And now, for the exciting conclusion of the Turnabout Musical Interview! Make sure you’ve listened to the first part…first!

The folks from Turnabout Musical have yet to escape the podcast, and are still randomly singing.

• Which Phoenix Wright characters would be totally hot if Mia Fey possessed them
• How the art for the musical was created
• Animating videos frame-by-frame takes an incredible amount of work.
• What other musicals inspired the staff in creating their own?
• Random sing-off! GameCola vs Turnabout Musical!
• Don’t bring up Ace Attorney Investigations.
• Pleady and Tri were tazed in order to get realistic screams.
• How were the voice actors chosen for the musical?
• The truth about who the judge really is
• Oh, yeah, check out their website! And, their YouTube channel! And, Deviant Art page!

If this bullet list didn’t excite you, why are you still reading?! If it did, however, start listening to the podcast NOW! It’s right here! Or, there. Which is just below here:

GC Podcast #43

And, make sure to check out the new audio trailer for Turnabout Musical, as well!

Overture Commercial

And, don’t forget to rate and subscribe to The GameCola Podcast on iTunes! I forget if we mentioned that in this episode…

In a complete reversal from GameCola’s last podcast, Podcast #42 entirely revolves around Phoenix Wright! In an awesome GameCola exclusive, we’re interviewing the staff of Turnabout Musical! That’s right—not only is there an English-language musical all about Phoenix Wright, but we’ve got the staff here for the podcast! All this after Paul said we’d never have another podcast about Phoenix Wright ever again. Oh, Paul. Could you have been any wronger?

This podcast outdoes our previous record of eight podcasters by involving a whole FOURTEEN podcasters!!! I think this is going to be a tough one to beat. Alex Jedraszczak, Paul Franzen, Michael Gray, Michael Ridgaway, and Vangie Ridgaway form the GameCola side, while special guest stars Matthew Taranto, Tom Laflin, Sarah Williams, Joel Williams, Amy Williams, Kristin “Max” Bebber, Mimi Cattle, Matt Di Carlo, and Lucia Lobosvilla visit from Turnabout Musical.

Was that everyone? Were all of these people really there? I think so. Either way, let’s see what topics are covered in the FIRST part of the Turnabout Musical interview! Bullet points, please!

• Random singing!
• Which Phoenix Wright characters should totally go out?!
• Why Miles Edgeworth is forever alone
• Why Von Karma is perfect
• It’s Gotta Be the Butz!
• Paul doesn’t care about proper grammar.
• There’s a keyboard that says “Dictionary!”
• Random singing!
• Why the Turnabout Musical staff decided to make a musical about Phoenix Wright
• Edgeworth should totally cosplay Batman.
• Random singing!
• These show notes aren’t convoluted at all!
• Why doesn’t GameCola have awesome parties and road trips?!
• Matt Jonas is never going to get his question read.

The Turnabout Musical staff have really got it going on, so be sure to visit not only their official website to check out their FREE highlights download, but also see their Deviant Art page and YouTube channel to see other cool stuff like their Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney dub. Oh, but while you’re here anyway, you can hear all about them on our podcast!

GC Podcast #42

That was a month ago. In the time since, I have achieved the following Facebook accomplishments:

• Level 23 Miner/Adventurer in Little Cave Hero
• Level 27 Time Society Member in Gardens of Time
• Level 19 Ranger in Deep Realms

Well, shit.

Pictured: A month of my life.

Of course, the more I play, the more I remember why it was that I set my ban on Facebook games in the first place. The number one reason is that they are sneaky. Instead of charging an up-front cost or a regular membership fee, Facebook games rely on the concept of micro-transactions. That is, they offer you the game for free, hook you in, and then start offering little upgrades and perks that you can only get by buying Facebook credits. This wouldn’t be so bad, except for the fact that the more you play, the more necessary the perks become, and the harder it is to achieve a quality gaming experience without forking over some cash. I find this concept both offensive and troublesome. Offensive, because I resent the fact that these games are trying to find a backdoor into my wallet. Troublesome, because I am becoming increasingly concerned that they might actually succeed.

Of course, the money issue isn’t the only problem with Facebook games. Most of these games were designed for the casual gamer, who only wants to play a little bit here and there. Much as I hate to admit it, though, I don’t think that epithet actually applies to me anymore. When I want to game, I want to game, and I would happily sink 2-3 hours at a time into the experience without a second thought. Unfortunately, Facebook games don’t work that way. Most games have energy gauges, which severely limit what you can do in any single session. They do fill back up again over time, but it can be REALLY ANNOYING to be 9/10 of the way toward reaching a particular goal, only to discover that you will have to check back in a couple of hours in order to achieve it.

Note the many hourglass icons.

So what’s a girl to do under these circumstances? You basically have two options: fork over some money for extra energy (see above rant), or suck it up and come back later. So, assuming you are (like me) a cheap bastard, you come back later. And then you come back again later. And again later. By the 50th time you check back, give or take a few, you are beginning to suspect you might have a problem. By the 100th time you do, you’re pretty sure of it. And yet, you keep playing.

This is because of the final major issue I have with Facebook games, which is that they are specifically designed to be addictive. From depleted energy gauges that take hours to fill up, to building projects that take hours to complete, the goal of every Facebook-based game is to keep you coming back for more. Otherwise, however are they to make their money? Every possible revenue source, from the relatively direct micro-transactions to the much more shady “partner deals” that allow you to earn credits by downloading outside applications, buying monthly subscriptions to outside services, or buying merchandise from outside vendors, depends on your continued need to play the game. This kind of ethically-challenged behavior isn’t even much of a big secret: Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga (developer of Facebook games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars) has actually gone on record as saying, “I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I don’t know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it. We did anything possible just to get revenues[i].”

Of course, evil corporate entities aren’t the only ones developing Facebook games.  Smaller developers are getting in on the action, too; and it would be misleading to say that all the Facebook games out there are mass-produced pieces of crap. Truthfully, in spite of my many protests, I am actually having fun with the games I’m playing, especially Little Cave Hero, a cute little adventuring/mining game with a quirky sense of humor and an old-school visual style. I can see its tricks and strategies for making money from miles away; but at the end of the day, why shouldn’t I pay something for a game that I’m genuinely enjoying? As long as I don’t get carried away, I feel like I can at least justify a few judicious expenditures in support of the gaming industry.

My ultimate point, I guess, is while Facebook games can be fun to play, you really do have to be cautious in terms of what you play, how much you play it, and how much money you decide you want to spend on it. My advice would be to play the games that you like, ditch the ones that you don’t, and any time you’re thinking about breaking out the credit card, consider waiting a week to make sure it’s something that you REALLY want to buy. Trust me when I say that your piggy bank will thank you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to mine some gems. That new Ore Refinery isn’t going to buy itself, after all.

“Digging, digging, digging for gems and gold…”

Most games that I’ve played tend to get mixed ratings on these criteria. A game with an intriguing premise and solid mechanics, for example, may be marred by a stupid ending. Another game that has a well-written story arc may nevertheless lose me after the first hour because the puzzles are either mind-numbingly easy or eye-searingly difficult.

Of all the hidden object games I have played, one of the absolute best was Mystery Trackers: Raincliff, which—fortunately for all of you—happens to be the subject of this review.

The plot of Mystery Trackers: Raincliff begins with what I would consider to be a fairly standard set-up for a hidden object game: a bus carrying five students and a driver vanishes after a trip to the mysterious town of Raincliff. You are tasked with finding them, and in short order you arrive in the middle of a seemingly deserted town. However, despite the absence of other people, you soon discover that you are not alone. Footprints appear in the snow before your eyes, hooded and masked figures appear out of nowhere, and an entire set of dinnerware angrily hurls itself at your head. What the &*^% is going on here?

The mood of the rest of game carries through that initial sense of unease. The quiet, creepy veneer of the town is occasionally interrupted by jarring, jump-inducing movie sequences . These scenes would be frightening enough on their own, but their effect is heightened by the fact that the animation is so good, it actually looks more like they were filmed than drawn. The Uncanny Valley effect is definitely at work here, but its presence actually enhances, rather than detracts from enjoyment of the game, because nothing about Mystery Trackers: Raincliff is supposed to make you feel “comfortable”. Fortunately, it turns out that the taste of bile in your mouth every time there’s a cut scene is something you do get used to after a while. Lucky me.

Apart from the writing and animation style, one of the things I really loved about Mystery Trackers: Raincliff was the quality of the puzzles and gameplay. This is actually the only hidden object game I have played to date that had a “No Hints (At All/Ever)” mode, which I thought would be fun to try. The upside of this decision was that it took me about twice as long as usual to get through the game, which was very satisfying, since I am now able to breeze through most of those games in less than three hours. The downside was that, when I did get stuck, I was kind of S.O.L. But hey, that’s what walkthroughs are for…

The other thing I loved about the puzzles was that the game had the perfect balance of hidden object puzzles, mini-game puzzles, and “picking stuff up from around the town and using it somewhere else at an opportune moment” puzzles (Note to Self: I really need to find a better term for that). A lot of hidden object games rely too heavily on the hidden object puzzles, which can get really tiresome after a while, so this was a welcome change. In addition, the hidden object scenes had just the right level of challenge for my eyes, in that they were a) not so easy that I could pick out objects without even needing to know what I was looking for, and b) not so difficult that they made me go blind. Again, this is something I have only come to notice because of the vast number of hidden object games I have played over the last few months, but trust me when I say that after a while, it’s those little marks of quality that you really come to appreciate.

Movement within the game was very good as well. Different sections of the town opened up at different points in the game, and I was rarely prevented from going back to any previous areas, so the overall effect was one of expansion as the game progressed. This made the game more challenging, since there were more possible areas to explore; however, the increased difficulty was mitigated by the fact that at any given point in the game, the majority of tasks that needed to be completed confined themselves to a certain chunk of the map, depending on where I was in the story. Also, while there were no explicit “Congratulations! This Area Is Clear!” signs, I could generally tell when an area didn’t require any more tasks.

There was very little music in the game, with one very prominent exception. The majority of the game featured only ambient noises; but the cut scenes would crank up the scary music to full blast, adding to the overall jump-inducing effect of the scenes. Moreover, I noticed that the music would continue for about 10-15 seconds after the cut scene had ended and I had returned to the normal gameplay screen, before fading out and back to silence. This gave the movie scenes a reverberating quality that prolonged the feelings of fright, simulating those few terrifying moments after a scary encounter when your heart is still racing—even though the danger has passed—until you are able to calm yourself down.

Overall, Mystery Trackers: Raincliff is one of the most well-crafted hidden object games I have ever played. There was really nothing at all to complain about. The puzzles were challenging and balanced, the animation was fantastic, the music was scary, and the plot delivered an interesting and satisfying (if slightly odd) resolution to the initial premise. I highly recommend it to all fans of the genre!

It sucks to be a low-level character in D&D. Sad, but true. Your hit points are crap, you have no money or magic items, and your most impressive spells do exactly 1d3 points of damage per casting. I mean, OK, it’s not like the challenge ratings of the monsters you’re fighting are very high either, but still. Best-case scenario, your character is kind of a weakling but still gets a decent hit or two in per encounter. Worst case scenario, he’s completely useless (seriously, try playing a Level 1 Monk sometime and see how much you like being the only person in the party who can’t hold a weapon properly).

I mean, OK, I get it; it’s all about “role playing.” People get better at things as they learn and practice. Your character’s personal growth is reflected in his ability to level up, gain new skills, grow stronger, blah blah blah, whatever. But let’s face it: the only real point of playing a low-level character is that you get to dream of that glorious day when you finally emerge from the hellish lower levels and bloom into that elusive and magnificent figure that is the high-level character.

Yes.

Of course, if your D&D campaigns are anything like mine, such dreams are rarely realized. Depending on how often you play, it can take weeks of real-world time to amass enough XP to make even one new level, let alone fifteen. By the time you hit level 6 or 7, the DM is already dropping hints about “wrapping up the campaign soon,” and promising that he has a “really great idea for a new (low-level) game that we can play next!” Before you know it, you’re crumpling up your character sheet and the DM is passing you a new, blank one. And the first line? “Name: Alora Elvensong, Wizard Level 1.”

Woo. Fucking. Hoo.

So, it was with great delight that I recently learned of a new kind of campaign that our group was going to try. Actually, it wasn’t so much an actual campaign as it was a one-shot D&D adventure in which our characters got thrown into an arena and were forced to battle one another to the death. Not a terribly complex concept, but the upshot was that instead of making another crop of Level 1 bozos, we got to create characters that started at Level 16.

I was enthralled by all of the new possibilities laid out before me. So many spells! So many feats! Three-digit hit points! Hidden abilities that had never before had time to manifest! My new Celestial Sorcerer stepped fully formed out of my imagination, with a Charisma score of 24, an arsenal of high-level spells, and a gigantic pair of glittering, feathery wings. I was the Angel of Death, and I was ready to rumble.

What followed was probably the single most entertaining D&D game that I have played in months. My Sorcerer faced down a howling Barbarian, a nigh-invulnerable Monk, and a shriveled Wizard surrounded by three gigantic iron golems. The DM, playing the part of a powerful and malevolent demon, transported all of us into his own pocket universe, dropped us into a coliseum, and gave us a single order: “Kill.”

It would be difficult to describe the ensuing battle in its entirety, given the thoroughly epic nature of the encounter, but here are some of the key highlights and “lessons learned” from the battle:

1. When playing a game that is far, far above your usual character level, be prepared to

a) look up a lot of stuff during the battle,

b) spend most of the next day regretting all of the stuff you forgot to look up during the battle, and

c) keep a pair of earplugs on hand for when your spouse goes off on a 60-minute tangential rant about all the stuff HE forgot to look up during the battle.

We knew in advance that we were going to need to do a lot of reading during the battle, since none of us were very familiar with playing high-level characters; but even so, there were still a lot of things we got wrong. It turned out, for example, that although my lightning spells couldn’t hurt the Wizard’s iron golems, it could slow them down. Of course, since we didn’t realize that until later, my lightning spells actually had no effect whatsoever during the battle. Much worse was the fact that we all thought the golems couldn’t be on the receiving end of a critical hit (which does double or triple the normal amount of damage for a particular weapon). Mike, whose Barbarian had a particular feat that made him more likely to achieve critical hits, was very pissed off when he heard this, but not nearly as pissed off as he was later, when he realized that it wasn’t even true. As far as I know, he is still fuming about it a week later.

2. If you don’t want to sleep on the couch, don’t cast a spell that can drive your spouse (or his character) permanently insane.

I learned this lesson the hard way after casting Prismatic Spray—twice—on Mike’s character. I still maintain that I wasn’t just targeting his character, but I couldn’t help it that he was the only character within range who didn’t have spell resistance! Prismatic Spray has a variety of effects, so the exact impact of the spell is determined with a dice roll. The first time I cast the spell, I made his character permanently insane. From that point forward, his character would perform a random action each round, from a list of possible actions including:

• Attacking the nearest person or thing
• Running around in circles
• Standing there and babbling incoherently
• Stabbing himself

Admittedly, it was pretty freaking entertaining to watch (a fact over which, incidentally, Mike still glares at me every time it comes up), but unfortunately it didn’t last long. The other guys convinced me to try a second casting of the spell, just for kicks, which again only affected Mike. The result this time? 80 points of electrical damage, which directly contributed to his death the following round. Oops.

3. Dispel Magic works remarkably well against iron golems with spell resistance. So, apparently, does Acid Splash.

I discovered this accidentally while battling the three iron golems that the Wizard (played by my friend Whit) had brought into the ring. I decided to do a Knowledge (Arcana) check on the golems, and discovered that they were made almost entirely of “iron and magic.” They had an insanely high spell resistance (as in, they were immune to almost my entire spell list), but they were surprisingly susceptible to Dispel Magic. It didn’t get rid of them, exactly, but it was an effective way of turning them “off” for a few rounds, allowing the Monk (played by Jeff) and the Barbarian (played by Mike) time to get some serious damage in.  I tried to help, but as previously mentioned, most of my spells were pretty useless. Actually, the only spell I could find on my list that didn’t have problems with spell resistance was my single weakest combat spell, Acid Splash. For those of you not familiar with the spell, let’s just say that I managed to do at most three points of damage to the 200-hit-point golem per turn. It was more or less the equivalent of punching the thing (very lightly) in the arm. On one occasion, though, I cast the spell while attacking a golem who only had 1 hit point left, so a little Acid Splashing was in fact the final blow that brought him down. I guess it turns out that even low-level spells occasionally have their moments.

4. The ability to fly doesn’t mean a damn thing when someone has Dimension Door.

I started out very confident in my flying ability. I spent pretty much the entire battle hovering over everyone else, raining Death from above. Spells cast from the ground didn’t affect me; even the golems with their 10-foot reach couldn’t touch me. I was invincible…at least, I was for as long as everyone else was still preoccupied with attacking characters other than me. The minute Jeff (aka the Monk) decided he’d had enough and Dimension Door’d right on top of me, I was pretty much done. A quick grapple check, an attempt to shape-shift (which I failed), a rain of blows that drained me of over half my total hit points, forcing a Fortitude check (which I also failed), and I was unconscious on the floor of the arena with no one else to help me and dead within a round. Whee.

5. Always carry a backup weapon that doesn’t suck, or you will be seriously boned when the bare-fisted Monk decides that weapons are a form of “cheating.”

I guess Jeff’s Monk didn’t like the fact that Mike’s Barbarian had a big sword, because it was not very long before he decided to divest him of it. “No weapons here! Weapons no good! We wrestle like men, yes?” Of course, since a Monk is much faster than a Barbarian, Jeff was able to snatch Mike’s sword pretty quickly, and proceeded to run around the coliseum (which he could do in a single turn because…well, Monk) and bury it in the sand, leaving Mike staring down a very large iron golem empty-handed. As the DM pointed out later, “…and this is why all of my characters ALWAYS have at least one backup weapon that doesn’t suck on them. Because you just never know.”

6. Even if you’re crap at melee personally, extra hit points are a very good idea. A very, very good idea. Just ask the dead guy. Oh wait, you can’t, because he’s DEAD.

This was a lesson I learned as much from observation as direct experience. My friend Whit played the Wizard with the iron golems. Since he was planning to have the golems fight for him, he didn’t bother to make his character very strong. The Wizard simply released the golems and cast Invisibility on himself. Unfortunately, Invisibility is not exactly foolproof when one is up against other high-level characters with spells like True Seeing. Jeff spotted Whit’s character almost immediately, and proceeded to punch him to death:

Jeff: I use Flurry of Blows!

Whit: Yeah, I’m not gonna be able to resist that.

Jeff: OK, I do…(rolls dice)…96 points of damage.

Whit: Oh, wow, OK. I’m dead.

Jeff: What, seriously?

Whit: I have negative 30 hit points!

Jeff: Oh. Well yeah, you’re definitely dead then!

7. If you have super-awesome spells prepared, for the love of God, use them!

As fun as it was casting Acid Splash on the iron golems, I discovered later that I could have done a lot more damage if I’d used some of the other spells in my arsenal. Not the attack spells, of course, but I had also prepared a bunch of summoning and shape-shifting spells, the most powerful of which was Form of Dragon III. If I had just shape-shifted early in the game, I could have turned myself into an enormous dragon (with the retained ability to cast ALL of my other spells) for the duration of the entire battle, allowing me to do massive physical damage to those damn spell-resistant golems. Of course, this didn’t occur to me until after the battle, when Mike mentioned it in the car. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Oh well.

8. Laugh a lot.

No point to this one really, but it certainly does add to the fun, especially when you get to destroy your friends’ characters in a spectacularly over-the-top manner. Their subsequent pouting just makes it even funnier!

In the end, the Monk played by Jeff succeeded in taking down all of his opponents. The reward for victory was a single Wish granted by the DM. I don’t think Jeff originally intended this, but when it came time to make his Wish, he took a quick glance around the table, taking in all of the glum, defeated faces, and loudly announced, “I wish that everyone is alive again! Hooray! We wrestle!” We all appreciated the thought, and the game was declared officially over; but it did occur to me that in the context of the game, there was really nothing stopping that evil demon from using Jeff’s Wish to make us just fight the whole damn battle over again. But hey, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. As least we could have delayed the inevitable return to Level 1 for just a little while longer…

In the beginning, most of my time-wasting activities involved trolling around on the Internet, reading books, and playing games on my DS. Unfortunately, it so happened this period also coincided with an unusual lull in my normal gaming activities. Nothing was waiting for me in our Gamefly queue, there were no new releases that I was interested in, and I was getting kind of bored with running through Mike’s classic RPG collection. I needed something new and different.

The answer to my troubles came from an unexpected quarter. A couple of years ago, I did a review of Avenue Flo, a point-and-click adventure game distributed by Big Fish Games. As a result, Big Fish Games managed to get hold of my e-mail address, and had been sending me periodic e-mail updates ever since. Up until this point, I had simply been ignoring them along with all of the other spam I get from Ann Taylor and Barnes & Noble; but on this particular day, a message in my inbox happened to catch my eye:

Huh, I thought. This looks interesting. I mean, hell, I like music. And I like mysteries! Not so keen on death, but hey, I’m REALLY bored. Why not check it out?

So I did. I quickly clicked on the link and followed through to the download page. Big Fish allows you to demo any game before you play it, so I downloaded the demo and dived in. Immediately, I was enchanted by the spooky mood, the evocative artwork, and the seemingly endless opportunities for puzzle solving. By the time I reached the end of the demo, I was hooked.

Looking back, that was probably where the downhill spiral started. For one thing, as much as I enjoyed playing the game, I found that it was over all too soon. Replaying it was no good (in general, puzzle adventure games are pretty crappy in terms of replay value); so in order to keep the fix going, I needed to get more. The other problem was that these kinds of games, individually, are relatively cheap. The average price for a game is about $6.99 (if you are in the super-special Big Fish Games Club, which I now am), and $13.99 for Collector’s Editions. Plus, once they had my information on file, buying and downloading games online was as easy as pie. Controlling my impulse buys, on the other hand…well, not so much.

What I discovered throughout the next month and a half was that hidden object games are to gaming what pizza and nachos are to food. They are addictive and tasty, but ultimately full of empty calories. In the course of a 3-4 hour playthrough, there is just enough time to solve the mystery, but no extra time for any substantial character or plot developments. The best they manage to deliver is a cheap thrill or two; and actually, a lot of hidden object games are either mysteries or horror/thriller games because those genres pack the most punch without having to dive into anything more complex.

This is not to say that they weren’t any good. On the contrary, I really enjoyed most of the games I played, and a select bunch of them I would even classify as excellent. These games in particular had solid, interesting (if simple) stories, beautiful designs, haunting music, and (importantly) puzzles that were both challenging and relevant to the plot. And there were so many of them! New games were posted daily, and for a while, it was all I could do to keep up.

Of course, no phase lasts forever; and (fortunately for me) my fixation with hidden object game downloads eventually did start to slow down. Part of it had to do with money (even at $6.99 a game, the cost really does add up after a while, especially if you’re running through them at a rate of one game every 1-3 days); and part of it was simply that I was ready to move on to my next obsessive, time-consuming phase. As of the writing of this column, it has been about a month since I purchased my last hidden object game; and although I do still try a demo or two from time to time, I think I finally have it beat. For now, anyway.

On a somewhat related note, it seems that I have managed to accumulate a sizeable collection of several dozen hidden object games on my computer. Barring any unforeseen events or circumstances, these games are probably going to sit on my hard drive until I a) forget how the puzzles work and play them again, or b) overcome my guilt about throwing away things I have paid for and delete them. In the meantime, if anybody happens to stop by our house and has a hankering to give any of them a try, feel free. At least then I’ll feel like I’m getting my money’s worth…

Preface: This article is the second half of a two-part series on playing Dungeons & Dragons. To read the first installment in the series, please click here.

Learning the Rules

As with any other game, the first—and often most frustrating—step of playing Dungeons & Dragons is learning all the rules. This is most definitely not an easy task, since D&D rules are a bit more complicated than most other games. Remember in my last article, when I mentioned that the D&D rulebook was a “tome”? This was not, in fact, entirely accurate. The truth is that the D&D rulebook is actually several tomes. Apparently, the official creators of D&D like to revamp the rules every so often, and regularly put out new editions with formal changes and updates. Meanwhile, other people, whose identities I cannot comment upon except to say that they are most definitely not the official creators of D&D, are also putting out their own volumes. For example, the last several campaigns I have played in were based on a book called Pathfinder, which is an unofficial “streamlined” version of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition Rulebook. But hey, it’s not so bad, right? At least you just have to deal with one book that serves as the bible for your campaign!

…Except, of course, for the supplementary volumes, of which there are many. The Core Rulebook is great for players who are “just starting out,” but if you really want to get in on the good stuff, you damn well had better see about investing in the Bestiary, the Advanced Players Guides, the Dungeon Master’s Guides, and the Lord-Knows-What-Else. On the plus side, toting all of these volumes to each and every gaming session does help to build your upper body strength, which is very important for things like opening beer bottles and feeding yourself snacks.

Taking Action

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you have by now mastered enough of the rules to at least feign a passing knowledge of D&D. Once you have the basics down, the next logical step is applying them; and the only way to do that is by diving into the game itself. Lucky you!

OK, so this part was actually pretty scary for me at first. As gigantic as the rulebooks are, the one thing they don’t tell you is what you are supposed to do in any given situation. That is pretty much up to you, and it is majorly open-ended. I will readily admit that the sheer number of available options really freaked me out in the beginning. I was never really sure what to say, so I frequently just didn’t say anything at all. In fact, I actually began to dread the DM’s eternal (yet, in retrospect, fairly innocuous) question: “So…what do you guys want to do?” Instead of answering, I preferred to let the other guys in the party make the decisions, and just kind of assumed that my character followed along with whatever they were doing. This worked well for a while; but as you can imagine, it’s kind of hard to get much enjoyment out of a game in which you have the functional capacity of a burlap sack.

The first time I really did anything in D&D was during one game that took place about half a dozen sessions after I started. The situation in question involved a couple of goblins who had kidnapped a little boy and were holding him hostage in a treehouse. Although I still lacked confidence as a player, I soon found that my sheer indignance over such abominable treatment of a child (fictional or otherwise) overcame my natural reticence to act. I swung myself into the treehouse, successfully talked the goblins into handing over the kid, and encased myself and the boy in a protective Sanctuary spell while the other guys “took care of” (read: annihilated) the remaining threat.

After the game had ended and we were heading out to the car, I noticed a slight spring in my step that hadn’t been there before. I felt surprisingly good. OK, so a little scuffle with a couple of goblins half my size wasn’t exactly a huge encounter, but I still felt proud of myself. I had acted, and I had helped. For the first time, I felt like a valuable member of the team.

After that, it got easier to make decisions during the game. Granted, some of them didn’t turn out so well, but many did. For example, during my time as a D&D player, I have:

• Rescued a drowning paladin from a raging river
• Helped save a single mother and her small children from murderous mafia goons
• Taken down multiple frost giants almost single-handedly with some well-placed arrows
• Successfully exonerated a teammate accused of a capital crime
• Captured a powerful magic item mere moments before it would have fallen into the hands of the main villain, thereby preventing an immediate and unpleasant end to a bloody war

I do realize that these accomplishments are not actually as impressive as they would be if they happened in real life; but when things get going, the game often starts to feel like it’s real, and it’s easy to get emotionally invested. Granted, it may only last a short while; but in that moment, if only for a moment, what you do matters, and you end up feeling like a hero. It does make for quite the ego boost!

Playing the Part

As you have probably ascertained by now, Dungeons & Dragons is at its core a game about role-playing; and playing the game well boils down to two things: how well you play your Character and how well you play your Role. Both aspects of role-playing are crucial to the D&D gaming experience. Without characters, for example, the story won’t get very far. Without people playing their designated roles, on the other hand, your party won’t get very far either, because chances are good none of you will last beyond the first couple of random encounters.

Whenever you begin a new campaign, your Character is the person you invent to take part in the game’s story. How much or how little time you actually put into creating your character is pretty much up to you, but you should at least nail down the character’s alignment, basic motivations, and rudimentary backstory. These fundamentals will be key to establishing how the character deals with any given situation.

Your Role, on the other hand, is less about overarching narrative arcs and more about basic tactics. There’s a good reason that parties of adventurers are generally composed of multiple character classes. A paladin is great and all, but a party of five or six paladins might run into trouble when required to do something other than “smite evil”. It’s much better to go with a balanced party, because all of the different classes have specific jobs at which they excel. Paladins smite, clerics heal, casters buff, bards negotiate, rangers track, and rogues do all the nasty little things that no one else in the party really wants to deal with. When you play your Role well, you become a valued asset to the team. When you don’t play your Role well, you are more likely run the risk of bringing the wrath of your fellow party members down upon yourself. This righteous fury can range from annoyed-but-good-natured ribbing to a swift and bloody end for your character at the hands of an enraged mob, so consider yourself warned!

The specific balance between Character and Role varies from game to game. Roles often end up trumping Characters as time goes on, largely because players who originally started out with the best of intentions eventually slip into “gaming” mode: that is, playing as themselves. Oddly enough, our party was rather unique in this respect, because the character-playing in our game actually got more intense towards the end of the game. Several of the players, including myself, ended up experiencing rather dramatic character development. My character, for example, transformed from a novice ranger to a full-fledged Duchess, bearing all of the weight and responsibility that came with the title. The rogue in our party shifted not one, but two character alignments over the course of the game, transitioning from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Evil as a magical Sword of Power slowly drove him mad. Our half-orc fighter began as a hired thug for the mob and developed into a respected guardsman harboring an unspoken (but not, perhaps, unrequited) attraction to the half-elf Duchess of Oriosa. Our sorcerer died and was reborn with new draconic powers. Our cleric…smashed a magic acorn. (OK, so not everyone achieved the same level of character development. It happens). At any rate, the “story” actually ended up trumping the “game”, and the whole thing made for a truly awesome experience.

Starting Over from Scratch

Of course, no matter how awesome your campaign is, you do have to remember that eventually, it will end. The storyline will wrap up, the DM will run out of ideas, and it will be time to move on to the next thing. No more leveling up, no more new spells or items, and time to say goodbye to all the sweet weapons and magical artifacts you’ve managed to accumulate.

This is always kind of a bittersweet moment, especially if the campaign has been going on for a long time and you’ve grown attached to your characters. Alas, there’s not much to do besides put away the character sheets, place your painted mini on the shelf, and rest secure in the knowledge that in a month or so, you’ll just be back where you started, with a new Lever 1 adventurer and a brand new campaign, wondering what’s going to happen next…

From left to right: Dante, Leaf of Oriosa, Rorich, Jace, Regulus, Ludvig, Godeck the Destroyer

You can view/listen to/ignore the complete video series on the GameCola YouTube channel. Below are the first three videos, so you can laugh at the predictions we made for gaming in 2009, which I’m still not convinced ever happened. The podcast is over an hour long, broken into nine videos; if you make it all the way to video #6, we’ll give you a cat.

Not all gaming has to be electronic. Over the last year or so, I’ve been making my first forays into tabletop gaming, which is another way of saying that, yes, I now know how to play Dungeons & Dragons. Well, kinda. It’s a steep learning curve. When I think of “game rules,” I think of the stapled 4-6 page pamphlets that come with most board games. The D&D rulebook, on the other hand, is a hardbound, 200+ page tome. And that’s only the latest edition.

That said, I’ve actually been having a lot of fun with D&D. Recently, my group finished up our latest campaign, which took the better part of 6-8 months to complete. For me, it was the first time I had ever played a story all the way through, and I ended up really getting into it. I wanted to use one of my “Gamer Girlfriend” columns to cover my D&D experiences, but I’m already finding that I have way too much material for a single article. As such, I think I am going to make this a 2-3 part series (a “Gamer Girlfriend” first!). 

Part I: Meet the Players

To begin, I need to explain what it’s like to play as part of a D&D group. A lot of people think that D&D players are just a uniform bunch of nerdy guys sitting around a table, but in reality, they aren’t uniform at all! As we progressed through the game, I noticed that the members of our group tended to drift toward specific roles that determined how they played. Each player brought something different to the table, and in doing so, helped to shape the dynamics that defined our game over the course of its 8-month run.

The members of our team were:

The Storyteller: Also known as the DM, or Dungeon Master, Jeff was basically the man in charge of the game. Now in theory, the role of the DM is to control all non-player characters, stage random encounters, and generally move the plot forward. However, I have begun to entertain a sneaking suspicion that the real job of the DM is to take every available tool, monster, and cursed item in the book, and use them in successively elaborate attempts to exterminate all of the player characters. Every time he fails to do so, you get experience points in celebration of your continued survival. Many player characters have died along the road to XP, but believe me when I say that leveling up is totally worth the trouble.

Unlike many Dungeon Masters who use pre-fabricated modules, Jeff preferred to write his own original content for the campaign. This gave him a lot of freedom to create his own world (complete with all of the trappings) and to weave a story that was adapted to the characters that the rest of our group had chosen. For me, this was actually pretty cool, since it meant that my character was actually an integral part of the plot from the very beginning. More on that in a bit…

The Meta-gamer: In D&D, there is always a fine line between “in character” and “out of character.” What you know may not be the same as what your character knows. How you decide to act during the 5-10 minutes it takes to do a round of combat probably isn’t the same as what your character would do in the equivalent 6 seconds of in-game time. Sometimes it can be difficult to balance the dueling impulses of Player and Character. The meta-gamer is the group member who tends to err a little too much on the side of Player.

In our game, Mike was the meta-gamer. His love for creating colorful-yet-freakishly-powerful characters from obscure prestige classes had earned him the nickname “Mr. Cheesy” in our group. True to form, and much to the chagrin of our DM, Mike had decided to be a Brass-type Dragon Disciple for our campaign. Between the free stat increases and the constant prattling (Brass Dragon Disciples are notoriously chatty), I’m pretty sure Jeff was ready to kill him by the third game.

At one point, though, our beloved DM did get the chance for some payback. After a series of random encounters and a couple of major battles, we ended up spending about 3-4 successive games in the city of Esgard, where the locals didn’t believe in arcane magic. As a result, while the rest of the party went merrily about its usual business, Mike’s character was stuck without his arcane magical powers for the real-time equivalent of about a month. I’m sure it was frustrating for him, but I have to admit: the constant pouting was pretty damn funny to watch. Who says DMs don’t have a sense of humor?

The Role-player: For every meta-gamer, there must be a role-player to maintain balance. Instead of fussing over stats and abilities, role-players focus on character. Not just, “What would my character do when faced with this situation,” but “What does my character do during his time off? … Who does my character enjoy spending time with? … What kind of beer does my character like?…,” and so on.

Dan was our role-player. By complete coincidence, it so happened that his character was cast as a sergeant who was ordered to go on a mission into the desert. This wouldn’t have meant much, were it not for the fact that Dan is actually a sergeant who was on his way to the desert (as in, Iraq) and left shortly after the campaign finished. You’d think that when you get cast in a game as essentially yourself, it wouldn’t require you to do much role playing. Somehow, though, he still seemed to manage it better than anyone else in the group.

Personally, I think it was his fondness for details that made the difference. Once, when faced with the question of what to do on the night before departing on a dangerous mission, Dan opted against any of the normal preparatory actions (e.g. buying supplies, packing gear, getting a good night’s sleep, etc.) and decided to spend the night with an unspecified “lady friend” that he had picked up in the tavern. Amused, the DM had him roll a “Diplomacy” check to ascertain how attractive the lady friend would be, and a subsequent “Performance” check to determine how big his “spear” would be. Ever the romantic, Dan even thought to leave a rose for his Lady Love before heading out in the morning. I cannot think of many other players who would have done the same.

Mr. Dependable (aka The Veteran): Somewhere between the extremes of the meta-gamer and the role-player lies the guy I like to refer to as Mr. Dependable. Mr. Dependable doesn’t obsess over stats, but knows how to use them to his advantage. He does role-play, but his primary focus is always on getting the job done.

Whitman was our Mr. Dependable. He played a half-orc fighter who spoke broken English with a Russian accent, sported a funny hat, and had an Intimidation score that was through the roof. He didn’t hesitate to use it, either. In fact, it proved quite useful in a surprising number of situations. Facing down a band of thugs? Intimidate. Have to kidnap another player character on the orders of a secret society boss? Intimidate. In charge of pulling the shell-shocked daughter of a dying duke away from her father’s broken corpse so you can escape? Damn straight, he’s going to Intimidate!

Whit was also the guy you could rely on to take action whenever action needed taking. Faced with an undead ice giantess bathed in dragon blood who could only be killed by a cursed sword currently in the possession of a party member who appeared to be having a seizure, Whit simply plucked up the sword, stabbed the giant, and ended up losing an arm for his trouble. But hey, he got the job done.

The Chick/The Newbie: I do not mean to imply that the chick must always be the newbie, nor must the newbie always be a chick; but in this case, they were the same person, and that person was me. The newbie is the one who is always asking questions: “What is my AC? How many bonus spells do I get? How do I figure out my hit points?”… etc. Now, I have found that if you must be the newbie, there are advantages to also being the chick. One advantage is that people don’t seem to get quite so annoyed when you pester them with questions. Another is the pity factor. At one point in the game, my character acquired a wolf companion, which made me ecstatic, because I had been waiting for four levels to get it, and it was totally badass. Much later, I found out that I had calculated the wolf’s hit points incorrectly, and that it was actually not supposed to be nearly as powerful as it had been. However, the DM never said anything about it until after the campaign was over. As he explained to Mike afterwards, “she was just so excited about getting the wolf, I could never bring myself to seriously try and kill it. So I figured it might as well just keep the extra HP.”

Finally, the chick has unique access to the ultimate out-of-game persuasion factor, also known as “crying.” I never used this tactic during the campaign, but I did come close a few times toward the end. My character was the daughter of a duke who had led and fought with us throughout much of the campaign. During the last couple of games, he was terribly wounded, and insisted that we leave him behind in order to escape. I was pretty traumatized, and I mentioned to Mike  that if the duke ended up dying, I was probably going to start crying during the final game. “Oh dear sweet Jesus, that would be the nuclear option!” he exclaimed. “They would do anything you wanted to get you to stop. Guys can’t handle crying. Duke Raymond would be dead on the floor and then all of a sudden, ‘Hey, he’s alive again and everything’s fine. You all go home and have a party.’”

Like I said, I didn’t actually use it during the campaign, but still…good to know. Good to know.

The “Cleric”: Under normal circumstances, the cleric is an extremely valuable member of the party. He is good at assisting in fights by using buff spells, as well as cleaning up after fights by healing the wounded. He may not be the toughest fighter, but the group would be lost without him.

Tom was our party’s “cleric” for the campaign. I say “cleric” because he was really only a cleric in the most nominal sense. He liked having the spells and bonuses that came with the class, but his character didn’t believe in any god, wasn’t particularly interested in converting or ministering unto the heathen masses, and—worst of all—didn’t consider himself to be a “healing cleric.” Admittedly, if you yelled at him enough, you could get him to cast Cure Light Wounds on occasion, but he was generally much more focused on casting Invisibility and/or Body Double than keeping his party members healthy. This was kind of a problem, since he was the only character in the whole goddamn party who could cast healing spells. Seriously. The fact that all of our party members actually survived the campaign was nothing short of a miracle. I am still not entirely sure how we managed it.

The Clown: It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing D&D, working on a group project, or serving in the actual Armed Forces, every group has a dud. This is the guy who is perpetually a) annoying, b) useless, or c) both. They can’t ever seem to do anything right, and they always end up as the butt of every joke. Now, if they are smart, they will play this up to the max and just laugh along with everyone else each time they fail, because it’s always better to be the fool than the idiot.

In our group, the role of the clown was filled by Ralph, who seemed to take a particular delight in making things more difficult for everyone else through periodic acts of brazen stupidity. Actually, I found him to be a pretty spectacular source of in-game comedy, and there are many D&D-related “Ralph” stories of which I am quite fond, such as “The Time Ralph Almost Drowned the Party by Casting Entangle While Underwater,” “The Time Ralph Burned Down a Village and Killed Everyone in It By Casting Grease on a Fire,” “The Time Ralph Soiled Himself to Avoid Being Eaten by a Bear,” and my personal favorite, “The Time Ralph Jumped off the Boat and Failed to Gain Experience Because He Did Not Help to Slay the Kraken.” A summary version of this story is provided below for your amusement:

Scene: The party is sailing on a boat that is attacked by pirates. While the rest of the party dispatches of the pirates, commandeers the boat, and fights a kraken, Ralph decides to take an alternate route…

(As the rest of the party battles the pirates)

Ralph: I jump off the boat!

DM: Ralph, don’t jump off the boat.

Ralph: I’m going to jump off the boat and swim to shore!

DM: OK, fine. You swim to shore. Then what do you do?

Ralph: Is there anything around me?

DM: No.

Ralph: Hmm…well, I guess I just start running. I have the Run feat, so I can go for a while.

DM: OK. You’re running, and some guys on horses come up behind you.

Ralph: I keep running.

DM: They’re going to catch you.

Ralph: But I have the Run feat!

DM: Ralph, they have horses.

Ralph: Well, I keep running anyway.

DM: OK…they catch up to you and club you over the head, knocking you unconscious. You wake up in a jail cell.

Ralph: Crap.

DM: Yeah.

Ralph: Is there anything around me that I could use for a spell or a tool?

DM: No.

Ralph: Do I have any of my gear?

DM: No.

Ralph: Not even my clothes?

DM: You have a pair of pants on. That’s it.

Ralph: Is there anyone around me?

DM: No.

Ralph: Any animals? Anything?

DM: There’s a frog in the corner.

Ralph: I talk to the frog!

And so he did. It didn’t really get him anywhere, though. I think the party eventually rescued him. Or maybe he died and made up a new character. I can’t remember which.

The Guy Who Always Ends Up Playing Neutral Evil (No Matter What His Character Alignment Actually Is): Every time a player creates a new character, they must give that character a moral and ethical alignment that encompasses the character’s views toward Good and Evil, as well as toward Lawfulness and Chaos. Certain races and classes tend in one direction or another, but it is generally up to the player to decide how they want to act in character. Some players favor one alignment, while others like to experiment and change from game to game.

Of course, there are other players whose moral relativism dictates that all alignments are really just “guidelines” that are open to a wide amount of interpretation. I have only played one full campaign with Allan, but I have it on good authority that his characters—irrespective of their actual alignments—always somehow end up being Neutral Evil. Mostly, it probably has to do with the fact that all his characters are a) first and foremost self-preservationists, and b) very good at rationalizing their actions. Kill a couple innocent bystanders, ignore some starving orphans, swear a secret blood oath of vengeance against a party member, execute a hostage behind the back of the party paladin despite explicit instructions not to do so…all in a day’s work in service to the “greater good.”

Now, other than that, the Neutral Evil guy is not necessarily a bad party member to have around. He often proves quite useful, especially when you find yourself in life-or-death situations where things like morals just get in the way of having to make the hard calls. All I’m saying is, if you ever play D&D with him, you might want to watch your back. There’s always a chance you might get stabbed in it.

Next month: Part II – Getting into the Game!

Plus, I like games. I do. Not all of them, to be sure; but enough that I had really started to enjoy the “gamer” lifestyle. It was a good life. It was a happy life.

Then Mike started to make friends.

Now, I’m not saying that having friends is a bad thing, or even a particularly unusual one. Mike is a pretty social person; and he has friends in quite a few different circles. Of course, most of them are nerds and gamers in some respect or another; but that’s normal, right?

Actually, I think it was the nerd factor that threw me off in the beginning. It all began so innocuously. Mike started to toss a few new names into conversation. Person A had been hanging out with the Poképals. Person B was someone he had met at a party. Person C liked to go to the same concerts he did. No biggie.

Then the same names started coming up in conversation more often; and I began noticing odd connections between them. It turned out that Persons A and B worked at the same gaming development company; Persons B and C were in a band together; Persons A and C were roommates, and so on.

And then it slowly started to dawn on me…they all knew each other. All of these people who were randomly involved in the Baltimore videogame scene were in some way connected with one another. This was bad enough; but it was soon followed by an even more alarming revelation: not only were they involved with the Baltimore videogame scene, they ran the Baltimore videogame scene.

They were the goddamn Baltimore Videogame Mafia.

From then on, it was different. Gaming wasn’t just about the games any more. All of a sudden, Mike was plunged into a world with a life and culture that was all its own. Instead of staying home every night and wading through the GameFly queue, Mike was in high demand for all sorts of events. Mega Man-themed D&D on Tuesdays. Nerd Dodgeball League on Wednesdays. Helping renovate the new theatre for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. Running the console room at the Bit Gen festivals. Concerts. Parties. Cookouts. All with the same fucking group of people.

 They even sent members to guard—I mean, “attend”—our wedding. Try to spot them!

For me, it was hard not to get drawn in; although Lord knows I tried. I never wanted to be part of an underground nerd subculture. Before Mike came onto the scene, if you had asked me what I thought about videogame cover bands, or D&D webcomics, or Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, I would have just stared at you blankly. And then laughed. And then stared blankly again.

I guess it’s my own fault, really, for being so “open” to things. I probably should have been more condescending and bitchy about my husband’s interests right from the get-go. Of course, if I had done that, he probably wouldn’t be my husband; but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, in spite of everything, I have come to…enjoy…much of what Mike has exposed me to. I like listening to The Protomen and The Megas. I read Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del and Order of the Stick. I still refuse to play Pokémon; but I have come to consider many of the Poképals to be good friends. Goddammit, WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

All of this recently culminated in MAGFest 9, aka the Music and Gaming Festival, aka the social event of the year for all of Mike’s gamer friends. This year the convention attracted about 3,000 people and consisted of five days of concerts, panels, and non-stop gaming. For me, it was quite an experience. I had actually been the previous year; but that was before Mike really got “in” with the BVGM. Back then, they might have been the Baltimore Videogame Construction Co. for all we knew. This year, though, we were in. Really in. “Made Man” in. So, I figured, why not take advantage of it?

And indeed I did. Over the course of five days at MAGFest, I did the following:

• I attended the panel for “Hey Ash Watcha’ Playin’?” (an online series of short parody videos made by a brother-and-sister team), and then proceeded to stalk—ahem, “randomly run into”—them for the rest of the convention;
• I watched The Megas play live for the first time;
• I rocked out to The Protomen, Acts I and II, also for the first time;
• I sat through 20 minutes of late-night trivia with Mike before vowing that we would never go again unless we were the ones running it;
• I got my now-famous Panda Hat;
• I completely missed the Child’s Play charity auction where they raised $700 by auctioning off the right to beat a guy with his own Nerf weapons; and
• I posted updates about the whole damn thing to Twitter. With pictures.

OK, so maybe it’s not such a terrible thing that gaming isn’t just about the games anymore. I mean, it’s not like we stopped playing the games. As we speak, Mike is battling his way through Costume Quest and I am resisting the temptation to stop writing and pick up Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. It’s just that the world has gotten a little bigger, maybe a little more complex, and definitely a whole lot more bad-ass. Because now if you mess with us, Big Adam will cut you. Ha ha! Just kidding. Maybe.