history to save lives.  Every tragedy that happens would lead to an immediate call of fixing it just this once.  Even the best intentions, though, can have unexpected consequences.

For these and tactical reasons, if government scientists were the ones to discover time travel it would likely be classified and kept secret.  Only the highest ranking officials would be allowed to know that this technology was available.  These politicians then would be subject to the same temptations of time travel that the general public would be if they only knew of its possibility.  Political campaigns would be much easier if the person in power could see the events of the future and proactively deal with them.  In times of war, leaders would be tempted to view the future battle and change plans based on effectiveness.  In the case of a failed operation they would likely send back communications to themselves of its failure.  While this has the potential of saving lives, it also becomes far more complicated if the other society also has access to time travel technology.  The potential for a time war or an inevitable temporal cold war would grow with each society that discovers time travel.  That possibility and the implications will be the topic of my next blog.

Predestination Paradox, causality loop, and retrocausality are all terms to deal with essentially the same concept.  Instead of the typical cause and effect relationship in this case, the effect actually operates as the cause.  To give a very simple example of this concept let’s say that you are given a picture of yourself with a future date on it, at a location you have never been to.  You are curious as to how someone would get this picture and why you would be in that location, so you go there at the time listed on the photo.  You have now taken the action of going there, because you saw that you were going to go there.  Again this is a very simplistic example, but it should explain what I am talking about here.  In most cases, the characters actually discover something unpleasant is going to happen and end up causing that very thing to happen by trying to prevent it.

I personally have a few huge issues with causality loops.  Essentially, they are an accepted paradox where there is no explanation of the original source.  If we look at time as a line where point A is the time you are presented with future knowledge and point B is the future event actually happening, we see the loop then created between these two points in time.  This loop would essentially continue into infinity, because each time it occurs it generates another instance of itself.  The events of the future would not have happened on their own without knowledge of them, though.  Something had to have set this loop into motion the first time, but that aspect of the story never seems to be told.  These stories can get particularly frustrating for me when the characters give up the free will of their actions to just act based on what they know of the future.

Ontological Paradoxes take this concept to their extreme.  In the case of an ontological paradox, an object from one point in time is taken to another point in time (usually the past) and becomes the very thing that is discovered in the future.  As an example, a father gives his son a pocket watch.  The son then travels back in time and in some strange turn of events ends up giving his father the very watch that he will someday be given.  In this case the watch is stuck in a paradoxical loop.  It doesn’t seem to have a creation, and despite going through this loop an infinite number of times it does not seem to be aging as would be expected.  The object simply exists with no explanation of how.  I have read many stories that involve this concept, but I have only found one that actually dealt with the origins of the object.  In the worst case, a person can end up becoming their own ancestor, thus creating a real paradox where a human being exists that shouldn’t.

My basic issue with all of these concepts is that they don’t make logical sense.  Not everything in entertainment needs to make sense, but Science Fiction is based in science, and circular logic just doesn’t fit.  I also cannot see any way a causality loop could work in a game since it is essentially forcing the players into a situation that they will likely try to avoid just because they feel railroaded.  That being said, I am currently enjoying a TV show based on a causality loop, but it does frustrate me.

If you can travel through time, can you make changes?  There are many scientific theories that deal with this very question from the standpoint of paradoxes not being possible.  The Novikov self-consistency principle for example states that if an event has the chance to create a paradox, the probability of that event occurring will be 0.  Essentially this theory proposes that if you try to change the past something will happen to prevent you from making the change.

This can be interpreted two ways.  One would be that the universe will not allow the paradox to happen.  I personally discount this entirely, because it would require the universe to have desires and intervene.  The other concept is that the past has already occurred, so if someone goes back to try to change it, they obviously have failed because here in the present that change did not occurred.  This is a far more acceptable theory, but leads to a boring story.  If your time traveler cannot make changes, then what is the point of the trip.  It could be a trip of discovery, but following this theory puts many limitations on your story.

The only theories scientists seem to take seriously in regard to making changes revolve around alternate realities.  If a person makes a change they are then creating an alternate reality.  Their original reality still exists, but they are now cut off from it and there is the potential for a temporal clone to exist.

Alternate realities provide many options, but they also present one major issue.  Any time traveler from the future — by the nature of just being there — has cut themselves off from their own time.  How big of a change would need to be made before a temporal clone situation arises?   Because decisions have not yet been made and time travelers can change things, then any trip to the future would have to be only a potential future.  By seeing that future you are then ensuring that at least minor changes will occur because of your knowledge.  You also then have to deal with many potential futures for every universe.  If time travel occurs after the split why wouldn’t multiple versions of you from different alternate realities run into each other when they go back to a time before the split occurred?  This methodology can be interesting, but tends to just be too convoluted for my tastes.  A paradox cannot occur because there are an infinite number of realities.

Another method that allows for changes to be made is similar to the previous method.  In this case an alternate reality is created by the change, but the original one now no longer exists.  There is only one timeline and any change causes it to readjust itself.  This is my preferred method of dealing with time travel.  It allows for changes, paradoxes, and can provide the largest sense of drama.  If your actions can risk your own existence, it makes everything you do that much more important.  If you subscribe to the butterfly effect this method also has the most potential for suspenseful stories.

The down side is that this method also doesn’t attempt to answer paradoxes at all.  Your characters typically have to find a way to avoid changes themselves and are thus combating paradoxes.  The real question is that if they change their world enough for them to have never time traveled to begin with, if they were to return to their own time would it have to be a temporal clone?  Also since the characters are typically trying to fix what they have changed, you generally don’t see what would happen to the world if the character that made the change had suddenly never been born and thus could not have traveled back in time.  The way comic books typically deal with this concept is to say that while the person may not exist anymore in the future, they did exist at a point before the change was made since they were the one making the change.  Thus a character may fade, but their actions did occur because they were there before the timeline diverged.

However you want to handle time travel in your story or game, you have to decide in the beginning if the past can be changed, and if so what method you will be using to show these changes.  While I’m sure it is possible to make it work, I just don’t personally see a way to make a game work if you are traveling through time but cannot change it.  That would likely just lead to frustration from your players.

Like Dan, I have a Science Fiction passion that I have spent years reading about and pondering.  In my case it is Time Travel.  Unfortunately I find that there are far more bad time travel stories out there than good ones.  That tends to lead into long rants in person where I can’t help but get off topic and bore people to tears.  So in the vein of Dan’s Capital Ship Combat articles I, too, would like to explore my Science Fiction passion and share my views in a series of blogs.  If you have any interest in Time Travel or just Science Fiction in general, I hope you will enjoy this series.  I also hope it will give everyone something to think about and generate many interesting debates and conversations.

What kind of Time Travel will we be discussing?

When it comes to time travel there appear to be two options.  You can either send your physical body through time, or you can project your consciousness back into a previous version of yourself or others.  The physical travel seems to be the most common method used by Science Fiction writers, but there have been interesting stories about both.  If you are sending only your consciousness, you usually have the extra plot hooks of having to live the day-to-day life while doing whatever you have come back to do.  Physical travel tends to put your characters outside of day-to-day events until they ultimately make a mistake and change something they were not supposed to.  For the case of these articles either method of time travel could be used, but from this point on I will focus on physical travel unless otherwise stated.

There are many concepts and many different takes on Time travel and how it would work.  I will avoid going into too many Einsteinian principals except were absolutely necessary such as when discussing absolute time and space and spacetime. To be clear though, at least at first I do not want to get into the actual methodology and theory behind how the travel itself works.

Ok, but what about Time Travel do you want to talk about then?

I want to start off by framing my initial discussions.  The far more interesting conversations revolve around how Time Travel works once you reach your destination and what that means to the travelers and society.  To give you a framework: drafts of the first three installments are already written and will focus on whether you can change the past, having the effects be the cause, and how a society would be impacted by time travel technology. I will keep this very high level at first to see what kind of feedback I receive, but in each case I could easily go into much more detail on any topic if there is an interest.

Finally I will be giving examples for many situations, but I will be creating each example myself and will intentionally try to avoid giving TV, movie, or book examples because I feel that will lead to conversations about those properties and not about the intended example.  That does not eliminate the chance of a future installment focusing on time travel in various media and what I think some of the major stories did right or wrong.

When you went to a BBS everyone knew your name.  It might be a handle, but it was you nonetheless.  It didn’t matter how popular you were in the everyday world.  You could play games with these people and just generally hang out.  There was a mechanism for file sharing so you could post pictures or files that others would find interesting.  The best part though was that you could talk about anything you wanted and someone would probably be interested.

The days of the BBS suddenly became numbered, though.  With the spread of the internet, new communication technologies started to eat away at the popularity.  The idea of a small, local community suddenly gave way to national or international chat rooms.  These had none of the small charm of the BBS and were all about instant gratification.  My collection of boards slowly shrank from 12 down until there were none left still running.  It was sad to see these go, but to be honest by the end they were barely echoes of what they once had been.

As this wave of nostalgia hit me I suddenly came to an obvious conclusion.  The BBS didn’t die; it just migrated to internet forums.  Internet forums provide all the functionality that a BBS ever did.  If you need information on a specific topic there is a forum out there dedicated to it where people will have no problem telling you everything there is to know about that topic, and just like on the old BBSes, some of it will even be accurate.  These very forums have proved that local events can still occur.

It seems like such a simple concept, but I for one had never really made that connection until now.  So in the new age of Twitter, texting, Facebook, and generally the second age of instant gratification communication technologies, I can’t help but worry about the future of this technology that has taken the place of my beloved BBS.  It is important to remember though that the BBS didn’t die — it just evolved.   It was my own unwillingness to accept change that kept me from seeing this.  If it happens again and someday forums don’t get traffic anymore, there will be another technology to fill that need.

1)   Locations are your background not your plot.  On my second week I prepared my location too much.  I had fully written descriptions for each room, but realized quickly that my players were getting bored with it.  They didn’t care to hear about a room that wasn’t related to the plot, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have either.  I was so worried about making sure my locations were well thought out that I allowed them to become the focus instead of the story I was trying to tell.

2) NEVER allow any one person or item to be essential to your plot. I was not at all prepared for the players to decide that my creepy character deserved to be attacked.  I knew that I couldn’t anticipate everything that they would do and was able to adapt, but when my whole plot required interaction by a single character and they wanted to kill him, I looked like a deer in the headlights.  Experienced GMs would know how to react to this, but as a new GM you can’t have a single point of failure.  I did let the players kill my creepy character, but I had to find a way to make them wait until he had done what I needed him to first.

3)  Prepare stats for characters even if you don’t anticipate a fight. I didn’t expect my players to attack my creepy character, but they were so freaked out by him that they really wanted him dead.  I didn’t have anything prepared for him or his guards in combat.  It wasn’t opposed to a fight and I did during some periods of stalling figure something out for them.  I just didn’t ever think I would need stats for these characters.

4)  Don’t feel like you have to stick to a script. Players will always do things you don’t expect and these can be the best moments of the game.  In my first week one of the things that I did particularly well was react to player decisions that I did not expect.  Subplots quickly grew out of these actions that I had never intended and I found afterward that these were the moments everyone talked about the most.  The players will latch on to things and you will be presented with opportunities during the course of the game that you never anticipated.  Don’t be afraid to go down these tangents, because you will be surprised how easily they can fit into your plot.  If your players are having fun with something it only makes the game easier for you, and they never need to know that it wasn’t something that you had planned.

The most important thing to remember is to just have fun.  If you are having fun, then your players are more likely to have fun.  Your first game won’t be perfect and you will make mistakes.  These are your friends or else you wouldn’t be gaming with them, and they will understand that you are new.  Your worst critic is likely to be yourself.

There are a few franchises out there, but they seem to be the exception that proves the rule.  In each case the franchise is a regional store, and the region rarely extends past the county or city.  These are not true franchises, because they are typically owned by the same individual.  Everywhere this occurs, these stores seem to do better and last longer than the stand alone competition.  I’m not entirely convinced this is due solely to name recognition though.

Comic Book and Game stores are typically opened by fans that have a passion for the hobby.  They want to make their hobby their career, so they take out loans or use their own collection to help fill their shelves.  This is the passion that drives the business forward, and in many cases that alone keeps the shop open.  The problem is that passion is not business sense.  The typical shop owner has motivation and many of the qualities needed to run a business.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to set up displays, advertise, or handle the finances of a business.

Comic and game stores typically look horrible.  They typically look like a college dorm room exploded inside a strip mall.  Posters wallpaper the room and cover the windows.  Displays typically are poorly lit and there is little to no striping.  This is partially due to the small order sizes, but also due to a lack of experience.  Expensive collectible items that likely will never sell are hung all over the store.  The general atmosphere just does not look like a serious business and thus people outside of the hobby are less likely to feel comfortable coming into the store.

Comic shop owners eventually need to hire employees.  The shop owners typically look to friends or customers for this role.  They think that others with a passion for the subject will be able to talk intelligently about it and won’t mind the slow periods because they can read.  The problem there is that these are not salesmen.  They don’t have any form of training to teach them how to treat costumers with respect or to try and upsell without being pushy.  More often than not they simply ignore the customer or drive them from the store with high pressure sales techniques.  At worst they are paid in merchandise that would have been bought by customers but they held aside for themselves.

There is a very small markup to this merchandise and a market that is gradually shrinking.   This leads to even someone with a strong business sense and a good crew not making much profit.  Successful shop owners can make a good living, but that isn’t enough to be able to afford opening a second or third shop, let alone building a franchise.  The few franchises that do exist I strongly feel do so due to their owners having a better business sense than many others.  That is not to say that some owners don’t have an excellent business sense and are just satisfied with a single shop.

There is a great potential for a comic\game store franchise, but the steps needed to create mass appeal are the very things that could drive away existing customers.  These are niche markets and part of the appeal of going into shops is their atmosphere.  While that atmosphere may prevent new customers it also provides the money needed to keep a shop running.  It doesn’t matter how many customers you pull into your store if they are not going to spend money.

What I do know is that I have searched out a comic shop in almost every town I have visited, and they are typically difficult to find.  You never know what you are going to get until you get there.  Some shops have custom made fixtures and work on providing a very professional appearance.  Others I wouldn’t want to touch the counter without disinfectant.   It would be nice to know, but since I already have a pull list it is this mystery of what I could find that drives me to the stores.  I have seen a number of stores over the years that have not fallen prey to these common business shortcomings.  Only time will tell though if these shops last longer than their more typical counterparts.

With the success of Wii Sports, it is safe to say that Wii Sports Resort has to once again raise the bar  to be worthy of the name.  This time the new technology being demoed comes in the form of an attachment called Wii MotionPlus and gives the Wiimote a greater ability to sense player movement.  This is most clearly seen in games like swordplay, frisbee, and tabletop tennis where you are holding objects that move completely freely in your hands as you twist and turn the controller.  The impact of Wii Sports on the system is undeniable, but can Wii Sports Resort and the new Wii MotionPlus live up to the original?

The game intro tries to pull you in and get you excited about the new technology.  Unfortunately the first time you play the game you have to sit through a three minute video explaining how to hook up that technology.  There is no magic “I’m not an idiot just load the game” button to let you skip past the video either.  Once you do get past this tutorial — assuming you didn’t break your TV from throwing your controller at it — your Mii goes into a skydiving mini-game.  It is an amusing introduction to what the controller can do, but you cannot pick your Mii.  In my case, to start the game I had to skydive as my wife instead of myself.   For those that do enjoy this pointless mini-game an expanded version is included in the Air Sports section.   Minor changes like the addition of legs and Wii Fit inspired menus are welcome additions.

I have gotten more questions about Swordplay than the rest of the game combined.  Under the Swordplay category there are three games.  Duel is a fight on top of a raised platform where the goal is to knock your opponent off into the water.  The sword does move exactly like you are holding it and shows the true potential for a sword fighting game.  Unfortunately the AI is ridiculously easy to defeat at first.  As your score goes up you are presented with more difficult opponents, but to be honest none of them have presented a challenge thus far.  In Speed Slice an item is presented, and you have to slice it in the direction shown on the screen quicker than your opponent.   Finally Showdown is a throwback to all of those old Kung-Fu movies.  You are presented with waves of one hit-point people coming at you, swords raised.   They even included the setting of an old rope bridge.  Overall this category is one of the best in the game and shows the potential for sword fighting games to actually be fun.  Of course it is now up to the game manufacturers to follow through.  Ubisoft is the first to step up to that plate with Red Steel 2 later this year.  Only time will tell if it’s successful or disappoints as much as the original Red Steel.

The hidden gem is Archery.  If you play right handed you hold the Wiimote in your left hand and the nunchuk in your right.  You aim the shot with the Wiimote and pull the arrow back with the nunchuk.  The faster you pull back the nunchuk the faster you will focus on the screen.  Wind and arch have to be taken into account when aiming instead of just setting your sites to the bull’s-eye.  The thwipping sound coming out of the Wiimote’s speaker added an extra level of immersion into the game.  I hope that if there is another Legend of Zelda game for the Wii, it will steal this mechanic.

A few other games deserve noting, but there are far too many for in-depth reviews.   Bowling, Golf, and Tabletop Tennis all got mechanical upgrades from previous versions in the Wii series.  Frisbee Golf was a true standout on this game by far overshadowing the Frisbee Dog that unlocks it.  Wakeboarding was surprisingly fun, but the directions are not the most intuitive.  Finally Dogfight is an aerial battle between planes to gather balloons and shoot your opponent’s balloons.  The flight controls are simply the best I have ever experienced on a flying game.  Dogfight and Skydiving leave me hoping for both a more advanced jetfighter game and a superhero game.

Every game can’t be good though, and Wii Sports Resort has a few that either needed more work or just aren’t fun.  The game that stands out most in this category is Cycling.  You are riding a bicycle by moving the Wiimote and nunchuk up and down rapidly.  You steer by tilting them left, right, and up.  The mechanic is not fun and leaves you exhausted by the end of the race.  It isn’t innovative game play and I don’t see any reason the MotionPlus is even needed for this.  Also, a personal pet peeve of mine with game developers is that they don’t realize that most people HATE split screen multiplayer mode.  For games like cycling it is necessary, but for Duel most players don’t need to see thru their character’s eyes just to fight.  The recently released Punch-Out also suffers from this.

Final Recommendation:  Wii Sports Resort buy, rent, or avoid?  BUY.  It will quickly become your new go to game to show people what the Wii is like.  Now if only it actually represented what most Wii games were like.

Over the years City of Heroes has had to adapt to the market and fan requests.  PvP, crafting, and special drops were all added to the game in a manner that allowed them to be completely optional.  PvP was first introduced as an arena, and later as zones dedicated to that purpose.  Crafting was introduced as something to expand your Supergroup base and has expanded to enhancements, temporary powers, and costume pieces.  With crafting came rare drops, an auction house, and an in game economy.

The developers of City of Heroes have introduced some truly innovative game mechanics in response to fan requests.

• The sidekick\exemplar system allows players of different levels to adjust themselves up or down to the other players’ level. This was designed to let new players play with veterans without the veteran players needing to create new characters.
• Global Chat channels allow players to communicate with each other regardless of the character or even server they are playing on.
• Players are given rewards based on the amount of time they have subscribed to the game. These can be powers, costume pieces, or other in game extras. They give veterans additional bonuses to deal with some of the limitations of new characters.
• Ouroboros missions allowed players to go back and complete any story arcs that they missed when they played through the game or just replay their favorite arcs any time they want.
• The badge system gives rewards to players that want to explore maps and provides something for completionists to strive for.
• A difficulty adjustment system allows advanced players to increase the difficulty of their missions to present more of a challenge.

So innovation is nothing new to city of Heroes, but with their latest free expansion “Issue 14: Architect” they have introduced a feature that is truly unique among MMOs.  The Architect system allows players to create their own story arcs and publish them for other players to experience.   A player creating an arc chooses the number of missions, the objectives, and all text associated with the missions.  This allows a player to create anything from a single mission to an Epic Taskforce.  The arcs are not limited to in game villains and villain groups either.  The innovative City Of Heroes character creator is available for players to create their own custom villain groups to inhabit their missions.  You can adjust the look, difficulty, and powers of these villains while creating your story arc.  Also as an added incentive to play other users missions you receive tickets that can be turned in to unlock additional content for your own missions.

While City of Heroes may not fit what everyone is looking for in an MMO with this issue it continues to provide features that other development teams would be wise to pay close attention to.  COH has a strong community and while it might not have as many subscribers as some other games, its fans are easily more vocal and supportive.  That is in no small part due to the creators focusing on ways to expand on that community.  Early in the game’s life one of the developers spent some of his off time to code a dance club because players were requesting a save non-combat location to meet and just hang out with their friends.  Costume contests, trivia games, and hide and seek are events frequently run by super groups in the starting zones.   This new Architect system just expands on those concepts.  If you have a group of people that love your product and spend a lot of time thinking about it they will keep the game interesting if you just provide them the tools and get out of their way.  The true key to being successful in the MMORPG business is to make your players feel invested in the game so they don’t want to leave.

If this blog has interested you, you can try a free 14-day trial of City of Heroes.

Role-playing games are complicated. One trend I saw in the replies was that role-playing games seem overly complicated with weird dice and advanced math.  Generally the concept of dice being anything other than the six-sided variety seems strange to most non-gamers.  The math concept seems to be a larger drawback.  People see the math involved as overly complicated and don’t see how a game that involves it could be fun.

All Role-playing games are all PvP. People are used to games having a winner.  As such they assume that role-playing games are the same way.  They don’t see the point of a game where everyone is working together and there is not a clear winner at the end.  The idea of games being just a social event and about the game itself — instead of victory — is a foreign concept.  Working together just doesn’t seem to come together with a game for most people.

All role-playing games are fantasy. It should not be a surprise that almost all ten people mentioned Dungeons and Dragons in their answers.   The idea of a Sci-fi, Western, or any other genre role-playing game is something that most non-gamers do not seem to have ever considered.  The prevalence of Dungeons and Dragons in popular media is likely the reason for this as some people seem to think that the terms “role-playing game” and “Dungeons and Dragons” are interchangeable.

Role-playing games are pointless and don’t take any skill. This one I actually did not expect.  There was a sentiment that role-playing games, since they are done sitting around a table, take no effort at all and don’t require any deep thinking.  Some people think that you just sit around telling stories with no rules and nothing to keep everyone in line.  One comment was, “If all your stats and information is on a sheet of paper, what is to keep you from just erasing it and writing in something better?”  They seem to think that if you want something that you could just write it down and suddenly have it.

Role-players are all socially inept males who dress in costumes and play in their parents’ basement. Let’s face it: this is the one everyone was expecting.  This was the only answer that every one of the ten gave some variation of.  The idea of women playing is completely out of the question for most people.  I don’t know exactly where this stereotype came from, but it definitely has invaded the population’s consciousness.  Many of the replies included bad hygiene in their descriptions as well, but that likely comes from the socially inept and basement stereotypes.   There is this idea too that these people are the “uber geeks” (a term provided by 3 of the 10) who slur their works and spit when they talk about their characters.  The idea that they were all middle-aged also seemed to come up frequently.  My favorite reply was, “Chad but with patchier facial hair, a stained shirt and really bad BO.”

If you want to bring someone new into the hobby or explain your hobby to non-gamers, keep in mind that these are the kind of thoughts going through the average person’s mind.  These are the concepts that are associated with role-players, and this is the mountain that must be climbed to reach the truth.  By just admitting that you are a player you could be shattering a mental image that has been created by the mass media.

A few years ago I moved. The original shop I had been going to for 10 years was now 20 miles away. I still went there every week to pick up my pull list even though there was now a shop right down the street. My shop didn’t get everything I wanted, so I would actually hit multiple shops in one day, wasting gas and buying more at each than I should have. In fact I only moved my pull list to the current shop when my old shop changed owners and had a few months without books. While I might be on the extreme side the sentiment ‘comic shop loyalty’ is a very pervasive concept.

So just what is it that makes a person so loyal to a shop that they are willing to pay a little more or go out of their way? Well there are many factors, and the answer is likely to vary from person to person. The strongest one seems to be personal relationships. When you go to the same store every week you get to know the people who work there. In most cases you meet the owner and he knows you by name. This creates a strong relationship with that shop. If you like the owner, you want to see the shop do well and the idea of moving your list makes you feel guilty for taking money away from them. The pull list also makes ending this relationship harder. You have to tell them in-person that you are leaving the store instead of just moving on. This is hard to do when you have talked to the person every week for years.

In a comic shop you generally feel that you are accepted. Everywhere else in the world may look down on your hobby, but here you are among your people. Here you can debate and have hour long conversations with people who have the same interests as you. This much time in any location is bound to create a sense of place.

With the growth of Trade Paperbacks and Graphic novels, the local comic shops may be losing some of this loyalty. Trades can be picked up at most book stores now so new readers may not get into the habit of going to a shop. Readers don’t need to come into the shop every week when buying trades, so that further creates a separation from the store. While it may or may not hurt the local shops in the end, separating from the idea of comic shop loyalty can only help the fans. They need to realize that Comic Book Shops are businesses and it is in their best interest to choose the business that best suits their needs. So with this in mind will I be changing my shop? Of course not, it’s far too late for me. I’m already loyal.

I want to talk about the stigma associated with role-playing games and how it can be a hurdle to bringing new players into the hobby.

The podcast has done an excellent job of defining this stigma and discussing how to deal with your personal “Gamer Shame”.  The one aspect of it they haven’t touched on is the slippery slope concept.  This is the idea that a person acknowledges their own level of geekness and is comfortable there only by being able to point out something further down the slope.  An argument using this logic would sound like, “Sure I read comics, but at least I don’t play Dungeons and Dragons.  Those guys are really weird.”   I think most people will find that they do this to some degree if they really look closely enough at themselves.  I could point to examples from the podcast talking about LARPers, but that probably isn’t the best example, because let’s face it, they really are weird.

Another aspect of the gaming stigma to explore is how it can affect new players when they experience it firsthand.   The podcast has discussed gateway games and how to walk players past the stigma and get them to the table.  But once they are there, if you don’t prepare them they may not be ready for the reaction of their non-gaming friends.

The first few games are key to solidifying a new player’s interest, and if they are not confident in themselves or the hobby, they could easily be shaken by the ridicule that can come from their friends, family, or significant others upon finding out about the new hobby.  Anyone who has delved into the realm of geekness that we all call home has dealt with this in relation to their own hobbies.  Someone new to a hobby might not be mentally ready for this or have the tools to defend against it.  At this critical juncture, you don’t want anything to scare them off, but that also includes you trying to over prepare them.

So how do you get past these issues?

To get past the initial stigmas I would suggest easing them in without any pressure at all.  It is a safe bet that if they are a geek in other ways, they have at least a passing curiosity about the hobby.  Making sure they know where to get the information at their own pace is the best thing you can do to bring them into the hobby.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record I have not seen anything that accomplishes this better than a CD of episode 115.  The key though is to take it slow and be very understanding of potentially stupid questions.  As mentioned before, when they are ready for a game, make it something they would be interested in.  Heavy fantasy, for example, can be overwhelming for someone who is not a fan.

Getting past the peer ridicule can be a little more difficult.  The level of preemptive action required for this is inversely proportional to the strength of a person’s self-confidence.  For someone strong in themselves, who doesn’t worry about what others think about them, this might never be an issue at all and need not be mentioned.  For someone, however, that tends to fall into trends or is worried about self-image, not bringing it up could prevent the hobby from sticking.  For these people it is also helpful to keep in mind that the people who ridicule others tend to be the ones that are also the most insecure.

You can approach finding a group from a couple directions.  You could start by just picking a server and talking to people in game until you find interesting people.  You could also search the internet for communities dedicated to the game you are interested in.  I find that a combination of both is the best route.  You start playing on servers and learn who you seem to enjoy seeing logged on.  Listen to them discuss other servers they play on, and if you have xfire or something similar to track movements, watch where clans that you are interested in seem to gather.  Then you hunt down their forums or other large communities and see if the members are also a personality match outside of the game.  The more you post on forums, the more you will quickly find that certain clans seem to be more of a fit for you than others.

Once you have picked out a clan, the real key is to get face time with them.  Post on forums they frequent, play on servers they play, and just generally be around.  It is a careful line to walk though because you don’t want to come off as a creepy tagalong, but you do want to be memorable.

Eventually, if you have made your impression someone from the group will approach you on the forums or in game.  If you aren’t patient enough or just want to take a more active role, most clans have a recruiting section of their forums where you can express interest.  In my case, I contacted someone within the group that I had talked to frequently and began asking questions about what being in a clan was like.  After the conversation, he brought it to a vote within the group, and they extended their invitation to me.  Generally most clans invite people by a vote of the members, and once a decision is made the thread used for the vote is deleted before giving the new member access.

It can be hard to accept when the clans days are over.  Sometimes a group will be ripped apart in a massive fight, but more commonly it dies slowly as the group grows apart.  The slow decline of games’ popularity tends to be the leading cause of this disconnect.  As people begin to migrate to other games it becomes difficult to stay together.  The forums grow less and less active each month, and the days of weekly get togethers with other groups are long past.   If the group was truly close and became strong friends, then the death of a game won’t be enough to keep them apart.  I know of clans that have stayed together and still talk on their forums when the game that brought them together has been dead for over three years.

I have been a geek for as long as I can remember, and while I have taken part in just about every aspect of geek culture, I had not taken part in a tabletop role playing game until this past Sunday.  I had done MMORPGs, so I did have some of the basic concepts down, but speaking as an outsider, there is a huge barrier to cross from video games to RP games.

I have always been interested in RPGs but never had the opportunity to try one.  There was also a bit of stigma around role-playing that held me back from searching out more information.  I admit it, and if you want to bring people into the hobby you will have to accept that the stereotypes are hard to get past even among other stereotyped groups.  It was someone at work talking openly about gaming that allowed that opening to get information without going outside my comfort zone.   Fear the Boot’s Episode 115 was an incredible resource for learning about the hobby at my own pace.  I highly recommend giving a CD of this episode to anyone who has even remotely expressed interest in the hobby.

The opportunity presented itself to join a group and try out the hobby.  I was nervous going over to create my character that first night.  I tried to be as prepared as possible, but I was left wondering just what it was going to be like.  This process was a little confusing for me going into it.  I understood the basic concepts from reading and research, but selecting base numbers for attributes was tricky when I didn’t know what the number I chose would mean in game.  I would guess that knowing what trade-offs are worth making is something that can only come with experience.

All this led to my first gaming session.  The group was very welcoming and seemed to be understanding of the fact that I was really winging it and didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  If the group had been more stand-offish or hadn’t gone out of their way to make me feel welcome I could easily have seen my interest in the hobby dying.   After about 10 minute or so of game time I quit worrying about saying the wrong thing or looking stupid and just started enjoying the experience.

There were some things that truly surprised me.  One player was shaken by accidentally killing an NPC and both he and I were amazed by how much it affected him.  I was surprised by the level of debate involved in some of the actions.  More than anything I found myself listening for every little detail and really focusing on certain clues.  I kept trying to piece together the larger picture and how every clue tied into it.  Mostly, going in I was afraid of being overwhelmed by the math and not knowing what any of it meant.  While this was a very numbers light game there is still a bit of that.  When I roll I don’t know if it is a good roll or a bad roll.

All in all, the group I played with went out of their way to make me feel welcome to the point that even though I still have A LOT to learn, I don’t think I will feel like an outsider to the hobby for very long.  The best advice I can give, other than giving Episode 115 to a prospective gamer, is to be welcoming and avoid too much discussion about numbers and rules.  Bring people into this aspect slowly because it is probably the second biggest obstacle after stereotypes.  It is a fine line to walk, because too much number talk will cause a person’s eyes to glaze over, but too little will leave them confused in game.

I planned on writing a whole blog about what a match is like, but the more I tried, the more I realized that it simply isn’t that interesting of a topic to talk about.  Everyone knows what it feels like to compete in one thing or another.  If I found it dry to write about, well then I’m sure it would have been pretty painful to read about.  So I will give a few comments on matches and move on.  Based on feedback, the social aspects of FPS gaming seems to be a better focus.

One person is the captain and calls the shots during the match.  Each player has to be vocal and share what they are seeing, but one person has to be in charge and change the strategy if it isn’t working.  The keys to victory really are teamwork and persistence.  Well that, skill, strategy, and sometimes a bit of luck.  You can’t give up if things aren’t going well, no matter how hopeless it seems.  I have personally been part of victories that happen with one second to spare.

A victory naturally feels good, and a loss is disappointing.  That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun even when you lose, but when you put that much time into anything, you are going to be invested in the results.  The best match is a close and hard fought battle, because it isn’t as much fun to crush your opponent, and it certainly isn’t very much fun to be crushed.  A series of victories can bring you closer together, but a series of losses can kill morale.  It is important to remind yourself that it’s just a game and supposed to be fun.

I wanted to expanded on a comment from Part One.

” Some people are there to cooperatively have a good time (even in competition), and some people are there because the online realm is the only place where they can satisfy the need for stroking their own ego.”

Just like anything else in life, you get out of First Person Shooters what you put into them.  You could play an MMORPG without ever typing a single sentence or teaming.  That’s how some people would prefer to play, actually, and there isn’t anything wrong with that if they are enjoying the game.  I think it is fair to say: that play style misses out on a good portion of the content and experience.

The same can be said of people who just want to shoot other players and trash talk.  They are enjoying the game as they see fit, but they are missing out on something deeper that is there.  Unfortunately, they give a bad name to the rest of us much like offensive players do in MMORPGs.   Those annoying 13 year olds are in every game, but they aren’t all 13.  Kids, teenagers, and even adults fall into the annoying category.  There is just something in certain people’s nature that makes them enjoy knocking down others.

To be competitive, your team has to work as a well oiled machine.  Each player on the team needs to know the other’s strengths and weaknesses, and trust that everyone on the team can play their role.  The only way to get that level of comfort is to communicate and play together as often as possible.  In our clan we had scheduled practices two to three times a week, a match at least once, sometimes twice a week, and a friendly get together on our server every Friday.   Practice could consist of running maps against each other, scriming against another team, or just running a strategy session.

If we ran maps against each other we would have each team on a separate channel of our voice communication software to keep communication private.  Each team would have a captain that determined the strategy we would employ.  This was a way to test out strategy, improve skills, and get used to playing with the squad that you would work with on match day.  More often than not the group would know each other so well that the captain would have to switch plans multiple times per map.

A scrim is when you set up a practice against another team.  This helps both teams practice and try their strategies in a situation as close to a match as possible.  Each team can learn from not just their teammates, but the opposing clan as well.  Crazy strategies can be tried out during a scrim to see how another team would react to them.

Finally a strategy session would involve all other players watching one player walk through the map and explain where everyone would be stationed or how they would progress.  These three methods are how a typical team prepares for a match.    If time and opportunity present themselves then watching recordings of an upcoming opponent’s previous matches could give a glimpse into how they work together.

You will notice the word “strategy” was used a lot in talking about match preparation.  Many people think that FPS games are all about skill and reflexes.  That certainly is important, but if you don’t have the strategy and planning to back it up, you will likely lose.  I have seen the more skilled team lose to a team with a better plan more times than I can count.  First Person Shooters at the competitive level is a game of skill both physically and mentally.  Sharing that experience with others helps to bring you closer together.

For the third part of my series I will discuss match day and the feeling that competitive gaming can provide you.  If anyone has any questions they would like answered e-mail me or leave comments and I will try to address them later in the series.

For this series of articles I’m going to show you that these stereotypes couldn’t be further from the truth. Ok, well the rambling on about “pwning noobs” is actually pretty dead on, but the rest could use some clearing up. Since I was a member of a clan that spent some time at number one on the TWL ladders I think I would be the perfect person to clear some of that up. Ok, so maybe the ego and bragging could be based in truth too.

I would argue that First Person Shooter clans are just as sociable as RPG groups. They may not meet each other in person (though some certainly do), but they talk just as much, if not more. Don’t think that clan members can’t get drunk with each other just because they are in different cities. Every clan has voice communication; most have forums, and some use messengers. In our case we also had each other’s cell phone numbers. After an initial period of getting used to, the group members would build a strong trust of their fellow clan mates. No topic is off limits for conversation. Over time you build friendships and rivalries both within your clan and without. They could be friendly rivalries or they could get as bitter as two rival high school football teams.

A clan is like a family. They stick together for the good times and the bad. For example one member of our Clan went through a divorce. We were there to support him emotionally, but we also took up a collection to help pay for his lawyer. Later we built him a computer so he could rejoin us online. Why would we do this for someone we had never met? It’s simple because he was one of us. To a clan that means he is family. I wouldn’t try to say that everyone always gets along. You don’t get along with anyone all the time so you couldn’t expect a clan to be different. Occasionally people leave because of fights, or the group’s very survival is threatened by strong emotions and words that can’t be unsaid.

So while FPS gamers are thought of as less sociable than RPG players it is actually the social aspect that keeps a clan together. It is the closeness and the camaraderie that keeps the group together sometimes long after the game itself has faded. My clan has not competed in at least two years, but we are still together. Some of them have moved on to WOW and some like me just stick around to talk. We have played other FPS games, MMORPGs, and even racing games together since our game of choice gradually died out.

Come back for part two of my series where I will discuss how a FPS clan prepares for a big match.

What does every comic book geek have in common? Well if they have been collecting for any time at all they have storage issues. With this in mind my first recommendation is the DrawerBox™ Storage System. These are reinforced cardboard boxes designed to open like a filing cabinet. They connect together for increased stability and have a rail system for hanging dividers. You could order directly from their site, but personally I make it a point never to order from a site that has an AOL e-mail address listed. Most comic shops carry these boxes and there is a list of retailers provided on their website.

My second recommendation is for the geek that likes to show off his collection. This is a display frame made specifically for comic books. It is designed for easily switching out the books still bagged and boarded since comic fans are fickle and tend to like variety. There are multiple frame versions for covers that combine to create a larger picture. The frames come in a variety of colors to ensure that they will fit in with any room design. You might even be able to convince the wife that it is a good way to display some of the comics currently cluttering up the counters, desks, and tables.

A few years ago my wife got me what is still to this day my favorite Christmas present ever. She gave me a set of three razor sharp batarangs. While I do realize that I have no actual use for these other than posing and looking like even more of a dork, that doesn’t change the fact that I absolutely loved them. I carried them around in my inner jacket pocket for months and almost forgot to leave them in the car when I was going through a metal detector. Of course I had to throw them into a tree or two. I would suggest starting with Amazon for a set of these.

Sticking with my personal mandate of avoiding the obvious my DVD suggestion is not typical. For the comic fan that appreciates camp I highly recommend season one of “Who wants to be a Superhero.” It was a TV “reality” show hosted by Stan Lee on the Sci-Fi channel. Each contestant created their own superhero personality and each week Stan eliminated the one that he felt was the least heroic. Over the course of the show it became obvious that Stan is a bit out of touch with the industry and the comic books produced from this show demonstrated just how far the great Stan Lee has fallen. The show might have had more cheese than the state of Wisconsin, but for those that like that it could be the ultimate Mecca of comic book goodness.

If none of these are a fit just go into a comic shop and take a look around. T-Shirts, collectables, and banks are always good choices. The average comic book geek will love any gift with their favorite character on it even if it is something they would normally hate.