The Root of Dungeon’s & Dragons

Gary Gygax passed away on March 4, 2008. For those who don’t know of him, Gygax was one of the founders of Dungeons & Dragons back in the 70’s. At its creation, D&D was a role-playing game that pioneered the genre. If you’ve never played one, the best way to describe a role-playing game or RPG is “interactive storytelling.” Imagine someone telling you a story, but you have control over what one of the characters can do in the story. That character essentially represents you.

What made D&D cool were the rules. Your character had attributes like strength, dexterity and intelligence, which were represented by a number. In order to see if your character succeeded in a particular action in the story, like, say, picking up a heavy boulder, you rolled dice against the particular attribute that was being tested. There were other stats as well, like Saving Throws, Proficiencies and Armor Class. All of these numbers were important in fleshing you out as a living, breathing character in the game world. More importantly, they allowed the Dungeon Master to assess how the game world would affect and react to you.

The Dungeon Master (or Game Master, for more contemporary games) was essentially god of the game world. He or she told you what happened and how. The DM was also the only way you saw the world, so if you had a crappy DM, your game world was kind of bland. But when you had a smart, savvy DM, you were part of some of the best adventures known to man.

A few weeks ago, I read an article on Slate, by Erik Sofge. He writes:

But it has to be said: Gary Gygax wasn’t a visionary to all of us. The real geeks out there—my homies—know the awkward truth: When you cut through the nostalgia, Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a good role-playing game; in fact, it’s one of the worst on the market. Sadly, Gygax’s creation defines our strange corner of the entertainment world and drowns out all the more innovative and sophisticated games that have made D&D obsolete for decades. (As a game designer, Gygax is far outclassed by contemporaries such as Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford.) It’s the reason that tabletop gaming is not only stuck in the pop culture gutter but considered pathetic even by the standards of mouth-breathing Star Trek conventioneers. And with the entire industry continuing to collapse in the face of online gaming, this might be the last chance to see Gygax for what he was—an unrepentant hack, more Michael Bay than Ingmar Bergman.

I was bothered by the article on many levels. First, it was printed on March 10, just six days after Gygax’s passing. To criticize his life’s work and then call him a hack is simply in bad taste. The article goes on talk about how D&D promotes the slaughter of countless hapless orcs just for a bit gold. I don’t know if that’s meant to somehow have real life ties and merits, but I think the writer needs to keep in mind that this is a game, after all. Lastly, he claims to be one of the gaming nerds, but effaces them and their ilk - like the mouth-breathing Star Trek conventioneers - which has me thinking that he’s not really what he claims to be. Or, more likely, he’s one of those nerd traitors who’s crossed over to the party life sometime in college and therefore has the right to thumb his nose at everyone who’s still hanging on to their nerdiness.

He reminds me of the dentist on Seinfeld who joined every religion so that he could crack jokes about them. It’s that “hey, I’m one of you, so I can make fun of you” free pass mentality.

I don’t think Dungeons & Dragons is any worse of a role-playing game than anything else out on the market. Each has their own rules and game mechanics. At the end of the day, it really boils down to how good the storyteller is.

Role-Playing Games Diluted for Video Games

I’ve played D&D in probably every incarnation of itself. I remember when the Armor Class worked with lower numbers being better and struggling with the math when negative numbers came into play. I do remember when Elf was a class in the basic version. Heck, I even had the D&D board game.

Over time, I’ve watched the evolution of the D&D franchise wind its way through the video game media. I played the Gold Box series, which is still highly regarded by old-time gamers. I’ve played the more obscure Dark Sun series, the Xbox Dark Alliance games, as well as the two arcade games (not sure if there’s more). And of course, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Baldur’s Gate games, Neverwinter Nights games and the offshoot Planescape Torment game.

I realize that not all of those games are really role-playing games. Unfortunately, today’s gamers don’t have the ability to tell the difference. Role-playing games have typically been considered harder to play, because they are more often text heavy and less action oriented. Imagine your average twitch-player who’s honed his reflexes for first-person shooter games like Halo slowing down to read the ponderous tomes of dialog in Torment. It seemed role-players and twitchers were destined to play separate games forever.

Then the game developers began making hybrids, like first-person shooter games that had role-playing elements, like stat building and dialog choices. A prime example of this is Deus Ex. This seemed to satisfy both groups because Twitchers didn’t feel excluded from more cerebral games and Role-players found a little more complexity added to simplistic games. Unfortunately, developers found that they could appeal to a broader audience with hybrid RPGs rather than straight ones. So now the majority of gamers think that games like the Final Fantasy series - which has no dialog choices and only the barest character building - are real RPGs.

I remember the frustration I felt, trying to explain to people why Bethesda’s Oblivion was not an RPG. The entire game relied on the player’s physical ability to play the game, ranging from attacking to jumping. You weren’t playing a role, you were playing yourself within the game. Gamers were trying to tell me how if you play a role in a game, then it’s a role-playing game. Therefore, Super Mario Brothers was a role-playing game because you played the role of Mario.

Ridiculous.

Sometimes - in this case, in particular - segregation through complexity is a good thing.

The movie industry is huge business. The amount of money that producers have to shell out for actors (half the budget right there, if you’re looking for A-listers), writers, special effects, crew and marketing is astronomical. That’s why you see less and less original work coming out of Hollywood. Any film requiring a budget over 50 million (I’m guesstimating here) must have an installed audience to guarantee box office sales. That means more movies based on existing work like a previous movie (remakes), book or other work like a video game. It makes sense and it’s smart business. What I don’t get is why video game movies have to suck so much.

First, let’s handle the problem of cross-media adaptation. Video games are highly interactive, therefore there’s going to be some enjoyment lost for the gamer who goes to see the movie version of his or her favorite game since the acts on the gamer, rather than with the gamer. I’m OK with that idea and I think most gamers are as well. The real pitfall in the translation is that most video games have weak story lines. Or, if they do have a decent story, it doesn’t follow the typical three-act structure that most films swear by. This forces the screenwriter to create a bunch of characters and story beats that never existed in the game in order to compensate, which can only disappoint fans of the source material.

The other problem is that video games - and the video game community as whole - still isn’t considered to be sophisticated. By and large, people of that opinion are correct. Many, if not most, gamers are comprised of children, teenagers and people who prefer reality television over scripted story. It seems as though screenwriters and/or producers look at the demographics and decide, “Well, our target audience won’t know the difference between a good movie and a bad one. Let’s just throw something together.” While I agree that there’s the fringe population that actually liked Double Dragon the movie, I think that for the most part, your average moviegoer can tell if a movie sucks.

I think this is the one thing that the likes of Uwe Boll can’t understand. The man has singlehandedly ruined a generation’s opinion of all films based on video games. He’s baffled us time and time again with inexplicable directorial choices and errors in movies like House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne and the recent In the Name of the King. And yet, with each movie, he gets a better cast! I don’t know about you, but watching Oscar-Winner Ben “Mahatma Gandhi” Kingsley play a vampire in Bloodrayne was tough to watch.

And yet, some filmmakers know how to handle the brand. I enjoyed the Tombraider movies, for instance. Silent Hill was also very entertaining. Let’s not forget DOOM, which I think took the best care of the video game audience to date. The extended first-person perspective scene was a very nice touch. Still, in all of these examples, the creators did their best to make the movies enjoyable as movies, even for people who aren’t familiar with the games; that has to be the primary goal if video game filmmakers want to escape this stigma of “cash cow milkers.”

Keep playing and keep watching.

Alright, I’m taking a break from putting together other parts of the site to knock out a more complete post.

So last time I left off on PC gamer elitism. While my stance hasn’t changed, there are a few undeniable drawbacks to gaming in this medium. Price is the biggest issue. If I want my games to run at bleeding edge graphics and sound then I have to shell out big bucks for premium class hardware, like the latest in graphics and sound cards. Combined, that’s a near-total of one grand. In and of itself, I guess it’s not so bad, considering that console gamers have to shell out the same kind of dough for a hi-def television. The problem for the PC gamer arises when the graphics card people release the next gen model six months down the line. That means game developers start developing for that level of performance, leaving your current card to play catchup. In this regard, console gamers have the luxury of shelling out a one-time payment that will last them for years to come since game developers only have to focus on one set of specs.

That brings us to the other major problem: Game developers focus more on the console market. That means all of these cool games, like Gears of War or Halo 3 don’t get released on the PC until way after their original release, if at all. Typically, these “ports” are half-baked messes that are more insulting than fun.

The last major problem is the “consolization” of games that are released on PC and consoles simultaneously. Whenever I see this happen with a game I want, I cringe, because this means that the game will dumbed down to accommodate the understandably younger audience playing on consoles. Two games that illustrate this point are The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Bioshock. You’ll find that in Morrowwind, Oblivion’s predecessor, you had more options for weapon and armor types. You could open separate parts of your menus individually. Lastly, you didn’t have “helper” icons to point you where you needed to go. Then, of course, there’s Bioshock, the direct descendant of System Shock 2 in everything but name (though it came quite close in that aspect, too). System Shock 2 had a nifty inventory system that prevented you from carrying every weapon in the game at all times. Furthermore, you could pick up food and stash them in safe areas rather than what you have in Bioshock where you consume everything you can upon grabbing it. What happened to the skill system, too? In System Shock, you specialized in a class that afforded you access to particular weapon types and hacking abilities. In Bioshock you can do everything instantly! If Bioshock is billed as an FPS/RPG, where’s the RPG?

Speaking of which, I’ll take the Baldur’s Gate’s and Fallout’s of the PC over any Final Fantasy on the consoles for my role-playing. RPGs are about choices, not watching fancy cinematics.

Unfortunately, this is the state of PC gaming today. The only real solution here is for PC games to start selling more, proving to developers that the PC market can be a reliable revenue stream in its own right. Sadly, with bittorrents as prevalent as ever, the PC market has a long way to go before it reaches that kind of status again.

Pressure, pressure, pressure.

I told myself that I would get a blog post out once a day. It’s good for the ol’ writing skills and fun for search engines looking for new content. But here I am with 10–scratch that–9 minutes to midnight with nothing to show for it. What was the delay? A video game. Meh, what the hell? Let’s talk video games.

So, I am a PC gamer, but by no means do I consider myself to be elite in any way. Scratch that, too. I kind of do feel elite, actually. Elite compared to a console gamer, anyway. You think about it. I consider PC gamers as the muscle car builders of the gaming world. I can customize every nuance of my machine, tweaking this or that to finely tune my rig into a pixel pounding machine. Throw in hacks, mods and user-made patches and it’s hard for me to consider ever being any other kind of gamer as my main role.

With that said, I still respect consoles and console gamers. In fact, when I can afford it, I will definitely invest some cash in a Wii and then migrate to the other machines.

Bleh, I’ve got more on this topic, but it’s midnight and that’s all I could muster in the time allotted.

Well, here we are again, folks! René Garcia has another brand-spanking-new Web site! Yeah, I know. You’re all probably tired of following me from site to site, so luckily, this will more than likely be my final “professional” site. My last site, www.writinginthedark.net, was a little off putting, I found. I’d tell people my domain name and they immediately thought I was some arm-cutting-emo-kid or something. Besides, this is a .com to boot. No more pride-swallowing .net for me!

Anyway, for all the new visitors, this site is meant to do several things: It should showcase my writing and artwork for prospective employers. It should share the writing lifestyle with would-be writers and those who are just curious. Lastly, I hope this site also gives everyone a chance to get to know me. At least a little bit.

I’ll try to keep it upbeat around here and post relevant news items I come across that I feel like bloviating about. Just keep in mind that if we ever meet, I probably won’t be anywhere near the ray of sunshine I’ll most likely come across as here.

With that said, thanks for stopping by and I hope you come by again. For now, forgive the dead links. I’m getting to them.