Not really the post I was planning, nor the day I expected to write it on

I was going to write about how Shadowrun went on Saturday, but this came out instead. So here it is the history of how I became interested in roleplaying games.

Starting with Dungeons & Dragons, and then branching out to other systems I've been roleplaying since 1990. In no particular order I can thank my mother, Tom Hanks, and Joel Rosenberg for that fact. Actually I can thank a lot more people then that, but that list would be ridiculously long, so I'll stick to those three and add any honorable mention additions as I go along.

To be perfectly fair I should be thanking both of my parents, and not just my mother, because I can trace my love of roleplaying back to my love of reading, and both of my parents deserve some credit for that. I grew up surrounded by books, both my parents are avid readers, and I grew up watching them read, and having them read to me, and I and my younger brothers had an awful lot of children's books at our disposal so it is not surprising that it is a hobby I picked up. I should also add some props to the Miller School District because I remember also being surrounded by books in the 1^st grade, and in the 2^nd grade the teacher read to us everyday from the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I would attempt to get back to the topic of my mother's role in all this, but the next point I'm going to make about her leads to another small tangent, so bear with me. The Hand County Public Library and their summer reading programs also deserve some credit. I bring this up because I need to thank my mother for getting me a library card at a young age, providing frequent transportation to the library (I grew up on a farm roughly 12 miles outside of the town of Miller, SD), and once I had started exhausting the possibilities of the children's section of the library she pointed out the science-fiction/fantasy section (if she had done nothing else I'd still thank her for that). All of this reading eventually lead to the likes of professor J. R. R. Tolkien and his hobbits, Ursula K. Le Guin and Earthsea, Lloyd Alexander and his tales of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper, C. S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia, etc.

So how does all this reading translate into me being a roleplayer. Well first reading encourages an active imagination, and codified rules for a game of make-believe is one of the many things a roleplaying game really is (I guess I should add Mr. Rogers and public television to the honorable mention list). I'll get to the second and more direct link in a bit. I'll also be coming back to my mother, but next I need to thank Mr. Tom Hanks, CBS, Rona Jaffe, and James Dallas Egbert III.

In 1982 CBS aired a made-for-TV-movie staring Tom Hanks called Mazes and Monsters. The movie is about a guy who played a Dungeon & Dragons like fantasy roleplaying game that caused him to go insane, and try to kill himself. It was adapted from a novel by Rona Jaffe with the same name and is a fictionalized account of the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1979 and even as fictionalized accounts go this movie (and book) bears little relation to the actual facts of the case. However none of that is the important part. The only thing I took away from this movie was an awareness that there was such a thing as a roleplaying game. So thank you Mr. Hanks, and everybody else involved.

As the 1980's progressed I noticed Dungeons & Dragons in various places: there was of course the Saturday morning cartoon on CBS, there would be the odd newspaper and magazine articles, and I started seeing the actual D&D game in bookstores (the later meant a trip out of town since Miller is way to small for a bookstore). In the late 1980s probably 1989 I checked out a book at my local library by Joel Rosenberg entitled Guardians of the Flame: The Warriors. It was composed of three previously published novels by Joel Rosenberg: The Sleeping Dragon, The Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown. The basic plot is a bunch of college students get together to play a fantasy roleplaying game (much like D&D), but their Game Master transports their consciousnesses (or minds, souls, spirits, what-have-you) into the body of their characters in the game world they were playing in, and then chronicles what happens as they try to find away back home.

The book was all fine, well, and good, but what really caught my attention was at the beginning of The Sleeping Dragon before the characters are transported into the game world they sit around a talk about the mechanics of their roleplaying game. They have a new person joining their campaign and they explain character creation to her. That part planted a seed in my head (see what reading will do to you). I probably didn't even wait to finish the book, before I was off trying to create my own roleplaying game. I created characters like mad, I created a town for them to live in, an evil baron to oppress them, a dungeon for them to go find treasure in, and I drew maps of all these places. Creating the world was relatively easy, coming up with game mechanics, now that was hard. What is the difference between playing an elf and a human? How do you determine how good somebody is with a sword? Those were the types of questions I struggled with (I never did come up with a particularly satisfying answer).

My parents took note of my interest (the fact I could blanket the living room with paper I'd used to create characters and what not may have aided in that). As luck would have it around this time my mother (told you I'd come back to her) went back to college. She was going to Northern State University, in Aberdeen, SD, and being in a larger town then Miller and a college town at that had easy access to bookstores. So for Easter in 1990 she got me three books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning. The books were very good, but she also included a copy of issue number 154 of Dragon Magazine. This was the jackpot tantalizing glimpses at actual rules for D&D. If there were any danger I'd loose interest in fantasy roleplaying it was gone now. A subscription to Dragon Magazine, and its sister publication Dungeon Magazine soon followed. But most importantly I took note of the bright shiny ads for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2^nd Edition Player's Handbook.

Let me pause for another aside. Also noted in these early copies of Dragon Magazine was an advertisement for a business in Albuquerque, NM called Wargames West. This business was a game distributer and they offered a free catalog. I ordered the catalog and my eyes were opened to the vast world of roleplaying games out there. Almost all of my first steps beyond D&D can be traced to those catalogs. They were often my primary source of information about a new and interesting game, and even when I learned of a new game from another source I could always count on Wargames West to carry it. Unfortunately Wargames West went out of business at the end of December 2001.

Anyway back to D&D and the 2^nd edition Player's Handbook. Naturally this brings me to another little digression. Probably in the 6^th grade I started to grow my hair out long. Now remember this was the late 1980s so I'm not talking about growing all of my hair out, no we are talking just the back. I'm rather embarrassed to admit, but I had a mullet. My parents never really expressed any dissatisfaction to me about this hair style (although I do know dad didn't like me wearing it in a ponytail), but out of the blue towards the end of my 8^th grade year they offered a trade. I get a hair cut, and they buy me the Player's Handbook. I wanted the book, and didn't have any particular attraction to having long hair so I agreed.

Once I had the Player's Handbook I was mostly set. I already had a pretty good handle on world creation. Now I had rules for actual game play, what I lacked was, rules for awarding experience points, statistics for magical items and monsters, and general advice about how to be a game master (or since we are talking D&D a dungeon master). But since I was reaching the age where I had access to my own money, and a car (in South Dakota you can start driving at age 14), the other D&D rulebooks I acquired mainly on my own.

As I alluded to above my first forays beyond D&D were games mainly from genres other than fantasy. The Star Wars RPG by West End Games remains a favorite of mine. The Marvel Super Hero RPG is another I got into pretty early on in my roleplaying career. It wasn't until about 1997 that I started growing a bit tired of some of the limitations of D&D and started looking elsewhere for a possible fantasy roleplaying replacement. Among the many other games I picked up during my search include GURPS and the Hero System (although this was 4^th edition Hero so it was still basically known as Champions). I guess it is worth pointing out neither GURPS nor Hero are strictly speaking fantasy roleplaying games both are universal systems meaning they are designed to be used for any genre, however since I could easily devote an entire other post to GURPS and the Hero System lets just stop while we are ahead. D&D 3e, the whole d20 system, and later D&D 3.5 did a pretty good job of addressing many of things I found wanting in D&D, but by this point the genie was out of the bottle. There was a whole world of RPGs out there and wasn't going to limit myself to just one.

Okay so there you go.

In brief:

Shadowrun on Saturday went extremely well. I had a blast, and I think everybody else did too. The gaming session was pretty typical for me and my current group. We ate first, we were easily distracted by each others company, and we started late, but that's okay. The game renewed my desire to get back to Shadowrun in the future, but for the present I really want to continue my BESM campaign.

I got even less sleep on Saturday night (well really Sunday morning) then I did the previous night, so I was super tired at work, fortunately Sundays are usually very slow (and this one mercifully was). This reminds me I really should do one post where I explain more or less what I do, but that isn't going to be this post.

City of Heroes continues to be fun, and a major time sink. Instead of going to sleep when I got home from work on Sunday, (or writing my how Shadowrun went post) I played City of Heroes for about five or six hours (or basically until I was ready to fall asleep at my computer). At least I went to bed at around 10pm Sunday night so I was nice an refreshed for work on Monday. After work yesterday I played for a good eight hours. I put in another five hours Tuesday afternoon. I am beginning to suspect I may have a problem with moderation in my life.

Still nothing new to report on the anime front. I'm going to make time away from City of Heroes to watch Tenjho Tenge either today or tomorrow. I also had the Saiyuki movie arrive in the mail, so I'll see about getting to that as well.

So little sleep, huzzah for Turkish coffee!


Okay this is going to be a short entry. I purchased City of Heroes last night. It is far too early to say what I think of the game overall, but the character creation is ridiculously fun. I’m not surprised that I found the chargen enjoyable, I’ve always been a fan of creating superheroes. I’ll always have fond memories of TSR’s Marvel Super Hero RPG for the fact that I spent hours and hours as a teenager creating superheroes with that game (I spent far more time creating characters for the game then I ever did actually playing it).

At any rate, I stayed up much too late last night playing my new game. I should have been preparing for a one off Shadowrun game I’m going to GM this afternoon. I’m pretty familiar with Shadowrun the setting, but we’ll be using the new 4th edition rules, which I’ve owned for a while now (got it not too long after it came out actually), I’ve even run a one off before using the rules, but I’ve never really sat down and read the book. I also haven’t sat down and prepared anything for this game. No I’m going to be winging it. If this were 3rd Edition Shadowrun I wouldn’t be as worried, if this were some version of D&D (any version really from 1st edition through 3.5) I just plain wouldn’t be worried, and if this were Big Eyes, Small Mouth then I would have just described the standard amount of preparation I’ve done for the majority of the fairly successful BESM campaign I’ve been running since January. Unfortunately this is none of those systems; nope this is 4th edition Shadowrun, the edition I know next to nothing about. So I am a bit worried.

Okay enough complaining. I’ve know since Tuesday that I’d be running Shadowrun instead of my usual BESM campaign this week, so I’ve got no one to blame but myself for poor time management. We will just have to see how it goes.

I actually have a fair bit to say

Hmmm. . . Where to start. . .

Let's start with the sad news.

On Wednesday, August 23, 2006, jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson died. I was lucky enough to see him in concert twice during the 1990s. The first time was while I was in high school. He performed at SDSU in Brookings, SD (I think it was 1993). The second time I saw him was in a concert held in New Ulm, MN (probably in 1998). Man that guy could make a trumpet scream.

I’ve been a fan of jazz for a good chunk of my life and I can trace the origin of that to school. The K-12 school system in the rather small town I grew up near (I grew up on a farm out in the country) had a very good music system (especially on the instrumental side of things). Towards the end of the 4th grade all the children were strongly encouraged to go out for band. Those that went out (I don’t know how it is these days, but when I was in school the majority of the students were in band) had summer lessons before the 5th grade. Once school started up the 5th and 6th grades had a concert/pep band that had daily practices, and weekly lessons. The 5th and 6th graders performed at the school’s Christmas pageant, and if I remember correctly also a spring concert. After the school year ended the weekly lessons continued during the summer. In junior high (7th and 8th grades) they added marching band to the mix, and gave anyone interested a chance to try out for jazz band (more on that later). The weekly lessons continued, and marching in the homecoming parade was added to the Christmas and Spring concerts. In high school they started getting serious about the marching band aspect of things. Two weeks or so before school started there would be practice for both marching band, and the homecoming halftime show. The band director also sent us off to at least one state college’s homecoming parade (usually Hobo Days at SDSU). The pep band side of things also picked up a great deal. The band played at every home football game, boy’s and girl’s basketball game, and one or two wrestling matches, gymnastics meets, and volleyball matches. In addition the Christmas and spring concerts, there was graduation to play for.

Now when I started junior high there was just one jazz band featuring 7th - 12th graders (but mostly 10th - 12th graders), by the time I graduated high school there was a Jazz I and Jazz II for high school, and a junior high jazz band (if not a junior high Jazz I and Jazz II). The band director had even started giving jazz improvisation lessons to teach students how to improvise a solo. There were three main jazz band trips each year. A one day trip to the South Dakota Jazz Festival at Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD, a three day trip to the Black Hills Jazz Festival at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD, and another three day trip to either the Jazz on the Upper Great Plains Festival at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, or the Coyote Jazz Festival at USD in Vermillion, SD. In any event six years of jazz band left me with a healthy respect for the genre.

My taste in jazz leans towards, but is hardly limited to bebop. While I don’t think I will ever grow tired of listening to the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk (who may have one of the greatest jazz musician names ever although Cannonball Adderley is also a pretty damn good jazz musician name), I also enjoy Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and I could keep going, but lets not forget Maynard Ferguson since his unfortunate death was the genesis of this whole post.

So enough about jazz. . .

I haven’t watched any more of The Twelve Kingdoms because my online DVD rental service hasn’t sent me any more yet. I haven’t watched any more Tenjho Tenge, because I just haven’t been in the mood. I received disk five in the mail early last week, but so far it has just sat next to my TV quietly whispering its desire to be played. “Please put me in your DVD player,” it says to me. However I make it a policy not to listen to the pleadings of inanimate objects so I haven’t given in.

I have been watching some anime however. I’ve been indulging in what may be the greatest guilty pleasure anime of all time. I’ve been watching, lord help me, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Actually Dragon Ball isn’t all that bad, it has a nice balance of humor and action. Plus I’d only seen a very small part of it before (I caught a few episodes when it was on Toonami on the Cartoon Network). DBZ on the other hand, Oy, it is so bad on so many levels that it just transcends to a sublime level of truly mindless, truly amusing fun. The basic DBZ story arc is as follows:

1. A powerful threat arrives and beats the crap out of Goku and friends (possibly killing some of them)
2. Goku and friends manage to either
      A. Eek out a victory only to learn an even greater threat is coming
      B. Stall, escape, or otherwise buy some time
3. Goku and friends train and become more powerful
4. Goku and friends fight the powerful threat
5. Goku (or rarely one of his friends) finally defeats the big bad villain.
6. Any dead friends not brought back to life in steps 3, 4, or 5 are brought back to life.
7. Repeat (possibly through in a filler episode or two) with even stronger villain.

The main reason I’m watching these now is because for the first time since I received them as a Christmas gift a few years back I can actually watch them at my leisure. I couldn’t easily watch them before because they aren’t legal copies of the shows, but rather downloads burned onto CD-Rs, and until this month I didn’t own a computer. I couldn’t watch them at work, so if I wanted to watch them I had to make a trip to the campus of the local university and watch them in one of the computer labs there.

So yes as the above implies I bought a computer. For those curious I bought a Dell XPS 400. I ordered it on the 11th, it arrived on the 18th, and I got my Internet connection set up on the 22nd. The fact my Internet connection wasn’t set up until the 22nd is the other reason I’ve been watching those two shows (you can only play so many games of solitaire and minesweeper).

My new computer has allowed me to indulge the closet CSci geek in me. I’ve been taking a bit of a nostalgic trip back to my college days when I’d play around on the university’s Unix system. This has led me to install several programs I have no real use for. I’ve added Pine and Pico, Vim, Gnu Emacs, XEmacs, and Cygwin. If I were an actual programer (especially one in the early 90s) I’d be set to go. I on the other had simply fiddle with them, but it makes me happy.

I have done a few of the more traditional things one does with a computer these days. I’ve ripped a few of my anime OSTs onto my computer. I’ve also installed iTunes and even purchased some music. Bringing this post to a nice circular close I’ve bought three albums from iTunes: Horace Silver’s Song for My Father, The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s At Carnegie Hall, and Maynard Ferguson & Big Bop Nouveau’s One More Trip to Birdland.

Tenjho Tenge and The Twelve Kingdoms

I’ve recently started watching Tenjho Tenge. I’ve watched 13 of the 26 episodes. Let me see if I can explain this one. . .

It is set in a high school that dedicates itself on training Japan’s next generation of martial artists. The story thus far seems to revolve around the conflict between the executive council president Mitsuomi and the Juuken club captain Maya, their past relationship, and Maya’s deceased brother Shin. Shin was killed by Mitsuomi, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because apparently Shin was insane possibility driven so by a cursed sword called the Reiki.

To start things off two new students Bob and Sōichirō arrive determined to rule this school. It seems they travel from school to school defeating the top fighters at each one as they go. They run into Maya and Masataka (Mitsuomi’s estranged younger brother) who trains under Maya. Maya defeats Sōichirō and in the process knocks him out a window and through a roof into the girls’ shower where he lands on Maya’s younger sister Aya. Aya becomes instantly infatuated with Sōichirō (because wouldn’t you).

All this attracts the attention of the executive council which decides to make an example of Bob and Sōichirō. Bob’s motorcycle is destroyed, Bob’s girlfriend is assaulted, and Bob and Sōichirō are beaten up all by one member of the executive council. Bob and Sōichirō decide they need to get stronger so they join the Juuken club to train under Maya.

This leads to very big fight at a bowling alley between members of the executive council and the Juuken club. In the aftermath of the battle (I’d say it ended in a draw, with the Juuken club possibly having won a slight tactical victory) they start in on flash backs where the history of Maya, her odd relationship with her brother Shin, and their relationship with Mitsuomi is revealed.

My first thought after I finished the first four episodes was that show has a very catchy opening theme song. My second thought was wow that was a lot of fan service and panty shots (but not as much as in Agent Aika). After finishing 13 episodes my first thought was well this is starting to get confusing. We’ll see were it goes from here.

As an aside I've made a mental note to look into picking up the Tenjho Tenge soundtrack. I find myself thinking more and more about anime soundtracks. I guess that isn’t a surprising development, many would argue the path of an anime fanboy is fairly predictable (if you follow the link I’d put myself firmly in stage four).

The other anime I’ve recently started watching is The Twelve Kingdoms. I’ve only watched five episodes of this one. I’ve heard some good things about this one, however thus far I haven’t found the characters to be very likable. On the other hand I find the story to be quite interesting.

I don’t have too much more to say about this one. Thus far school girl Nakajima Yōko and two of her classmates have been transported to another world. Unlike many girl transported to another world anime many the people Yōko and her classmates meet treat them badly (either out of fear and ignorance, or because they are trying to exploit them). It would seem that Yōko is destined to be Queen of one of the kingdoms, but the King of another kingdom seems to be taking exception to that.

That’s about all that is new on the anime front.

Getting things started. . .

Well to start things off I'm going to go ahead and post the results of two test I took awhile back on OkCupid. The first test I'll show is the Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test. The second is the OkCupid Politics test. These two test results should give a fair overview of me in the sense of a few of the broad stereotypes I fall into.

Okay even I don't really believe that last bit. The first test amuses me , and the second test gives my political leanings (in broad strokes).

So here is the first test:

Modern, Cool Nerd 69 % Nerd, 78% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd. Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)! Congratulations! Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

This test tracked 3 variables. How the score compared to the other people's:

	Higher than 75% on nerdiness
	Higher than 97% on geekosity
	Higher than 34% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

And the second test:

You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (18% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

I’m not really setting any limits on what I’ll write about here, but some topics are far more likely then others. I’m unlikely to ever post too much about work. The main reason is I don’t really care to talk about my job; its importance to me is pretty much limited to being the thing I do to get money to live. Plus I don’t hate my job (nor do I love it) so I cannot really work up a good rant about it. The other reason I won’t likely have too much to say about work is its just safer that way, I’d hate to mention something that ended up getting me fired. At the other end of the spectrum I envision using this blog to indulge in my geeky side. I hope to spend a great deal of time writing about comic books, webcomics, RPGs, HeroClix, manga, books in general, movies, anime, and any other similar topic I can think of.

So with that as I guideline I guess I can begin this little experiment.