Terrence Marks

I was at Best Buy today (Tuesday) and there were two people camping outside for Black Friday. That's a three-day wait, by my count.
Firstly, I thought what great publicity that was. Even if I had no interest in their Black Friday deals, I'd still give them another look - here's some people who think they're worth sitting in a tent for 72 hours. If I ran a Best Buy, I'd pay people to camp out just to make it look like my deals were that awesome - you know, better than 1% of your entire year.

Secondly, I realized how long it's been since I had three days I could waste like that. (And it is - the 20 minutes of actual shopping they do may be great, but the three days of waiting is wasted). I never camped out in line, and the last time I had that kind of time, I couldn't afford a TV. (Didn't have one for a few years - how do you think I had so much free time?). Now? I've been meaning to update the You Say it First FAQ for months. It says the answer to "Are Kimberly and Brisbane sleeping together?" is "Probably not". They've been married for a year and a half now, and trust me, it would've come up if they weren't. We owe you a con report from two weeks ago. The only reason this is getting written tonight is because it's rather time-sensitive.

I was telling Isabel all this (I talk a lot. If it's good, I write it down.) She reminds me, "You do realize you went to Strategicon about three months ago, right?".

"Well, yeah. Three days of gaming. But I didn't get to play the first day."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Mine. And I could have bought a TV instead, but my point stands".

Anyhow, if they started a game now, I bet they could get to ninth level by the time the sale starts.

So, I picked up D&D 4th edition a week ago. I used to play first edition AD&D, and have followed the second and third editions. What do I think of the new one?

Day 1: Whargbl! They killed Dungeons & Dragons! What happened to lawful neutral? I can't build an int rogue! Two kinds of elves? That's either too many or not enough - maybe both!

Day 2: Wait a minute. They've already ported over bards and gnomes. There's a lot of setting fluff and some of it is quite good. They'll probably bring over everything else that got cut, eventually. Or a third party will make a supplement. I mean, that's what happened with Ravenloft and Planescape in the third edition. Or you could just use the old settings and adjust things yourself. I'm sure that in two more years, they'll have added a dozen types of elves back in, and only a hardcore elf-nerd could actually tell you the difference between High Elves and Grey Elves.

Day 3: I still don't understand warlocks. Are they like sorcerors? Or are wizards like sorcerors now? Spell memorization is gone, right? You can cast magic missle as many times as you want? Is that legal? But it never was that fun being the wizard with one spell who had to stand in the back while the fighters did all the fun stuff. Or, ten levels later, being the fighter who still did 1d8+2 damage while the mages did all the fun stuff.

Day 4: I mean, I never really got gnomes. I mean, as far as race archetypes, I'm totally drawing a blank. I understand dwarves, elves, halflings, goblins, kobolds, and two or three different types of orcs. But gnomes? Ask me to describe gnomes, and all I've got is "short". Not that dragonborn look like a winner at the moment, either.

Day 5: Action points? Neck slot items? Defender and controller character roles? Picking character stats instead of rolling 3d6? Is this D&D or a pen-and-paper version of a MMORPG? It doesn't feel like D&D. But what is the D&D feel? Twenty mildly different types of polearms, monsters attacks that have a 30% chance of killing you (saving throw? not this time. Flat percentage chance for everybody.), and psionics rules that give you a 3% chance of having a massive advantage. I mean, on one level it's the same as replacing "Players have a 40% chance to find the hidden lever" with actual mechanics for spot checks. But seriously, neck slot items? And there are terms they don't define until a hundred pages later. I read about powers doing [W]+3 damage and can't figure out why thieves are hitting things using Wisdom.

Day 6: I still miss lawful neutral. I'm sure modrons will be back, but I want to play a hero who stops the lich-king from destroying the universe because the lich-king hasn't filled out Form 837/b (Removing a Tree from Municipal Property), on the grounds that destroying the universe would remove one or more trees.

Day 7: I realize that all of this, and more, has been discussed by online over the past year or so. If you look at my taste in music, "one year behind the times" is as close as I've gotten in the recent past. I really ought to actually roll up a character - wait, I mean stat out a character using one of the chosen attribute blocks. Yes, I know - the alternative is you end up gaming with the guy who swears he rolled all 18s. I want to like it, but it seems strange. The advantage of waiting a year is that I can see that other folks seem to like it, so it can't be all bad. D&D seems decidedly not-dead at present. When I get time, I'll give it a shot

I tried playing Mabinogi. It appears to be a social game. Appearance is customizable, but every time you change your skin tone or hairstyle, your clothes change randomly too, making it difficult to really tell the difference. I was blocky and my shirt was a radioactive gumdrop blue. I felt like a cartoon man in the real world. You can choose your character's age, from 10-17. Their target demographic, I assume. If you're over 18 they assume you'll be out smoking, joining the marines, or one of those other things we keep minors from doing. I played for half an hour and I'm not sure if I fought anything. The first quest I got was "get five chicken eggs and hand them to me". I'm used to games where they start you killing stuff right off the bat. I didn't even have to punch the chickens. Getting the eggs was kinda fun. Then I spent five minutes trying to turn the quest in and failing. Maybe I was supposed to punch the NPC.

You get skills by walking around and talking to people. There are about a dozen dialogue topics, and if you talk to people a lot, you get better stuff. I'm not sure if you can unlock skills by talking to the same person 100 times in one day or if you have to talk to them once a day over 100 days. I'm not sure which is worse, either

Everyone has the same generic topics. I'm supposed to keep track of which shopkeepers like talking about "skills" or "farmlands". If I wanted to spend weeks getting to know video game characters, I'd play Animal Crossing. That way I could at least choose what I say. The Pete/Pelly/Phyllis love triangle is more interesting anyhow.