Die a hero, or live long enough to become a villain

If you’re like me, you’ve probably enjoyed watching the stratospheric rise in popularity that Dungeons & Dragons has enjoyed over the past ten years or so. Regardless of your thoughts on the quality of some of the products *cough*Spelljammer*cough* the fact that so many new people were coming into the hobby was objectively a good thing. It made for a healthy community, full of endless creativity and sources for new ideas and settings…and that’s all poised to change.

If you don’t run in those circles, you might not know that, over the past week or so, social media on the topic has been exploding about Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast, and their decision to rewrite the license that let third-party sources develop content based on D&D‘s mechanics/settings. Without dwelling on the details, the new license seems to render any previous versions invalid, replacing them with one that is far more restrictive, far more costly, and includes a clause that basically says…well, I think this is pretty cut-and-dry: “You own the new and original content You create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable,
worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose.” Emphasis, mine. You can read the full text of the Open Gaming License, version 1.1 for yourself here: http://ogl.battlezoo.com/ The text I quoted is in section X, subsection B.

This sort of thing hurts. I’ve been playing D&D in some form or another for nearly as long as I can remember–be it the tabletop game, video game adaptations, choose-your-own-adventure books, or what have you. And thinking back to the days when the franchise wasn’t operated by a greedy, faceless, multi-billion-dollar company brought to mind today’s word.

hauberk, noun – a chainmail tunic

Learned from: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin (Intellivision)

Developed by APh Technological Consulting

Published by Mattel Electronics (1983)

Aside from maybe ogling the art of the Creature Compendium at a bookstore as a child, Treasure of Tarmin was my first introduction to D&D. It was also my first introduction to the idea of gaming in a 3D world. The game took place in a dungeon of varying size (depending on the difficulty you selected), that you ventured into, searching for a treasure guarded by a minotaur. Each level was laid out on a grid that you traversed in first-person view, one square at a time, fighting monsters, finding weapons, discovering hidden doors, and searching for the ladder that led further downward. Hopelessly simplistic by today’s standards, it blew my young mind. With a hunger mechanic, inventory system, ammunition (arrows) you had to keep track of, and more, it was pretty complex for its time. There were tons of items to find, most color-coded by their strength, including various types of armor: shields, helmets, gauntlets, and hauberks.

I remember the hauberks not looking like much, in the crude, pixelated representation the game was capable of–I think they looked more like scarves than anything. But I have to hand it to the artist for taking a crack at accurately showing what a bunch of loose chainmail would look like, laying on the ground, instead of just drawing it as a shirt. A lot of thought and effort went into this game, from the wide variety of monsters, to the inclusion of traps, to the fact that you could keep going past the minotaur into deeper and deeper randomly-generated levels, as deep as you wanted to go.

It was a wonderful game, complex but accessible, and always with a new adventure to be had. I mean that about D&D as a whole. Seeing what the game is about to become is nothing short of tragic, because some of the best content is often created by third-party studios. And I can’t imagine anyone would really want to keep making content, when it can be taken from them at any time. This will hurt the hobby, but there is hope.

Dungeons & Dragons isn’t the only game in town. There’s a multitude of other systems out there, offering different takes on traditional fantasy, but also sci-fi, horror, spy fiction, and everything in-between. Sure, it won’t feel quite the same, but with some searching, you might find a system and setting that fits you even better. D&D has always been a game about exploration; I think now is the time to take that theme to heart, and go discover what else is out there.

Farewell, old friend. It’s been good while it lasted.

A word of caution

On this random Sunday, I’d just like to dispense a bit of advice: you never can really know when something you do or say could have unintended consequences. This might sound like I’m advocating living in a constant state of anxiety, but that’s not exactly the case. That sort of thing tends to be my general state of being, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Just, be mindful, because you don’t always know what other people may be going through. Which brings us to today’s word.

chary, adj. – exceptionally wary or cautious

Learned from: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Released on virtually everything that can display graphics, since the PS3 era. I’m not listing it all.)

Developed by Bethesda Game Studios

Published by Bethesda Softworks (originally 2011, with many, many re-releases afterward)

These games are full of books. Books about history, and poetry, and cooking, and travel guides–there’s a lot here for anyone with the patience and interest to seek it out and read through it all. That said, I don’t think I would’ve had the foggiest idea of which book the word “chary” showed up in, if I hadn’t scribbled an extra memo next to it in my notebook. If I was accurate, this word shows up somewhere in volume 2 of The Real Barenziah, in reference to how some townsfolk feel with regards to the titular character.

Now, if you offered me a million dollars to tell you just who Barenziah was, or why your average citizen might be overly wary of him, I would not leave the conversation a rich man. Heck, I can’t even say for certainty that Barenziah as a “him” at all, it’s been so long since I read this particular story-within-a-story. And that’s something I seem to remember from Skyrim as a whole: a lot of the ancillary, background material seemed significantly more detailed and fleshed out than the events taking place during your adventure.

In fairness though, I never finished it. After about 20 hours of primarily fighting the same reskinned “guy with melee weapon,” “guy with ranged weapon,” and “guy with magic” over and over again, I lost interest. If I find a subterranean nest of bug people, fighting them shouldn’t feel essentially the same as fighting a group of bandits. But it did. I guess I just wanted more of a chary feeling, venturing into the unknown, instead of the boredom that settled in.

I couldn’t find a screenshot of that exact page, so enjoy the hexadecimal codes for a bunch of crafting materials, instead.

‘Tis the season of giving…

…and of getting back to things. Hello, world, I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long. It’s like skipping time at the gym: You let one day slip by, and before you know it, months have gone by, and you’re 20 pounds heavier. But it’s the middle of the Holiday season right now, and I wanted to do a little something for both myself, and anyone who might happen upon this. Plus, holidays just so happen to be relevant to today’s word.

alms, noun – charitable donations to the poor; specifically: donations of leftover trenchers from the previous evening’s feast

Learned from: The Faery Tale Adventure (Sega Genesis, Amiga, Commodore 64, PC)

Developed by MicroIllusions

Published by MicroIllusions (1987 – Amiga, 1988 – Commodore 64, 1989 – MS-DOS) Electronic Arts (1991 – Genesis)

I don’t remember a whole lot of The Faery Tale Adventure. The terrible spelling on the cover caught my attention at my local video store when I was little, and set my expectations low, even to my young mind. But, it was an RPG, and I hadn’t played it before, so I gave it a shot…and was summarily rather lost, because someone had lost the instruction manual, and this was back in the days when those were actually important.

Most of what I recall from the gameplay is aimlessly wandering around a massive world (for the time), as one of the three playable characters, who might have been brothers or something. Well, that, and the beggar who tried to kill me.

I was traveling along some random stretch of road, and there was a guy standing off to the side, who asked me if I had any alms for the poor. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I think I said yes, because I was supposed to be the hero in this story, and this man was clearly a beggar…except when I answered, several other guys jumped out of nearby bushes, and they all started attacking me.

During the fight, I remember wondering what I did wrong. Did I actually not have any of whatever “alms” were, and was this guy pissed off that I lied to him? Were “alms” some sort of bad thing? Was this a secret code for a quest I hadn’t discovered yet, and I answered incorrectly?

Later, I looked up the word, and put the pieces together: I’d done the right, charitable thing, but this guy was just a bandit pretending to be a beggar, and I fell into his trap. It’s a moment that stuck with me all these years, and it’s the only solid memory I have of The Faery Tale Adventure.

What brought it to mind, all this time later, is a book I recently read: Medieval Holidays and Festivals, by Madeleine Pelner Cosman. I was trying to get inspiration for celebrations to work into a Pathfinder game I’m running, when I came across mention of what exactly alms are. Durable plates were expensive back then, so many feasts were served on plates or in bowls made of bread, called trenchers. At the end of the meal, the flavor-soaked remnants of the trenchers could be eaten, or donated the next day to the needy. These days, alms refer to any charitable gift to the needy, but during Medieval times, it had a more specific connotation.

And hey, I may have even given you a bonus word this time around, if you didn’t know what a trencher was. Happy holidays, everyone!

With a cover this generic, is it any surprise I don’t remember much from this game?

Blast from the past

Growing up in the ’80s, I was too young to fully comprehend the horrors of impending nuclear annihilation. Granted, those were the last years of the Cold War, and it ended when I was eight years old, but still, my main takeaway at the time was that the Soviet Union was bad…except, someone from there made Tetris, so they couldn’t be all bad. And once the USSR dissolved, I kinda just went on with life, dimly aware that something potentially terrible had been averted.

Fast forward 30 years, and we’ve got the Russians invading Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin implicitly threatening to make this go nuclear. There’s no ambiguity about this in my mind, anymore. Which brings us to today’s word.

megalomania, noun – an obsession with obtaining power, wealth, or importance

Learned from: Tyrants: Fight Through Time (Sega Genesis, Amiga, Atari ST, Super Nintendo, PC)

Developed by Sensible Software

Published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Image Works for the original version, 1991)

I didn’t exactly learn this word from playing Tyrants, but rather from an ad in an old gaming magazine. Similar to Odium being called Gorky 17 in other regions of the world, Tyrants was known overseas as Mega-lo-mania. Both titles fit for a variety of reasons.

Tyrants/Mega-lo-mania was an early real-time strategy game, where you play as one of four gods, differentiated only by their portrait and color palette, with the task of defeating the other three on a variety of islands. You do this by influencing your followers to develop increasingly sophisticated weapons and defenses through a variety of technological eras, from stone axes up to ballistic missiles. While simple by conventional standards, the game featured a surprisingly large tech tree that could even lead you to developmental dead ends, depending on what you decided to research. It also featured some pretty braindead AI, to the point where if you were really backed into a corner, you could just keep spamming the “form alliance” button at the god attacking you, until the RNG would eventually make him give in. If only we could do that in real conflicts…

Don’t let the door hit you

So, we’re down yet another teller at work. Granted, this particular guy was no huge loss; he had a tendency to wander away from his window if there was nothing going on, his attempts to call people over to his window when he was there were half-hearted at best, and he barely seemed to know how to do the job when he had to do it, anyway. Still, we can’t seem to keep a decent staff, because people keep getting fired or leaving. Which brings us to today’s word.

egress, verb – to leave (also noun – an exit)

Learned from: Shining in the Darkness (Sega Genesis)

Developed by Climax Entertainment

Published by Sega (1991)

Shining in the Darkness is a game that took me years of renting to beat. Back in the days before standardized game pricing, you might get lucky and find a game for $40, or you might get gouged for as much as $90, depending on the title, its development costs, number of copies produced, and the alignment of the stars, for all I know. This one fell closer to the pricy end of that spectrum, though my parents probably spent close to its retail price on rental payments, by the time I finally finished it. Yay, irony.

Objectively, the game wasn’t anything special from a story standpoint: the king’s daughter has been kidnapped by an evil wizard, and you take up the quest to delve into an enormous dungeon and rescue her. But it was the presentation that kept me coming back. The artwork in this (and the later Shining Force games) had a style I loved, the soundtrack occasionally pops into my head even today, and the characters actually had interactions beyond simple “here’s your quest, now go, brave adventurers!” And again, the dungeon was HUGE–requiring you to draw your own maps if you had any hope of figuring out where you were going. If you didn’t (or if you got too beat up), you could cast the Egress spell to pop back to the entrance and regroup.

A map to the credit union where I work, if any brave adventurers want to take up a quest.

This too shall pass

Recently, one of my coworkers was out, having surgery to remove a kidney stone. It’s a process I hope never to have to go through (though, surgery almost sounds better than passing one naturally), but it does bring us to today’s word.

ptyalolith, noun – the hard buildup of minerals inside the organs or ducts

Learned from: Vigil: The Longest Night (PC, Playstation 4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch)

Developed by Glass Heart Games

Published by Neon Doctrine (2020)

As the title would suggest, Vigil is a dark game. It’s a 2D platformer, with a heavy emphasis on exploration, that casts you as a member of the titular Vigil, tasked with fighting against an encroaching darkness that seems to have enveloped the world. It would seem you’re not terribly good at your job, but all you can do is your best. Even when your best includes consuming the kidney stones of a dark god to increase your abilities. The Ptyalolith from the Other God feels like an item that would be more at home in Bloodborne, or Blasphemous (both games I’m sure I’ll post more about in the future), but it’s far from the strangest item in the game–you can end up wearing a grapefruit rind on your head, while dressed in a nun’s habit and wielding a broom as a weapon. While it’s a beautiful game, there are times it really doesn’t know what tone it wants to have. Still, there’s a lot of equipment, and a variety of play styles (some of which are pretty broken for a lot of the game), so it’s worth checking out.

Even if the title card does make it look like one of those “find the hidden object” games from the mid-2000s.

Is it too late for New Year’s resolutions?

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, though man, this past year was a doozy. I must have spent 3/4 of it either working longer hours to train people in, or working longer hours because we flat-out just didn’t have enough people. This shortage seems like it might finally be behind us (for the moment, at least), so I wanted to finally get back to some creative projects. In all honesty, I probably could’ve picked this back up a few weeks ago, but well, bodies at rest and all that. Which brings us to today’s word.

skiving, verb – progressive tense of “skive,” to slack off or avoid one’s duty

Learned from: Xenoblade Chronicles (Nintendo Switch, New 3DS, Wii)

Developed by Monolith Soft

Published by Nintendo (2010)

The fact that I haven’t finished Xenoblade Chronicles yet makes this word even more fitting. It’s not that it’s a bad game, or anything–far from it. With its mix of sci-fi and fantasy, engaging combat, and unique setting (pretty much all land masses are on the backs of two dead titans), it’s actually a very enjoyable title…even if the antagonists were more menacing before they started talking in thick, Cockney accents. That just feels weird, coming out of a hulking, murderous machine. But I digress. Some other game came out that distracted me while I was playing it (maybe Shin Megami Tensei V), and I just haven’t gotten back to it yet. I’d like to, though.

Anyway, in one of the earlier parts of the game, the main character is getting berated for not pulling his weight. Admittedly, in a world under the constant threat of invasion by nigh-unstoppable, mechanical behemoths, skiving is a bit more egregious than neglecting a little Internet blog, but I can still identify somewhat. And while I won’t be saving the world from a looming danger, I’m still going to pick up the slack and get back to doing things that matter to me. Expect more updates soon!

When your only tool is a sword, all your problems become things that need stabbing. Like this looming embodiment of procrastination.

Something’s fishy

With the announcement of the first paid DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons the other day, which takes place on an archipelago, I found myself reminded of the first time I learned that word, decades ago from a game that…probably wasn’t as good.

archipelago, noun – a chain of islands

Learned from: James Pond 3: Operation Starfish (Genesis, Amiga, Super Nintendo, Game Gear)

Developed by Vectordean, Millenium Interactive

Published by Electronic Arts (1993)

As you probably guessed from the name, the James Pond series was a spoof of spy films, except starring a fish. I don’t remember a whole lot about the character aside from that (and the fact that he seemed to do a lot less spying and a lot more jumping), except that James also had the ability to…er…get really long.

The idea was that he could stretch really far to grab high platforms, and then lift the rest of his body up. I’m not sure if he still had this power in the third game or not. I do seem to remember that the series, while always silly, went from fighting against pollution, to…running around on stages made of food. One of those stages in James Pond 3 was the Arran Archipelago, and as the name suggests, I think it was a series of food-inspired islands that you had to jump across. I…don’t really remember much else about this game; the video store was my friend, growing up, exposing me to a wealth of games I never would’ve even looked at, otherwise.

I mean seriously. Would *you* have played this if it cost you more than $3 for five nights?

Toss a coin to your teller

Hello, all. During the time I’ve been gone, I’ve been pretty consistently burnt out from the never-ending cycle of training in new tellers at work. We’d get close to full capacity, and then someone else would put in their two weeks’ notice; at this point, two thirds of the staff hasn’t even been there for three months. I’d say this long, excruciating ordeal was finally over…but yet another one (who hasn’t even been on staff for a month), has announced he’s moving to Idaho, to become a potato farmer. Or whatever other non-stereotypical things people in Idaho actually do. This constant shuffle has been exhausting, so I haven’t had much energy at the end of the day for gaming, or updating this blog, or much of anything. What I have had the time for, is reading. Which finally brings us to today’s word.

drachma, noun – ancient Greek currency

Learned from: Age of Adventure (Apple II, Atari, Commodore 64)

Developed by Stuart Smith

Published by Electronic Arts (1983)

One of the books I’ve read over the past several months was an absolutely wonderful history of computer RPGs, aptly titled The CRPG Book. In paging through the early parts of the book, I stumbled across one with graphics I swore I recognized, but a title that was unfamiliar (including screenshots of the inventory, with the word “drachmae,” the plural of drachma). But I was sure I’d played this…so I went digging.

Since Bitmap Books, the publisher of The CRPG Book is based in the UK, they used the title this game had, seemingly everywhere else outside of the US: The Return of Heracles (because I guess EA figured American kids are too flat-out ignorant to have known who Heracles was). And to be fair, when I was six or seven, or however old I was when I asked my parents to buy me this game, I was more familiar with Hercules. But its original title is far more interesting than the generic one we got over here. It’s like calling a game “Story of Excitement,” or “Time for Fun.”

Anyway, as you’ve probably guessed, Age of Adventure/The Return of Heracles is all about Greek mythology and history, letting you play as characters ranging from Odysseus to Achilles, to Hippolyta. I guess you could technically call it an edutainment title, but the RPG gameplay was surprisingly solid for a game whose purpose was to teach you things. I’m not sure if I ever beat all of the characters’ scenarios (there were 19 of them, according to the game’s entry in the book), but I did walk away with a greater knowledge of Greek myths and legends, so I consider that a win.

Even the cover is generic. This says less “Greek mythology,” and more “Sylvester Stallone’s arm wrestling movie, *Over the Top*, if it were about pirates.”

The new normal

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a post all about COVID. At least, not directly. Over the past few months, the company I work for has bled off no fewer than seven employees. We aren’t large, so this has really hurt. And because there’s a labor shortage in the US right now (the exact reasons why are a subject for another time), every place is hiring. That means we’ve had a ridiculously hard time getting people to apply–and if they do apply, most of them only stick around for a month or so before leaving to look for something less stressful. “Normal” this year has become an endless cycle of working extra hours because we’re so short-staffed, leading to a more stressful environment among those of us who have stuck around, and the new employees we do get pick up on that, and don’t want to stay, leading to more long hours, and more stress, and…

I miss the old normal. Which brings us to today’s word.

mundane, adj. – normal, ordinary, commonplace

Learned from: The Immortal (Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, Genesis, NES, PC, Nintendo Switch)

Developed by Will Harvey

Published by Electronic Arts (1990)

The Immortal was an odd, but memorable game. Part-adventure game, part-light RPG, it put you in the shoes of a rather old wizard, trying to find his mentor somewhere in a sprawling labyrinth. It sounds pretty straightforward (aside from the protagonist older than 30–how often do you see something like that, these days?), but the game was anything but. Your adventure was chock-full of clever puzzles to solve (or bash your head against), traps to avoid (or blunder into), monsters to fight (or sneak by, or even befriend), and spells to cast–even spells as “mundane” as fireballs, according to the manual.

The world usually felt threatening, sometimes alien (the will-o’-the-wisps stand out in my memory), and always lived-in. Even despite the clunky controls, and some would say unfair difficulty (how was I supposed to know that chest was full of spiders, ahead of time?!), I still have very fond recollections of my time with The Immortal. Despite the bland initial setup, the game is anything but mundane.