Grand Romantic Delusions Chapter 06: The Venture

     Seth pulled the beat-up Camaro into the driveway of his small house. It was a side-split, only about 1,200 square feet, with siding painted in the most eye-watering shade of green imaginable. He drove over the half a dozen or so issues of bagged community newspapers that lay in the driveway as he parked.

     Grabbing the book he ran up the front steps and unlocked his deep red front door. He figured the people who had owned the house before him must have been huge fans of Christmas, or something.

     After grabbing a beer from the fridge, he plopped himself and the book down on the couch. He needed something to take his mind off Mary and how he was going to find her. He often found that the best way to solve a problem was to take a break from thinking about it. He was very Zen like that.

     He turned on the TV and grabbed a game remote. This guy Gary at work had been telling him about a new game called "Venture" or something like that. It was one of those downloadable console games you could get for, like, ten bucks. It was supposed to be a sort of "art" game you just had to experience to understand, he'd said. Of course Gary was quite the stoner, so his opinions were hit-and-miss. Still, Seth had plenty of points in his account, so he thought he'd give it a shot. After logging in and starting the download he stood up, downed the rest of his beer and headed back to the kitchen, book in hand. He dropped the book on the counter next to the fridge, grabbed another beer and went back to the living room. 

     Something felt … odd. He pushed the front curtain aside with one finger and peeked through the small gap he'd made. There were a couple of kids playing in the yard across the street, and one guy a couple doors down washing his car. He could hear the sounds of a lawnmower and those of a couple of dogs barking … pretty much just a typical Saturday afternoon on Cortona Road.

     He sat back down. The download was finished so he started up the game. He was greeted with a title screen which included a shadowy character floating about and making ghostly chimp-like noises while soft piano and synthesized flute music played over the sound of wind and crickets. Yeah, this looked like something Stoner Gary would get into.

     Seth was completely unprepared for what happened next. After hitting the start button, he found he had control of one of the ghostly shadow characters and he was floating through some standing stones on a hilltop in the middle of a foggy moor. It was dark, with only the barest sliver of a moon, but in the distance there was a faint light, so he moved his avatar in that direction. Quiet music rose and fell as he glided across the landscape towards the source of the light. It seemed to be coming from the base of a tall tower at the top of another hill. 

     On his way there, he started playing with the controls to see what functions they had. One button made him leap into the air. Another made him glide more quickly. A third caused his character to vocalize—making chimp-like noises. He found that if he tapped this button he got a simple ook-like sound, but that if he held hit down the sound became more of a squeal. If he held it long enough the noise was like that of a chimp screeching after having had a banana taken away or something. How could any of that possibly be useful? The fourth button didn't appear to do much other than make him squat down and raise his hands up. Weird.

     Seth shrugged and held down his sprint button. His character floated at double speed towards the tower in the distance. He downed rest of the second beer and went to pause the game so he could get another. It wouldn't pause. Weird … so apparently you have to play this game in real time? He quickly went to the kitchen and grabbed two more beers (the remainder of his six-pack), as well as the bottle of Jameson's and a glass tumbler from the top of the fridge for good measure.

     When he returned, he noticed that the faint light that had been at the base of the tower was now a little brighter … and a little closer. In fact, it appeared to be moving towards him. Suddenly he remembered a key point that Gary had mentioned about the game.

     "It's multi-player—online only. But you can't actually talk to the other players. You can only communicate through noises and gestures," Gary had said. "And you can't pick your partners. It just randomly teams you up with someone else who's playing the game."

     So, that light coming towards him must be another player's avatar! Cool, he thought. I can get into this. After taking a swig out of the third beer bottle, Seth set about moving towards the other player. As they neared one another, he could see another ghostly figure, similar to his, but white and glowing rather than dark and shadowy. When they came together, the two characters did a little dance around one another. 

     Seth tapped his vocalize button a couple of times. Ook! Ook! The other player did likewise. OK, well we can sort of communicate, Seth thought. But what do we do now?

     The white character willowed back and forth a couple of times then ooked at him three times and turned away, back towards he ruins of the tower from which she'd come. (Something about the way the white figure moved made Seth think of a woman, though he knew there was no way to know who was on the other end.) He followed.

     Suddenly it became a race. They each moved towards the tower as fast as they could. Seth realized that he could only sprint for so long before his character slowed down, and that it took some time before he could sprint again. However, as there was no "energy bar" or other indicator on the screen, you just sort of had to get a feel for when you could sprint again. So the two of them traded leads until they were almost there, when suddenly the white figure pulled ahead and touched the tower first. She must have been conserving her energy, thought Seth. Of course, this person had probably played the game before.

     The white figure began spinning around and jumping, ook-ooking the whole while. What did she want? He imitated her, spinning his avatar around, alternately tapping the vocalize and jump buttons. Sure, the dancing around and chattering senselessly at one another was kind of fun, but what was the point of this game?

     Suddenly the other character began bumping into him—sort of pushing him forward, guiding him around the tower. Once they were at the other side, Seth noticed that the tower had a large open doorway and inside there were alternating stones sticking out from the walls like a spiral staircase, but with big gaps between the individual steps, and the bottom step far higher than their characters could jump. This must be what she wants me to see!

     Seth finished the third beer and popped open the fourth and last bottle. He had a big gulp then turned his attention back to the game. OK , he thought, it's a puzzle. We have to find a way to the top of the tower, I guess.

     The white character began spinning again, then jumping. The more she spun, the higher she seemed to jump. She appeared to be trying to reach the bottom stair, but couldn't quite manage it. He tried the old Mario double-jump, but that didn't work at all in this game.

     Then the white character jumped on top of him and squatted. She held the position for a moment then sprung up into the air … but only slightly. This clearly wasn't going to help them reach the stairs, either.

     After landing in front of him, the white character squatted again and made an ook sound. Seth imitated her. She gave him two ook sounds this time. Then she squatted again and held the position. He pressed his squat button and held it. She ooked twice then jumped up. He did likewise. She stopped in front of him and ooked once, then stepped away and squatted again.

     Seth wasn't sure what she wanted at this point. He stepped towards her and squatted. She ooked twice … and he released the squat. She gave him one ook and stood still. Suddenly it dawned on him She wanted him to hold the squatting position!

     Seth squatted again and remained. The white figure ooked twice then began her spinning jump until she was on top of him again. She ooked. He sat there in his squatting position, unsure of what to do next. She ooked twice. He still didn't get it. Then she started shrieking. He remained in position, holding the squat button for a good thirty seconds or so … her shrieking rose in frequency and intensity. Finally, she jumped back down in front of him and shrieked some more. He stood up.

     She alternated between bouncing and squatting and shrieking, over and over again. Then she jumped on top of him once more. After several minutes of this, Seth finally got it. He squatted, she jumped on top of him, and he released the squat button and flung her into the air, high enough to reach the bottom stair … but in the wrong direction. So the squat button was really a throw button, apparently.

     Seth finished the fourth and final beer then grabbed the whisky bottle and poured himself a double-shot into the glass tumbler. He took a couple of sips. Nothing like trying to solve a co-op puzzle game while drunk, he thought.

     He moved towards the bottom stair, facing it, and ooked at the white figure. By this time he was sure it was a woman on the other end. He tried to imagine what she was like. She was probably patient. One had to be patient to play a game like this—especially with such limited communication. With patience came kindness, of course. He tried to imagine a pair of kind and gentle eyes. He thought they would be a light brown color, like Mary's—when you could see them through the glare of her glasses, that is.

     Seth squatted and let the white character jump on top of him again. This time he threw her accurately and she climbed onto the bottom stair. She hopped to the next step, then the next, but fell off the one after that, so he squatted and threw her again. 

     Wouldn't it be hilarious if it was Mary on the other end of the game, he thought. He knew fate was bringing them together, but wouldn't it be something if after trying to find her through the library, he ended up playing with her online? He finished his whisky, the cool warmth flowing down his throat and hitting him in the chest. He poured another.

     He watched as the white figure leapt from step to step until she made it all the way to the top of the tower. OK … what now? How was he supposed to get to the top? She disappeared through a trap door and then he heard a "click" and suddenly the walls of the tower began to rotate in sections, each section moving opposite from the way the section above and below it moved. The whole tower was like a big clockwork. As the sections rotated, more stairs popped out of the walls and then it stopped. Now he could climb right up to the top and join his companion without the need for jumping. 

     Once he reached the top and climbed through the trapdoor he stood next to the white figure and looked out towards the horizon. The tower was quite tall and they could see a fair distance away as a result. It was a beautiful, haunting kind of game world—especially with the soft New-Agey music and the wind and frogs sound effects. It felt like they were really outside in some mysterious and alien world. The sliver of moon lit the rolling hills and moorland about them just enough that he could make out the contours of the surrounding countryside without seeing any of the details.

     His partner began ooking again and spinning around. She stood on a pale circle of light on the roof of the tower. He stood next to her and ooked back. She moved to the other side of the tower and he followed her again., then she screeched at him.

     He wasn't sure what a screech meant. Was he supposed to follow her, or was he doing something wrong? She stood on another circle on the other side of the tower. He went and stood next to her again. She circled around him and pushed him into the circle and ooked at him twice. He squatted. Am I supposed to throw her somewhere?

     She crossed the roof again and he followed. She shrieked and he went back to the circle and squatted. Ook ook! She went and stood in the opposite circle while he remained. Suddenly the entire roof of the tower lifted off and floated away, carrying them with it. So that's the trick, Seth realized.

     Suddenly he knew it was her. That's right … it had to be. The universe was bringing them together, one way or another, and what better way than through the incredible shared experience of this otherworldly game?

     Oh Mary, he thought. If only I could find you in OUR world!

     They went on like this for hours. They explored the world, finding new landscapes, new puzzles and collecting various kinds of gemstones. Seth guessed that was the real point of the game: collecting the gems. Each time they found one, they were treated to swelling music and a new vista. They searched the moors and then a desert and then a barren snowscape. One doorway apparently led them to the moon—everything was grey and lifeless and starkly beautiful.

     Every step of the way they worked together as if sharing one consciousness. They would arrive at the new location and she would guide him through each puzzle —patiently, lovingly. Seth had never experienced anything quite like this.

     With each new discovery he was more convinced that it was Mary with whom he was playing. Who else could it be? Who else could he just click with on such a deep level, without even needing language to communicate? He knew instinctively that it was his soulmate on the other end of the network. And with this knowledge he was more confident than ever that he would manage to find her. He just had to be as patient as she was with him in the game.

     At the end they were in a jungle, exploring the ruins of some sort of step-pyramid. By this time Seth was so drunk he could barely sit up straight and hold the controller, but he was not giving up. He needed some water. He ooked at his companion a couple of times and jumped up—too fast. He fell forward before ever really getting to his feet. He was suddenly very glad he didn't own a coffee table.

     Seth stood and staggered into the kitchen. He grabbed the water jug out of the refrigerator and brought it back to the couch in the now-dark living room. He managed to pour himself a tumbler-full of water without spilling more than a couple of cups worth on himself  or his couch.

     He downed the entire glass of water in a couple of lusty gulps and poured another. God damn, I'm thirsty. He picked up the controller again and noticed that Mary was jumping up and down again, ooking at him like mad.

     He moved towards her and ooked back twice. She led him up the pyramid to a little room at the top. Again, they each had to press a button on either side, but this time instead of floating away, the entire pyramid inverted, collapsing in on itself—the top sinking below the level of the bottom—and they were suddenly in a chamber deep under ground.

     Everywhere was dark. They had only the soft glow of white light issuing forth from Mary's avatar to see by. She led him away from the little room into the deep dark chamber. In the distance there were colorful lights and he could see more ghostly figures like theirs—some dark, some light—dancing in a great circle. It was like a homecoming!

     There was a loud bang from somewhere behind Seth, which scared the living shit out of him. He jumped up, controller in hand, and pulled the console off its shelf. The TV screen went to blue. Disconnected!

     Heart racing, he quickly checked the wires in the back of the console, but realized he could barely see anything. The clock on the cable box said it was 11:30. Fuck! How long have we been playing? He jumped up to hit the lamp and almost knocked it over before he managed to get the light on. Goddamn neighbors! There was always someone in this neighborhood setting off firecrackers or target shooting or something.

     He checked his console now in the harsh glare of the lamplight. The cables were all connected, both to the console and the back of the television. He hit the power button on the console and it blinked on, then off. It wouldn't stay on, no matter how many times he pushed it.

     Seth howled with rage. He'd have to get this fixed. Shit! Probably cheaper to buy a new one. At any rate, he knew he was done for now. He'd get the damn thing looked at tomorrow.

     One thing he knew for sure: he would have to find Mary. He wanted to talk to her about the game. He wanted to finish playing it with her. He wanted to stare deeply into her eyes over a cup of coffee and talk about all the feelings they'd shared tonight. He wondered if she knew it was him she'd been playing with. Tomorrow, he told himself. I will find her tomorrow.

     Somewhere south of Phoenix, Arizona, in an adobe-style ranch house sat a heavy-set, unshaven man in his mid-forties. He wore an ill-fitting black tank, cut-off denim shorts and a trucker hat which read "Horny Old Bastard" —and he was not wearing it ironically. He scratched his ass as he stared at his TV screen, controller in one hand, can of Bud Light in the other. He began screaming at no one in particular.

     "That stupid sunovabitch! Took me for freakin' ever to finally drag his dumb ass to the end of this game, and then he fuckin' quits on me?"

Neil DeGrasse Tyson for President ... of the Galaxy!

This is one of the greatest, most inspiring, yet maddening and saddening things I have ever seen:

Dear Corporate America: Stop it! Just … Fucking … STOP IT!

As the company continues to evolve its branding identity, we are making proactive structural adjustments in order to allow the management team to be better positioned for leveraging anticipated growth sectors while taking a more strategic role in driving the company forward.  

Our current structure has served us well to date, but it is not ideally suited to optimize additional new methods for business inter-operations. As such, we will be moving to a more strategically functional structure in this area, which is similar to the current structures in other areas of our business model. 

The newly created group will also evolve as we bring everyone involved in the core business needs of the department together within this group. We expect to be able to leverage synergies between the various roles while allowing greater strategic flexibility, thus allowing us to react to ever changing and increasingly complex business needs within the core competencies of  this departmental function. This new group will become primarily responsible for forecasting needs while managing expectations and logistics and ensuring that the overall solutions utilized to support the businesses are optimized across all sectors. We will finalize and communicate the specific structure and roles within this group at a future date, while the organizational structure of the business division will remain poised to support the growth needs of the business as they arise.

In terms of addressing the question of open positions in the organization, these new positions will provide us with anticipated resources needed to not only support long-term strategic growth but to also take a more active role in driving the business forward in the short term.

We sincerely hope you share our excitement as we continue to the next chapter our company's future. Our team looks ahead with an unyielding sense of commitment and the deepest dedication to what we hope to accomplish through this forward-looking evolutionary phase of growth.  We are embracing a heightened sense of enthusiasm and urgency for scalable improvement and continuous excellence moving forward.

D&D Forever ...

Upon the announcement that there's to be a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, I thought I'd re-post my initial observations about the 4th Edition:

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My "Geek Geezer" Opinion (FWLIW) on Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. (Old Geekzer? Could that be a word?)

First, a little history (if nothing else but to establish my "geezer" bona fides):

I've been an off and on Dungeons & Dragons player since 1981, starting with the "red-box" Basic Set and "blue-box" Expert Set, and then picking up with AD&D in about 1982. In mid 1991 I married (and then became a father at the end of 1992), but I still managed to pick up all the major Second Edition AD&D books, and even get together and play with a group again starting in the mid-90s. And in 2000 we all started playing 3rd Edition.

The basic game was a lot of fun, but seemed somewhat lacking, which was why I quickly jumped to AD&D, as soon as I realized what it was, and that it existed (I would have been about 12 at the time). It was a fuller-featured, more logical, more "realistic" (if the term can be applied to a fantasy world of the player's own imaginations) simulation of a Sword & Sorcery Fantasy Epic Adventure.

I really loved the Second Edition, too. It built so well on top of the older system, streamlining it, and adding tons of new options with the Character "Kits" (I think I was one of the few who really enjoyed those, though) ... it actually felt like the game was opening up - becoming a framework which a DM (and players) could use to build up any kind of fantasy story they desired. You want to focus on a stone-age, low-magic universe? No problem. You want High Fantasy, with magic as common as technology is in to-day's world? Easy. You want a Feudal East-Asian themed world full of honourable Samurai, peasants defending their homes with the tools they had at hand and skulking Ninja spies selling the keys to power to the highest bidder? You could do that, too. And you wouldn't necessarily have had to buy specific expansion books to do those things. Any DM with a little imagination and ingenuity could make the rules fit.

Now, when the 3rd Edition was published, I admit I was a little apprehensive. The rules, as they had been, had really grown on me. Nevertheless, I bought the new Player's Handbook, and, together with my regular gaming group, we started exploring the new rules set. And, behold! We found it good! Again, the rules had become much more streamlined, and more logical. The d20 system was a great boon in that it simplified the PROCESS of D&D gaming, without simplifying the GAME. Next thing I knew, I was buying a whole new set of D&D books. (As were all of my friends.)

Then there was a 3.5 edition, which I never really got into ... it seemed a bit pointless, really. Why spend all that money buying yet another new set of books with minor rules tweaks, when the rules we had worked so well? (Of course, we'd always had a few house rules here and there, depending on who was DM - who doesn't? - but the core rules were a great foundation.)

Unfortunately, my regular gaming group sort of fell apart a couple of years ago, and I haven't played much D&D since then. Besides - how are you gonna pull people away from the ease of playing World of Warcraft, and get them around a table to play a game? (This last question is important, as I'm sure it has gone through the minds of everyone who has had anything at all to do with the development of 4th Edition. In fact, I'd venture to say it was probably the guiding principle in 4th Edition's design.)

Then there was 4th Edition announcement.

Upon first hearing about 4E, I was, as with 3E, a little cautious. But I was also more than a little hopeful. After all, I had thought 3rd Edition was probably unnecessary, but I went into it with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised. I even found myself preferring it over the older versions. Couldn't the same thing happen again? Of course it could! I planned to do as I had with 3rd Edition: buy a Player's Handbook first, and if I liked what I read, pick up the other books and maybe try to get some of my old group back together and give it a whirl.

Now we come to the present. I've been reading the new 4th Edition Player's Handbook ...

So ... where to even begin?

I guess the first, most obvious thing is how dumb it is. I don't mean dumb, as in "not smart" ... I mean "dumbed-down" the way video games often are. Of course, video games have to be dumbed down to accommodate the lack of real intelligence behind them. They have to be run by AI, which is just a bunch of mathematics that run different equations based on the players' input. The whole point of a table-top game is that you have a real, live, thinking person who will make intelligent decisions or the NPCs and/or monsters in any given situation.

Let's take concepts like threat and aggro from the realm of MMORPGs. Why do these concepts exist? These terms represent the outcome of formulae that work behind-the-scenes in order for creatures in a MMORPG to react within some set of pre-defined parameters. (Let me just note here that I'll be using examples from WoW, because it's the most popular MMORPG out there, and the one with which I am most familiar.) These formulae can be tweaked, depending on the characteristics that the creators of the game want a particular creature to display. This way, if you're running through, say Elwynn Forest with a level 76 character, it's unlikely that any of the low-level Defias Bandits (or whatever) are going to bother you, unless you walk right up to them and stand there - or even hit them first. But, if you go through there with a level 3 character, they'll come running to attack you from many yards away. This is what allows a Murloc to decide that it's time to go running and bring back more Murlocs to help in its fight unless you take it down very quickly. This is also what allows your main "Tank" to use specific abitlities that increase her threat to any given mob, so it will attack her, instead of the poor cloth-wearing mage who is doing, probably, a lot more damage. It's these behind-the-scenes formulae that determine the reactions - and it's these same formulae that players have learned to game in order to have success. That's why it's vitally important, especially when going into an instance, to have a good tank (and a good healer) - you have to game the systemic formulae in order to make the monsters play to your strategy.

Now, in a video game this becomes a necessity. The only way around it would be to hire a lot of people to play mobs, which would be very cost-prohibitive. Another way would be to develop AI that is beyond anything that can be accomplished, currently. But, see ... this is a WEAKNESS in the video game world - one which developers are either constantly struggling to overcome, and make as transparent as possible, or which, in the case of WoW, they use as a tool in building abilities and classes within the game. Players are going to figure these things out anyway, so why not just make it part and parcel of the whole MMORPG experience? This is one of the things that annoys me about WoW - but it's something I can accept, considering the limitations of the medium.

So why, in the name of all that is Good and Right in the Universe, would the developers of a table-top RPG take the biggest weakness of MMORPGs and incorporate it into their game? WTF?!?

D&D 4E is chock FULL of this kind of malarkey. They've even gone so far as to give each class a "role" to fill in combat ... Strikers=dps, Controllers=Crowd-Control, Defender=Tank, Leader =Healer. These aren't necessarily EXACT cognates, but they're pretty close. The new combat rules are pretty much ALL about managing aggro and threat zones - a concept which really shouldn't even EXIST in this setting! So, what - now the DM is supposed to pretend to be a computer AI?

And now, characters are constantly using all these special powers ... no one ever just attacks any more. And instead of cool-downs you have frequencies of time in which to use the powers - daily, once per encounter, at will, etc. The only thing missing is the buttons on a menu bar. And these "healing surges" ... what's up with that? Why not just give us a random number of hit points to put on top of what we already have? In essence, you are rolling up hit points - you're just doing it on the fly, in the middle of combat, instead of at creation or level-up, AND you're giving every character a huge hp reserve right from level 1. (Don't even get me started on this "martial power-source" bunk.)

And speaking of rolling ... does any one else find it odd that using dice to get your character's stats is so strongly discouraged? Again, I have to compare this with video games. It makes sense in a video game - especially in an MMORPG, or any game with an on-line component, that you want to level the playing field to a certain degree. This evening-out of the playing field was traditionally handled by a DM, but again, the lack of a human DM is the big obstacle to overcome in a computer game. So we use point-buy systems, or some such thing to prevent players cheating or gaming the system to gain an unfair (or just lucky) advantage over other players. But what's the point, again, of taking a system that is primarily a response to a weakness in one system, and moving it to a system that does not share this weakness? If a DM is afraid her players will cheat on stat rolls, all she has to do is make them roll their stats in front of her! Problem solved ... and, more importantly, UNIQUENESS of CHARACTER is maintained! With the systems that 4th Ed. presents and encourages, almost all Elven Wizards are going to have the same (or VERY close) stats! As will all Dwarven Paladins, or Tiefling Rogues, or whatever ...

Whatever happened to the DEX-based fighter who could dish out damage like no one else? Doesn't exist anymore. A Fighter is a Tank is a Fighter is a Tank, with only a few possible modifications. Trying to build a truly creative, unique character, within the framework of these rules, is pretty much impossible.

Character creation in 4E feels as cold and impersonal as in WoW. Sadly, even the Neverwinter Nights character generation felt more organic. The beauty of D&D (or any table-top system) was that you could create and play something new and different - you weren't just playing another cookie-cutter hero (or anti-hero, or even villain).

Let's talk about what a framework rules set for an RPG should NOT do (unless it's set up for a specific milieu) - and that's tell us what kind of world we're in. That's what campaign settings are for! "Points of Light in the Great Darkness" or whatever, is great for a specific setting ... but don't try to implement it as part of the basic rules! In fact don't even give us deities - unless you just want to include a few as examples (much like 3E) to help guide the players and DMs in creating their own. Each setting (whether published or home-brewed) should have its own feel - its own cosmology. I want to see vast continents full of cosmopolitan societies, where social and political intrigue play as big a role (or even bigger) as martial prowess. Or how about a universe without gods? Or maybe a whole campaign that takes place within a single huge city? Yes, you can do those things in the 4E rules - but they seem to go against the spirit that the rules are trying to set forth.

And what happened to Alignment?!? So now there's no such thing as Chaotic Good?!? WTF?!? You're telling me that a person of my own personal moral persuasion can't exist in the D&D world? And no Lawful Evil? (I guess there are no Dick Cheney's in D&D either ... so maybe it's a fair trade.) I can forgive Unaligned, I suppose ... but in a sense, that's more of a Chaotic Neutral sentiment, a "who gives a crap about all this morality anyway" attitude, that actually is, in itself, a moral stand. Now, I was never a huge fan of the old alignment restrictions, except in specific cases (Paladins are Lawful Good, End of Story.) I never used alignment languages or any of that - but I DID ask players to choose an alignment - not to punish or control their actions, but as a Role-Playing device.

Ah, Role-Playing! Anyone else remember role-playing? Ostensibly, that's what the "RP" in "RPG (and even "MMORPG") stands for. But MMORPGs tend to break the mood of real RPing. There's too much "gaming the system" and meta-talk to ever really role-play. That's where a lot of the old text-based MMORPGS had it over WoW. There was always MUCH better RP on those - even if it wasn't always consistent. Go to one of the WoW RP-specific servers, and what do you see? The same thing as on any other server, except with the occasional thee or thou or m'lady thrown in. People are still talking about movies and shouting about selling their crap over the General channel and such - and discussing meta-game concepts. Again, this is a great weakness of the electronic versions of RPGs which should NOT be brought into the Table-Top versions.

Now, I'm not an RP purist, per se. I'm not saying that I believe that everyone at the table should always speak as their characters, or anything like that. In fact, one of the great things about playing with a group, in-person, is that the amount of RP can be measured out according to the tastes and whims of the group. When you're on-line with 2,000 of your closest "friends", this isn't so easily accomplished!

I'm also not saying that D&D 4E is anti-role-playing. Role-playing is something anyone can do with any game if one so chooses - though it's easier with some games than others. (Ever tried to behave like a millionaire real-estate developing shoe in Monopoly?) However all of the emphasis in the new PHB seems to be about combat and powers and "what can you do with your cookie-cutter hero character?"

The whole intangible "feel" of 4th Edition D&D is that it's a specialized tactics game, on a par with the old Milton Bradley Hero Quest game. Its emphasis is no longer on encouraging friends to get together and use their imaginations to weave together a story, complete with character development, and plot. Now it's all about getting to the next Big Action Sequence.

Now, It's not ALL wrong. I like the idea of a hero being able to summon forth great reserves of strength to make a real difference - to do something almost super-human, just in the nick-of-time, to save the day - or even to fail while making such an attempt, and die a truly heroic death. (Though, it shouldn't be a daily occurrence.)

Again, I'm not saying D&D 4E is ALL bad. I just don't see this as D&D anymore. It's a small unit combat tactics game set in a medieval/fantasy setting, with video-game-type powers being used in Hollywood-Style Action Sequences. In short, it's D&D with all the heart and soul ripped out.

I'm sure it'll be fun for what it is - and for the generation raised on XBox and MMORPGs, and movie versions of classic stories, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun. And if you enjoy it, good for you! I'm certainly not here to ruin anyone's good time.

But for me ... it's just not the same anymore. I dunno ... maybe I'm just getting old. Or I'm just old-fashioned. Whatever it is ... YOU KIDS NEED TO GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Monsters

i have a little monster

that lives inside my head

i find it's much more scarier

than the ones under my bed

at night it rules my dreams

and gives me a bad thought

in the day it bids me to do things

i know i shouldn't ought

and when i leave my house

at the start of each new day

despite the colors and sunshine

it makes the whole world grey

when people make me mad

i never scream or shout

i think about the future day

when i'll let the monster out

many others harbor monsters

many people just like me

and some day we will lose control

and the monsters will be free

but if you look around you

you'll see it has begun

look how people treat each other

the monsters, they have won

Grand Romantic Delusions Chapter 04: The Breakdown

     It's a terrible thing, the public eye. 

     Once you have its attention, your life is no longer your own. It scrutinizes you with its x-ray vision, digging into your past, affecting your future, poring over your very soul—and invariably, it finds you wanting.

     The mainstream media or MSM* is always looking for a narrative to catch the interest of the reader, viewer or (more likely these days) the half-listener. And if your life doesn't live up to those expectations, you're a disappointment to society. So what were we supposed to do? After all that happened to us; after the rescue efforts and the TV coverage, we didn't really have a choice. I think we both knew it wasn't the best decision, but at the end of the day, we knew we had to get married.

     I don't know ... does anyone ever feel like things are all right? I used to imagine that other people did. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm not so different from other people. After all, in our own minds, well ... as the old expression goes, we're all the protagonists in our own life stories ... or something like that. (My memory's not what it used to be, and I'm too lazy to look it up.)

     I guess that makes my story a tragic comedy, because the protagonist is a hapless fool.  In order to really explain what happened, I guess I should introduce myself first:

     My name's Celia Wright, and I was a loser.

     Now, if when you first hear the word "loser" you immediately think of someone who's failed out of school, lives with her mother, and never helped anyone or did anything worthwhile, you're on the wrong track. I guess I'm what you'd call a "successful loser" in that I graduated college with honors, excelled in my field, made decent money, got married to a nice and attractive guy, had a really great kid—all the things that are supposed to mean success in our society. But it wasn't enough. Or rather, it wasn't right.

     Lewis and I met in College. I was in graduate school—earning my Ph.D. in Education, while he was still working on his undergraduate degree with an eye towards an MBA at Haas.

     The details of our meeting aren't important, nor are they remarkable. We met at a party, both of us a little tipsy on cheap White Zinfandel (everybody was drinking that crap at the time), and just got to talking the way people do when they find themselves together in social situations. He walked me home and promised to call me the next day, which he did. Next thing I knew, we were a couple.

     We'd been dating a few months, when we decided to move in together. I'm not sure whose decision that really was. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time, since he was spending most nights at my place anyway. And then, a year or so after that, I think we were both starting to get a little tired of each other. It wasn't anyone's fault or anything, but you know how relationships just sometimes get stale? It was like that.  If things had continued on, we would probably have gone our separate ways before too much longer. 

     But that was before the Big Earthquake.

     Lewis and I were in the mall when it hit. As anyone who's spent any time in California knows, no matter how many times you experience it, it's still a gut-wrenching feeling when the ground starts to shake. We immediately ran for the exit, but got separated in the rushing crowd.

     Most buildings in California are built to withstand some pretty major quakes, so it came as a surprise when one section of the mall actually collapsed. Apparently there was a small problem that somehow slipped past the building inspectors. I managed to get outside, but couldn't find Lewis anywhere.

     If you lived anywhere near the Bay Area in 1994, you might even remember me. My fifteen minutes lasted just under two days, and were spent agonizing over Lewis and talking to community papers and local TV news:

     Do you think he could be alive and trapped in there? 

     Have you given up hope? 

     The community is praying for you! 

     If you could talk to him now, what would you say? 

     For two days they searched the rubble—and I must have been interviewed twenty times in that same span. The big story was all about the "young couple who were torn apart too soon." People held vigils. Vigils! They sent me flowers and gifts. Donations came in. The whole thing grew out of anyone's control.

     Then, when the emergency workers found Lewis it was quite the spectacle. Once they got him on a stretcher and pulled him out—before he'd even had more than a sip of water—some reporter was in his face with a microphone and a camera, and television lights. She told him how the whole community had been waiting with me, and how everyone was so happy for us, and then asked him what his plans were for the future and how glad he was to see me.

     So the big dummy just up and asked me to marry him right then and there. He could barely speak, but there he was on live TV proposing. So what was I supposed to say? No?

     We were married in February the next year. And in the end, it turned out to be almost as big a disaster as the construction on that mall.

     Now, Lewis wasn't a bad person, per se. Nor was he inattentive—if anything, he was too clingy. At first, the renewed attention was kind of nice. I'd had a few bad relationships before him—you know the kind: the guy's all about you when nothing else is going on, but as soon as some of his buddies want to come over to play video games, or go out and do "guy" things, he acts like your very existence is somehow more inconvenience than he can handle. Yet, as soon as you want to have some time with your friends, he's asking, Why would you want to go out without me? Don't you love me? Are you seeing someone else?

     My first hint of trouble with Lewis, though, came during the planning for our wedding. Most guys just want to know where to get their tux and when and where to show up and say, "I do." They leave the bulk of the planning up to the bride—and/or her mother—or so I've been told. Not Lewis, though; he insisted on being involved in every aspect. The biggest problem was that even though he wanted to help make decisions, he could never make up his mind! He very nearly drove my poor mother into an asylum. Ultimately, I got my own way in just about everything. I think he mostly just wanted to feel like he was part of it.

     The first couple of years were actually rather nice. We had each finished our respective studies and started careers. We had a daughter, Isabella, the November of our second year married. The third year was a bit difficult—we were first-time parents, after all—but we struggled through it. Things were a bit easier the next two years; Lewis was always a caring, loving man. He made a good father, too, and he really doted on Izzy.

     My career took off. I was on a team which published a very important and acclaimed academic study on early childhood learning disorders. We moved north when I was hired at the University of Washington as a research professor.  Lewis got a job in Marketing at a local publisher—nothing terribly exciting, but he brought home about as much money as I did. We bought a nice, older house in Lynnwood and worked to fix the place up. We lived quite well, in terms of physical comforts.

     It was after we'd been married about five or six years that things started to change. I don't know if it was a case of Is this all there is? setting in, or if it was simply a realization that we didn't really quite fit together, or what—but we started doing more and more things apart. We spent more time at our jobs or hanging out with our respective work friends. I know Lewis didn't really enjoy his job. He also started drinking noticeably more. 

     Lewis had always displayed a tendency to over-think everything he did, but it started getting worse. It got so he spent a half hour every morning just lying in bed and agonizing over whether he even wanted to get up and go to the office. He always did go, of course, but by the time he'd make up his mind, he was always running late.

     Then, one Saturday morning when Lewis was sleeping in, I went to check on Izzy. She would have been about five or six years old at this point. I listened to her play-acting with some of her toys. Her teddy bear, Mr. Snoofles, was having an argument with Stinky the Skunk over what they wanted to do that day. The dialogue that Izzy came up with really shook me up. Stinky was berating Mr. Snoofles for changing his opinions to match whatever the skunk wanted. I knew right then that our relationship in general, and Lewis's neuroses in particular, were having a negative effect on Izzy's development.

     I talked to Lewis about it, but the whole thing just seemed to make him worse. It was like he suddenly worried that every minor decision he made was going to hurt his daughter, too. He couldn't handle it. Within a couple of months he would suffer a mental break-down … but, more on that in a moment.

     Lewis started disappearing for days at a time. He just needed, Time away to get my head straight, or so he said. I never thought he was cheating on me, or anything like that. Hell, that would have been easier to handle! He said he liked the freedom of the open road. I think he mostly just liked the idea of making simple decisions like which way to turn at an intersection. It wasn't until later that I found out he was heading far into the Eastern countryside—into places with long stretches of road where intersections were rare.

     Then one day I received a phone call from the police. Lewis had stopped the car right in the middle of the intersection of 45th and Eleventh—one of the busier intersections in town—and wouldn't budge. Every time an officer approached the vehicle, he started screaming nonsense about how "What's done can't be undone," and how did they expect him to decide where to go, when any direction could cause a breakdown in his life stream, or some such nonsense. He'd also blow on the horn and shout threats on occasion. He had something in his hand, and they weren't sure if it was a gun or some other sort of weapon. (Lewis was driving my X3 that day, so it had my plates and my U-Dub parking permit, so they contacted me quickly.)

     By the time I arrived, the police were routing traffic around the area, but it was a mess. Lewis was sitting in the car—the ignition was off and the windows were down, and he was crying. As I approached him, I saw that he had a calculator in his hand, as well as a small notepad and a thick black Sharpie.

     And, of course, there were the news cameras, and they wanted their story.

     "Lewis," I said. "Honey? Is everything all right?"

     "Probably not," came the response, in between sobs. "It's hard to know, though." He fumbled at a couple of the buttons on the calculator with a finger. I remember noticing then, for the first time, that his fingers were kind of short and stubby for a grown man.

     He continued; "It's assigning meanings to the values that's so hard."

     "OK, well, maybe I could help you with that. Would you like that?" He looked up at me, confused.

     "You could do that?" He didn't seem to notice anything of the chaos around him.

     "Of course, honey," I replied. "You know, we could just go to the coffee shop over there, and—"

     "No!" He interrupted me. "Don't want to go to any shops … too many possibilities … options … menus."

     "All right, then. How about we just go home? I'll order a pizza and we'll sit down together and … and assign meanings?"

     "Yeah, that would be nice."

     "Great — that's all settled, then. Why don't you just scoot over, there, and let me drive?" 

     Not that the Seattle PD had any intention of letting us just drive away, obviously. Not after what he'd pulled.

     The minute I had him distracted and he'd held his hands up into view long enough for them to see it wasn't a weapon in his hand, an officer had eased up to the passenger side of the car. As soon as Lewis unlocked the car and began to scoot over she pulled the door open and hit him with the taser. Two more officers ran up to assist her, and a third came up behind me and pulled me away. Clearly Lewis wan't a threat to anyone, but they were all very frustrated, and weren't about to take any chances.

     Once we were all on our feet again, the news crews rushed the scene, yelling out questions. I just repeated "No comment" until I found myself in the back of a squad car. I could hear Lewis trying to answer their questions, though, and even asking some of his own. He was pushed into another car and we were driven downtown.

     After hours of questioning, they finally let me call Gina—Izzy's sitter—and explain to her what had been going on. Of course, she'd already seen the whole thing on the evening news.

     Once it was all over, and we were released, I got Lewis in to see a really good therapist, but he resisted. Even when he did go—and he was under a Court Mandate, he didn't seem to want to work with the doctor. After a year he finally managed to do the bare minimum required to get himself released. And then, he started taking his long trips again.

      I just couldn't take it any more. After ten years of marriage, I finally filed for divorce.

     Sometimes, I feel guilty about the whole thing. I ask myself whether I could have done something differently, or why I hadn't really noticed the warning signs. I wonder to myself whether our lives would have been different if I'd paid more attention. What if I hadn't taken the job at U-Dub? Would he have found work that better suited him? What if we hadn't gone to the mall that day? What if I hadn't gone to that party, and we'd just never met? Would he have married someone else? Would he still have had his breakdown?

     It's then that I realize I'm starting to think like Lewis: over-analyzing the past and worrying about every decision I've ever made. That way lies madness, and I have been witness to it.

     Since then, I've re-married. William is a really wonderful, level-headed man. I'm much better off and, I think, so is Isabella. She is almost old enough to drive herself, now. She hasn't shown any signs of her father's neurosis, but I'm keeping a close eye on her just the same.

     As for Lewis … Well, the last I heard he met some woman on one of his long drives through the desert. They moved out east somewhere—Indiana or Ohio, I think. I tried to keep track of him for a while, but eventually, I just gave up. For a man who has a problem making decisions, he sure has moved around a lot.

*The acronym MSM is also frequently used to refer to Mechanically-Separated Meat. This product bears an uncanny allegorical resemblance to the product produced by the other MSM.