Bush praises Wizards of the Coast's "Bold support of abstinence only initiatives."

Without it there would be no World of Warcraft. Without it Jack Chick would just be a fundamentalist freak, rather than a fundamentalist freak with a cult fandom, and Tom Hanks wouldn't cry in the dark whenever anyone mentions the words mazes and/or monsters. Without it Rivers Cuomo's fan base would have a collective 50% less body fat. Most importantly, without it I would have had a real job between the years 2000 and 2005, when I fed my family (barely) writing books about buried treasures, hideous monsters, and elven maids with improbably large breasts.

Yes, today it was leaked that Wizards of the Coast will be releasing a 4th edition of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, which for 30 odd years has lurked in the dankest corners of the pop culture basement, inspiring freaks and geeks to acts of d4 heroism, to songs about of all sorts to swing singlehanded fuel the explosive growth of the Slim Jim, Cheeto, and Mountain Dew brands. Well, they didn't really so much announce 4th ed. as announce they were announcing something, and then forget to hide the new forum they'd cleverly disguised under the name "D&D 4th Edition Forum"

For those of you curious (and bereft of hope) enough to care, here's a screenshot of the now removed forum.

The official announcement is scheduled for tomorrow, at
GenCon Indy 2007, a 4 day celebration of all those things I find far cooler than any 34 year old man ever should.

So if you, like me, felt a strange disturbance in the force today, a tingle in your spider-pants, and a desperate need to hole up in the library with pencil, ruler, crinkled graph paper, and an annotated edition of The Bloody Crown of Conan... now you know why.


Patrick Y invented italics, actually, back in the summer of '02, but traded away the patent for a pack of Wheat Thins, and a favor to be named later.

A pair of chaotic evil gamers named Michael and Iana Straw have plead guilty to child neglect after failing to stop playing Dungeons & Dragons Online to feed their two young children.

Now, I'm no DM but I would wager their actions will certainly result in an alignment change and or a loss of level or Paladin status. Oh, and jail. I find this an especially odd story because I've never heard of hardcore gamers that didn’t have a treasure hoard of delicious snacks within an arm's flop of the keyboard...

Oh, well that explains that.

I knew they had food though. The only remaining mystery is where did the pair get all the gold pieces come from to pay for the high speed internet?

I guess somewhere in the orgy of spending and gaming there was some actual, real-life sexual contact becuase the two dumb asses rolled-up a couple of new human characters. Frankly, those two babies are off on a quest to a better place.

Why couldn’t it have been World of Warcraft? Or meth? Dungeons and Dragons needed this PR hit like a prismatic spray to the face.

Since Gary Gygax conjured up a turn-based role playing game and published it through his company, TSR his wonderful game has been called everything from satanic to brainwashing.

For now, their vile campaign is at an end. Ogres Michael and Iana, hand in your character sheets: your're done. You face the maximum banishment of a dozen years in one of Nevada's dungeons. The couple are imprisoned in a soul trap where inmates that harm children are preyed upon at every turn. Their two younglings are doing well and putting on weight in foster care.

Finally, some in the media will take this incident as an opportunity to beat up video games...but I have another axe to grind. I would like to point out that this could never have happened if they were playing D & D like God intended - with a pencil, character sheet, painted figurine, and bags of doritos and dice. There's just no way that you could assemble an entire campaign of such heartless souls that would play through the cries of hungry babies. That's why we pick up swords in the first place. To smite such evil.

I was ten years old in 1982, and came of age at the beginning of the electronic gaming revolution, as toy companies realized there was a lot of allowance to claim if they could bring the arcade gaming experience into our homes and the palms of our hands.

If you’re of a certain age, you may remember some of the totally cool electronic hand held toys we coveted in our youth, like the Digital Daredevil and 3-D Thundering Turbo from Tomy, or Milton Bradley’s straight-from-the-future Microvision – a hand held game gadget that could play different games, just like an Atari or Intellivision! And it only weighed, like, ten pounds! If you were really lucky, maybe you had one of the Coleco games that looked an awful lot like an arcade cabinet. I had Pac-Man, my brother had Galaxian. Sure, they didn’t play as well as their arcade inspirations, but they looked so cool!

There were different games for different types of kids: the competitive kids liked the racing games, the elementary school equivalent of the jocks liked the sports “simulations,” and the nerds like me played the science fiction games.

I never liked the sports games, because I sucked at sports in real life, and video and electronic games were a way to escape from real life into worlds that only existed in imagination. In fact, when I got Star Raiders for my Atari, I built a fort that was actually the bridge of a starship, with the television as the main viewer and a chair from the kitchen as my captain’s chair. When I got my Vectrex, I frequently played it with a blanket draped over my head to block out everything else in the world, so I could pretend I really was sweeping mines in outer space.

Space was the most common “fantastic” setting for games back then, but in the early 80s, the role playing games that we all take for granted today were just beginning to filter down from the mysterious realm of hardcore wargamers into the more familiar surroundings of Toys R Us and Kmart, as the Dungeons & Dragons craze leveled up on a daily basis, (reaching the coveted Saturday Morning Cartoon status in 1983) so it was only natural that the two worlds would collide and create something that I could call my own: the electronic fantasy game.

Most of these games were variations on the basic dungeon-crawling theme, but they were just perfect in an age where imagination was still required to transform the monster that chased you around Atari’s Adventure from a duck into a dragon, and the animated Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit was scary and magnificent. This was a perfect blending of the two things my friends and I loved more than anything else in the world: cool electronic gadgets and the fantasy world we were just discovering.

Today, I look back at a couple of my favorites . . .

Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth Game
By Mattel
1980
“. . . an electronic game of strategy, imagination, and adventure . . .”



This was a classic dungeon crawl, where one or two players navigated a randomly generated map in search of a single box of treasure while trying to avoid a boodthirsty dragon. The game used sounds to tell you what was going on, like the dragon flying around or the player bumping into a wall, as you and a friend mapped out the ever-changing labyrinth.

This game included really cool lead miniatures, just like the ones the big kids used when they played with paper and dice and listened to Black Sabbath. It combined electronics and traditional board game pieces to create something that was just as fun to play alone as it was to play with a friend. You could even set up different difficulty levels to handicap one player if you wanted.

I didn’t own this game until a few years after it had been released, but once it was added to my inventory, I played it until it broke, which happened before I lost any of the pieces – a rarity in my pre-teen years.

Dungeons & Dragons Computer Fantasy Game
By Mattel
1981
“Find the magic arrow and shoot the dragon! If your aim is good, you win!”



Ah, how frequently I long for a simpler time when slaying a dragon was as easy as firing a magic arrow with good aim. Or, in this case, left, right, up or down.

Though it was little more than a D&D-branded hand held version of Hunt the Wumpus, this was still a lot of fun for a kid who was willing to use his imagination.

The randomly-generated dungeon was divided into a ten by ten grid, with each space on the grid representing a different room that could hold a deadly and potentially game-ending pit, a monster, or the magic dragon-slaying arrow. The player’s goal was to explore the dungeon, find the magic arrow, and then use it to slay the dragon. Depending on what difficulty you chose, you could start the game with a rope that gave you safe egress from the pits (rendering them annoying instead of game-ending) or the rope could also be randomly hidden somewhere in the dungeon.

Flashing LCD icons told the player what was in an adjacent room, so you could avoid the annoying bats that picked you up and dropped you in a random room, or find the tools you needed to complete the quest.

For all its apparent simplicity, it was really a challenge if played on the higher levels, and because it ran on watch batteries, you’d get bored with it long before they ever ran out of juice. I played this for hours between shots on film sets, though I rarely got good scores, because the game was timed and didn’t have a pause feature. I’d frequently put it down when I was called in to shoot, and come back to discover that my score was the dreaded 99. I think this helped create my philosophy that playing the game and enjoying it was more important than winning.

The Dark Tower
By Milton Bradley
1981



“You’re lost in a forbidding land . . . your warriors are dying . . . food is low. But still you must conqueror THE DARK TOWER!”

I saved my absolute favorite electronic fantasy game for last: a quest that felt epic in scale, that was as much fun to play with friends as it was to play alone. It could even be rendered portable with a little ten year-old ingenuity.

The Dark Tower was a fantasy quest game that pitted players against each other in a race to travel through four different realms, collect three different keys, and retrieve an ancient magic scepter, which had been stolen by a Tyrant King, who was also known as “Sir not appearing in this game.”

The centerpiece of the game, literally and figuratively, was a tall black tower that sat at the center of the board and kept track of players’ progres through the game as they visited crypts and tombs, replenished their food and gold supply at sanctuaries, and battled band after band of evil Brigands. Inside the tower was a small computer and a spinning series of absolutely gorgeous and perfectly-drawn images that showed the players what was going on during the game: when you battled Brigands, an LED display would show you how many warriors you had, along with a picture of them, and then do the same with the brigands. Simple electronic beeps and tunes heightened the excitement as the game unfolded.



While you traveled around the board, you could visit crypts and tombs in search of treasure and keys, and a magic sword which could slay the obligatory dragon. You could visit bazaars and purchase food, additional warriors, or healers and scouts to protect you from plague or getting lost. In multi-player games, you could get a wizard to join your party and use him to curse the other players.

Since I spent so much of my youth on film sets, portability was an important factor in any game, as was the ability to play it alone, since I was frequently the only kid at work. The Dark Tower had a built-in one player option, and if you were willing to draw a copy of the four realms on some notebook paper (I was) then you could just take the tower with you in your backpack, and leave the mundane world of the early 1980s for a magical and dangerous fantasy realm any time, with ease.

Milton Bradley was sued shortly after the game was released, and they stopped producing it. It quickly went out of print, and is highly prized by collectors today. There is a wonderful flash-based version of the game that can be played online . . . but don’t complain to me if you get in trouble for leaving the mundane world of 2007 for a magical and dangerous fantasy realm.

Credits: Computer Fantasy Game image comes from Hand Held Museum dot Com. Computer Labyrinth Game images come from Board Game Geek dot Com, and The Dark Tower images come from Well of Souls dot Com and Google.

Wil Wheaton’s aim is true.

December, 1983:

I sat on the floor in my Aunt Val's house, and opened up her Christmas present to me. It was a red box with a really cool looking dragon on the front of it. Inside, there were a few books, some dice, a map, and a crayon to color in the dice.

"That's a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow," she said, "It's dragons and wizards and those things you liked from The Hobbit. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have." My brother played with Legos and my cousins played with handheld electronic games. I felt a little gypped.

"Wow," I said, masking my disappointment. "Thanks, Aunt Val!"

Later, while the other kids played with Mattel football and Simon, I sat near the fireplace and examined my gift. It said that I could be a wizard or a fighter, but there weren't any pieces that looked like that. There were a lot of weird looking dice, but I had to color in the numbers. That seemed silly, but at least it was something to do, so I grabbed the black crayon, and rubbed it over the pale blue dice, just like the instructions said.

Aunt Val (who was my favorite relative in the world throughout my entire childhood and right up until she died a few years ago) walked into the living room. "What do you think, Willow?"

"I colored the dice," I said, and showed her the result. "But I haven't read the book, yet."

She patted my leg. "Well, I hope you like it." She moved to the other side of the room, where cousin Jack played with a Nintendo Game and Watch.

I opened the Players Guide, and began to read.

February, 1984:

It was afternoon PE in fifth grade, and I was terrified. I ran and jumped and ducked, surrounded by a cheering crowd of my classmates. The PE teacher did nothing to stop the attack, and in fact encouraged it.

"Get him!" Someone yelled, as I fell to the asphalt, small rocks digging into my palms. I breathed hard, and through my adrenaline-fueled flight-or-fight response, the world slowed, the cheering faded, and I wondered to myself why our playground was just a parking lot, and why we had to wear corduroy pants in the middle of a Southern California heatwave. Before I could offer any answers, a clear and loud voice spoke from within my head. "Hey," it said. "You'd better get up and move, or you're dead."

I nodded my head, and looked up in time to see the red playground ball, spinning in slow motion, as the word "Voit" rotated into view. Pain exploded across my face and a mighty cheer erupted from the crowd. The PE teacher blew her whistle.

I don't know how I managed to be the last kid standing on our team. I usually ran right to the front of the court, so I could get knocked out quickly and (hopefully) painlessly before the good players got worked up by the furor of battle and started taking head shots, but I'd been stricken by a bout of temporary insanity—possibly created by the heat—on this February day, and I'd actually played to win the game, using a very simple strategy: run like hell and hope to get lucky.

I blinked back tears as I looked up at Jimmie Just, who had delivered the fatal blow. Jimmie was the playground bully who spent as much time in the principal's office as he did in our classroom, and was the most feared dodgeball player at the Lutheran School of the Foothills.

He laughed at me, his long hair stuck to his face in sweaty mats, and sneered, "Nice try, Wil the Pill."

I picked myself up off the ground, determined not to cry. I sucked in deep breaths of air through my nose.

Mrs. Cooper, the PE teacher, walked over to me. "Are you okay, Wil?" She asked.

"Uh-huh," I lied. Anything more than that and I risked breaking down into humiliating sobs that would follow me around the rest of the school year, and possibly into sixth grade.

"Why don't you go wash off your face," she said, not unkindly. "And sit down for a minute."

"Okay," I said. I walked slowly across the blacktop to the drinking fountains. Maybe if I really took my time, I could run out the clock and I wouldn't have to play another stupid dodgeball game.

January, 1984:

Papers scattered across my bed appeared to be homework to the casual observer, but to me they were people. A thief, a couple of wizards, some fighters; a party of adventurers who desperately wanted to storm The Keep on the Borderlands. But without anyone to guide them, they sat alone, trapped in the purgatory of my bedroom, straining behind college-ruled blue lines to come to life.

I tried to recruit my younger brother to play with me, but he was 7, and more interested in Monchichi. The kids in my neighborhood were more interested in football and riding bikes, so I was left to read through module B2 by myself, wandering the Caves of Chaos and dodging Lizardmen alone.

February, 1984:

I washed my face and drank deeply from the drinking fountain, and by the time I made it back to the benches against the playground's southern edge, I'd lost the urge to cry, but my face radiated enough heat to compete with the blistering La Crescenta sun.

I sat down near this kid Simon Teele, who, thanks to the wonders of alphabetization, ended up with me and Harry Yan (the school's lone Asian kid) on field trips and fire drills, and in chapel. Simon was taller than all of us, wore his hair down into his face, and really kept to himself. He was reading an oversized book that sort of looked like a text book, filled with charts and tables.

We weren't officially friends, but I knew him well enough to make polite conversation.

"Hey," I said. "Why don't you have to play dodgeball?"

"Asthma," He said.

"Lucky," I said. "I hate dodgeball."

"Everyone hates dodgeball," he said. "Except Jimmie Just."

"Yeah," I said, relieved to hear someone else say out loud what I'd been thinking since fourth grade.

"Hey," I said. "What are you reading?"

He held up the book, and I saw its cover: a giant statue, illuminated by torches, sat behind an archway. Two guys were on its head, prying loose one of its jeweled eyes, as a group of people stood at the base. One was clearly a wizard, another was obviously a knight.

"Player's Handbook," he said. "Do you play D&D?"

I gasped. According to our ultra-religious school, D&D was Satanic. I looked up for teachers, but none were close to us. 100 feet away on the playground, another game of dodgeball was underway. I involuntarily flinched when I heard the hollow pang! of the ball as it skipped off the ground.

"You're going to get in trouble if you get caught with that," I said.

"No, I won't," he said. "If I just keep it turned upside down, they'll never see it. So do you play or not?"

"I have the red box set," I said, "and a bunch of characters, but I don't have anyone to play with."

"That's basic," he said. "This is advanced."

"Oh."

"But if you want, you could come over to my house this weekend and we could play."

I couldn't believe my good luck. With a dodgeball to the face, Fate put me on the bench next to the kid who, over the next few months, helped me take my first tentative steps down the path to geekdom. He had a ton of AD&D books: the Dungeon Master's Guide, which had a truly terrifying demon on the cover, and would result in certain expulsion if seen at school, the Monster Manual which was filled with dragons, and the Fiend Folio, which not only had demons and devils, but a harpy and a nymph, accompanied by a drawing of a naked woman with boobs!

Simon's parents were divorced, and he lived with his mom in a huge house in La Canada. His room was filled with evidence of a custody battle: too many toys to count littered the floor and spilled out of the closet, but even though we were surrounded by Atari and Intellivision, GI Joe and Transformers, we had D&D fever, and the only prescription was more polyhedral dice.

Though it was just the two of us playing, we stormed the Keep on the Borderlands and explored the Isle of Dread. We spent all our free time at school making new characters, designing dungeons, and unsuccessfully attempting to recruit other kids to play with us.

March, 1984:

My babysitter Gina's older brother was an experienced dungeon master, and he let us play in one of his custom-made dungeons. My fighter walked into a room, got trapped behind a portcullis, and died when I sprung a trap trying to escape. Simon and I decided later that it would be okay to resurrect him for our own adventures without penalty, because Gina's brother's dungeon was really too hard, and it wasn't part of our world, anyway.

June, 1984:

Simon and I finally got two other kids to join our group: Robert and his friend David. The four of us were officially declared "the nerds" by the cool kids at school, and the four of us played almost every weekend. I started carrying my dice, a couple of pencils, and folded-up character sheets with me everywhere I went, stored in a pleather Casio calculator case that my dad gave me.

The Satanic Panic, fueled by Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons and some "investigative" reporting on television news magazines reached our suburban school, and a letter was sent home warning our parents about the dangers of Dungeons and Dragons. My parents laughed it off, but Robert's did not; he was prohibited from playing with us any more, and since he brought David into our little group, he left too. Then, right when school was about to get out for Summer, we were dealt a total party kill: Simon's mom was moving the two of them to Indiana.

July, 1984:

With Simon gone and the Satanic Panic at its peak, I didn't have anyone to play with. My books and character sheets slowly made their way into my closet, as Atari began to creep further and further into my life. Then, for my birthday, Aunt Val gave me a book called Lone Wolf. It was like Choose Your Own Adventure, but you had a character sheet, and rolled dice for combat! It wasn't D&D, but it was close enough. That series of books carried me all the way through middle school, and guided me farther and farther down the path to geekdom.

1987:

I was a freshman in high school, and gained admittance to a group of geeks via my friend Darin. We played tons of geeky games together, watched Holy Grail at least once a month, and argued the finer points of Sci-Fi. I was finally surrounded by geeks again, only this time I was proud to be counted among their number.

One day, sitting in Darin's house and playing Illuminati, I said, "Hey, do any of you guys ever play D&D?"

There was a collective snort of derision.

"What?" I said.

"We play GURPS," one of the guys said.

On the path to geekdom, I crossed another Rubicon.

Wil Wheaton has a +20 shirt of Smiting. He would gladly trade it for +5 vs. Dodgeball.