RIP Charles S. Roberts (1930 - 2010) -- Without Roberts, There Would Be No Gaming Hobby as We Know It

Charles S. Roberts, a man who is arguably the most important figure in Hobby Gaming, died on August 20th, 2010 due to complications of emphysema and pneumonia. Roberts was the founder of the Avalon Hill game company, a company that was once a giant in Hobby Gaming. The Baltimore Sun has an extensive, though also error riddled, obituary regarding Roberts and his impact as a game designer and as a historian. High on the error list is the assertion that Roberts sold Avalon Hill to Parker Brothers in the 1960s, when the truth is that Monarch Publishing -- Avalon Hill's chief creditor -- took ownership of the company in 1962.


Roberts' impact on Hobby Gaming is undeniable. Were it not for the publication of Roberts' game Tactics in 1953, it is unlikely that there would have been the "Castles and Crusades" society that led to the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. It is possible, as there was miniatures gaming without Avalon Hill, but given the fact that the original D&D books recommended the ownership of Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival for use in "Wilderness Adventures" it is clear that Gygax was influenced and inspired by Avalon Hill. Gygax also wrote articles in Avalon Hill's The General magazine and viewed Avalon Hill and SPI as two of his chief rivals early in the hobby, but that is another discussion. Hobby Gaming is more that role playing games, it includes Eurogames and games like Battlelore and Formula D.

To quote SPI's "Strategy & Tactics Staff Study #2": Wargame Design (1981):

Modern wargaming on boards, as a hobby, can be traced to one man and one game. In 1953, Charles S. Roberts, a young man in his early twenties, combined an interest in the military and in history to produce a game, which he designed in his spare time, called Tactics.

Roberts release of Tactics, and subsequent founding of Avalon Hill, is entirely responsible for the creation of the board wargaming hobby. His contribution to general hobby gaming is often overlooked, primarily because people view Avalon Hill as a "wargame" company and not a Hobby Gaming company. This is a huge error. To quote Wargame Design again:

The Avalon Hill Company was not founded for the primary purpose of producing wargames. This point is often ignored by those in the hobby who have come to look at Avalon Hill as a source for games. Its true purpose is, and remains, to produce the broad spectrum of adult games for which Roberts felt there would be a market. Roberts felt that the big game publishers, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, and the like, had ignored the adult game field and he was determined to take advantage of their indifference.

Roberts saw adult games as a field to be exploited and fertile soil for a hobby. He was right. As modern adult games like The Settlers of Catan, Small World, Pandemic, and Tide of Iron, as well as classics like Squad Leader, Gettysburg, Facts in Five, Acquire and Diplomacy, ably demonstrate. Gaming had room to expand into a grand hobby, and it has done so. A quick visit to BoardGameNews.com and a glance at their Gone Cardboard link presents a glimpse of the Hobby games coming out this year. There is a breadth of theme and a breadth play styles represented. This comes as a natural descent from Roberts' original mission. According to Wargame Design, of the eighteen titles published during the Roberts era "nine are non-battle titles representing such diverse fields as law, commerce, and sports."

Due to a number of errors in his approach, Roberts eventually ended up in trouble with his creditors. One of these creditors, Monarch Publishing, took over Avalon Hill and continued publishing games. In fact, the company expanded a great deal under the new leadership. Unlike many brand purchases in the gaming industry, Monarch didn't cherry pick a few old titles and forget the rest. Instead, they continued in the mission set forth by Roberts and produced a wide variety of games for the adult gaming market. They also published a magazine, The General, which served as a way to promote and support their existing line of games.

Though Roberts no longer ran Avalon Hill, his contribution to the creation of a hobby was solidified by the success of his legacy.

In 1975, at the first Origins gaming convention, the first Charles S. Roberts awards were given out to games within the hobby. The winners (games published in 1974) were, Third Reich, Manassas, Strategy and Tactics Magazine, Albion Magazine, and a Hall of Fame Award for Charles S. Roberts himself. For years to come, the Charles S. Roberts Award was a part of the annual Origins Awards and winners included Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, The Space Gamer Magazine, and Car Wars. The Roberts Awards have typically gone to board and wargames, with other Origins categories covering other aspects of hobby gaming. In recent years, the Charles S. Roberts Award has been handed out at the World Boardgaming Championships -- a fact that highlights both the growth and the fracturing of the gaming hobby.

Other than my gratitude for Roberts contribution to Hobby Gaming, I have no connection to him or to Avalon Hill. Like most of the grand masters of the hobby, I never had a chance to meet him and wish that I had.

I am credited with doing some proofreading work on a game (Zulus on the Ramparts! that won a CSR Award this year, but that is a pretty tangential connection.

I would like to thank GROGNARDIA: RIP Charles S. Roberts (1930-2010), and Greyhawk Grognard: R.I.P. Charles S. Roberts for sharing this sad news.

As a gamer, I have recently begun collecting books about the hobby and copies of the games that created the hobby. Maybe I'll crack open my copy of Gettysburg -- square spaces and all -- and play a game in remembrance of one of the founders of Hobby Gaming.

RIP: J. Eric Holmes (1930 - 2010)

I read the news that J. Eric Holmes passed away on March 20, 2010 due to complications from a stroke on James Maliszewski's Grognardia blog yesterday. For players of role playing games of a certain generation, this is very sad news indeed. His passing is all the sadder because there are so many who don't know how much he contributed to the role playing game hobby. Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax created and promoted new hobby through their Dungeons and Dragons role playing game, but it was J. Eric Holmes who made that game intelligible to the world at large. His efforts, and those of Tom Moldvay and Dave Cook, are major contributions to the growth of the hobby as a whole.



J. Eric Holmes wrote the first "Basic" edition for the Dungeons and Dragons game, he describes how he -- a Professor in the Department of Neurology at USC at the time (Fight On!) -- came to write the product in his informative book Fantasy Role Playing Games (Hippocrene Books 1981) as follows:

In 1974 I persuaded Gygax that the original D&D rules needed revision and that I was the person to rewrite them. He readily conceded that there was a need for a beginners' book and "if you want to try it, go ahead..." I edited a slim (48 pages) handbook for beginners in roleplaying, published by TSR in 1977...

Without that Basic set, the role playing game hobby may have aged out with the older generation who were the majority of the audience playing the game prior to the publication of Holmes' work. Gary Gygax wrote of the importance of the Holmes Basic set to the hobby as a whole in Dragon #22:

If millions take to the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien, and nearly as many follow the heroic feats of Conan, the market potential of a game system which provides participants with a pastime which creates play resembling these adventuresome worlds and their inhabitants is bounded only by its accessibility. Access has two prominent aspects; availability is the first; that is, are potential players informed of the fact that the game exists, and are they able to physically obtain it; and difficulty is the second, for if once obtained the game is so abstruse as to be able to be played only by persons with intelligence far above the norm, or if the game demands a volume of preliminary work which is prohibitive for the normal individual, this will be recognized and the offering shunned even if it is available. D&D failed on both counts, and still it grew. Today we are putting D&D onto the track where it is envisioned it will have both maximum availability and minimum difficulty. This is best illustrated in the "Basic Set."

Well over two years ago we recognized that there was a need for an introductory form of the game. In 1977, the colorfully boxed "Basic Set" was published. It contained simplified, more clearly written rules, dungeon geomorphs, selections of monsters and treasures to place in these dungeons, and a set of polyhedra dice -- in short all that a group of beginning players need to start play with relative ease.

Without the "Basic Set," D&D would have grown due to the size of the interested market, but it would not have had explosive growth. Gygax is right that the original rules failed on both the above counts, he is also right that the "Basic Set" succeeded on both. This is evident is that the "Basic Set" increased sales exponentially as it provided a pathway to the other products -- a well lit and easy to follow pathway. In the article quoted above, Gygax states that between January 1974 to December 1975 (two years of sales) 4,000 sets of the original rules were sold. Comparably, at the time the article was written (February 1979) the "Basic Set" was selling 4,000 copies per month, "and the sales graph is upward."

Holmes articulated the underlying difficulty of the original rules as follows:

When Tactical Studies Rules published the first DUNGEONS & DRAGONS rule sets, the three little books in brown covers, they were intended to guide people who were already playing the game. As a guide to learning the game, they were incomprehensible. There was no description of the use of the combat table. Magic spells were listed, but there was no mention of what we all now know is a vital aspect of the rules: that as the magic user says his spell, the words and gestures for it fade from his memory and he cannot say it again.

Holmes understood that gaming companies needed to write products that could introduce people to the hobby. They needed to promote their products to broader demographics if they wanted to survive as a viable industry. Roleplaying games tend to get more and more complex the longer the rules set remains in play, and thus become more difficult for the neophyte player. One response to the "rules bloat" has been to reboot with new editions, but this can alienate your existing player base who enjoy the complexity the game has to offer. The other solution is to offer an introductory version of the game. The hard core current players will not, as a block, purchase the product, but it is a great way to introduce new players into the hobby.

Hasbro is attempting to apply this lesson with product offerings that are coming out later this year -- among them a new Dungeons & Dragons Introductory Set.

John Eric Holmes was a great advocate for the role playing game hobby, a gaming enthusiast, and the game designer responsible for making D&D rule accessible. He was also an active member of Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom. He is definitely someone I would have loved to meet.

From one Trojan gamer to another, all I can say is Fight On!

In Memoriam Eleven Years Later: Eugenie Lela-Ilsa Johnson 05/04/1952 - 10/07/1998

Those of you who have been long time readers will have to forgive me once more for my annual "repeat" post. Today is a day that I often don't feel like posting about popular culture. Today is the eleventh anniversary of my mother's death, and I always feel a need to share on this day. I thought about writing something entirely original, but then I reread what I wrote in 2004 and it captures most of what I want to say. So instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I will post the contents of a prior entry. Before you move on to the piece, I'd like to make two comments. I have added some sentences (I also updated my age and the length of time since my mom died), they are in italics, and my statement below that my mother will never get to meet her grandchildren has come true. My mom will never get to meet her lovely granddaughters Nora Thekla Lindke and Clio Millie Lindke. I don't often include photos of family on this blog, but I'll make a rare exception today.



Here are Nora and Clio. Do you see how much they look like their grandmother?

This is a picture of my mom in 1971, that blob on her lap is me.

Here is another picture of Nora and Clio.



A Day to Listen to the Velvet Underground

I am only 38 years old, but today marks the end of my first eleven years without a mom. That is an awkward sentence, but it best captures my sentiments. I am not an orphan, I still have a father. In fact, I recently had a wonderful, but too short, visit with him and my sister last week. Yet a part of me is still very much missing, a large part. October 7th, 1998...10,7,98...those numbers loom large and ominous in my heart and this is the first year I am not completely overwhelmed by them.

My wife and I have intimate conversations often, it is one of the joys of marriage, and she and I were discussing death the other day. Her grandmother had just died at the age of 92. My wife explained it this way, "When someone dies, the world feels a little less complete. Bird songs aren't as joyful, and sunrises are slightly less beautiful." Displaying, as she often does, the magnificence of unedited, awkward, and spontaneous verbal poetry. She was also correct. C.S. Lewis opens his book A Grief Observed with another observation about death:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

I still feel this way, not everyday...today.

There are two things that are still difficult for me to do seven years after my mom died when I was 27 (she was 46).

I have a hard time remembering truly happy moments with her...on command. Happy moments enter my consciousness at random moments and seldom on the anniversary of her death. Glimpses of her nymph-like smile...brief auditory illusions of her laughter enter my mind. But the majority of my memories are neither happy nor sad, they are the memories of everyday activities, evening dinners and the question which ever looms over the head of a teenager, "Have you finished your homework?" I remember watching videotapes with her on many occasions, though none as awkward as the time we watched The Hunger, just the two of us and an erotic vampire film. I remember feeling both uncomfortable being aroused by the film, in my mom's presence, while at the same time finding the situation hilarious. This moment just came to mind. There are many more like it, I just can't remember them on demand. In all honesty, I remember my mom as a happy person, a person who added joy to the world. Which is why I have my other difficulty.

I can't understand my mom's addiction, and eventual death due to how it ravaged her body, to heroin. I try, by reading/watching/listening to and about other addicts. I know the narrative of my mom's addictive cycle, I can see each step of her hopeless journey. That's not what I can't understand. I know the things that led to her addiction. What I can't understand is the overwhelming power of it, how addiction stole my mom from me...day by day. Oddly, some really shallow things help. They are a poor substitute for true knowledge, and seem trite when I think hard on them, but they help. These things include the music of the Velvet Underground (in particular, you guessed it, Heroin) and Iggy Pop, the films Permanent Midnight (which I saw just after her death) and Trainspotting, the book and film versions of Razor's Edge, and the writings of C.S. Lewis among other things.

I am the only member of my immediate family I know of who attends church. I was raised secularly. Strange as it sounds my mom found comfort in, though she was baffled by, my belief. She once asked -- before I was a regular church attendee -- if I believed in God, expecting me (the first college student in my family) to laugh at the absurdity of the question. I told her I did and her response lingers with me to this day, "Really?" Her eyes looked at me...proud, confused, unbelieving, yet hopeful. I never was able to tell her that hope was what faith was all about ("Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1). It isn't about "knowledge," little of life is about actual knowledge. This is why the Oracle at Delphi asked us to know ourselves, that is a difficult enough task. Let alone the ability to acquire actual knowledge of something else.

I was notified of my mom's death by answering machine. I was in classes all day and didn't have a cell phone. A series of messages of an ever-worsening condition. Seizures...followed by emergency medical action. The voices of my father and sister becoming more and more desperate as they couldn't reach me in person. My wife and I later read the medical records to piece together a time line, to see if there was an heroic effort to save my mom. There was. It is not the best way to be notified of death, answering machine, I think it is the worst. I also wish that my mom had been buried not cremated, I would have liked to have had the chance to speak, to say my own words. A dear friend of mine died of cancer two-and-a-half years ago and her funeral approximated what I would have liked for my mom. There is a tangible closure in the physical act of burial. It is still a sad event, to be sure, but there is emotional power in the ritual.

Instead, I will share the two poems I think best capture the way I feel. One is gender confused (for my situation not its own) and the other is written from an older generation to a younger one, but they will have to do. In addition I would like to add a part of Philip K. Dick's author's note from A Scanner Darkly.

The first poem is by W.H. Auden (and yes it's the poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral but the scene it is in is one of my favorites in all of cinema).

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The second poem is by Wordsworth:

SURPRISED by joy--impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Wordsworth wrote Suprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis titled one of his autobiographies after this poem), for his daughter Catherine who had died at the age of four. This poem masterfully captures the grief I feel over the loss of my mom. Every time I have wonderful event in my life, I want to call her and share the news. That can never happen and it brings the event of her death immediately to mind and my sorrow and feeling of loss are renewed. Every time...without fail. My mom missed my graduation, my wife's master's, my acceptance to graduate school, my wife completing her MFA in film at USC. She will not be there to see her first grandchild, or any of the joy that her grandchildren will bring into the world.

As I stated before, I have continually looked to fiction and biographical narrative to understand my mom's addiction and that is why I am including the following by Philip K. Dick.

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one another of them being killed --run over, maimed, destroyed -- but they continued to play anyhow...

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving care. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory..."Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit is a whole lifetime...

If there was any "sin" it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far to great...

I don't entirely agree with P.K. Dick's statement above. Certainly I agree that "the punishment was far too great," but I disagree with his statement that "drug misuse is not a disease." I absolutely believe that an individual has some -- though not always complete -- control over the initial decision whether to use or not use a drug initially. Some people are self-diagnosing their psychological state and self-medicating to heal themselves, others are being "happy now because tomorrow they are dying."

It does not matter why a person first used drugs, whether for "happiness" or to feel normal, there is a point in the addict's life where the drug takes over. The addict's brain chemistry is altered and they begin to experience the disease that is addiction. I firmly believe that addiction is a disease. Drug use? Not necessarily, but addiction is. When you've seen addiction in one person, you begin to recognize it when you witness it elsewhere. It is an eerie phenomenon to see the addicted personality because no matter who the addict is, no matter what their personal pain or prior life, no matter that every person is unique, the addicted personality is strikingly familiar.



When my mom first told me of her addiction to heroin she expected me to be angry. A lot of my family was, I think the thought of my mother using heroin was too alien to them to even imagine. I think they viewed her use as somehow a failure on their part. I didn't, I only wanted to know if she was okay. By which I meant was she okay at the time she told me. My mom thought that heroin could make life more pleasant, for her it wasn't a selfish desire for more fun than anyone else was having, because she felt empty and sad on a regular basis. Heroin made her feel happy, like she could live life. But in making her think she could live life, heroin took life from her.

I don't "forgive" my mom for dying, I have never thought there was anything to forgive. I miss my mom and wish she were here. I love her and knowing that makes the missing part not so bad, because (as C.S. Lewis would say) the pain we feel now is a part of the love we have.

The Voice of a Suburban Generation: Director John Hughes Dead at 59

I am saddened by the death of film director John Hughes.

When I think of the 1980s, I think of two things -- High School and the movies of John Hughes. I don't know if John Hughes' films perfectly captured the high school experience my friends and I lived, or if his films shaped the way that we perceived the world around us. All I know is that John Hughes' early films have touched my heart in wonderful ways. I empathized with Molly Ringwald's character in Pretty in Pink. I wasn't one of the popular kids in school, but I wasn't one of the rebels either. My lot was somewhere between them all. When I watched The Breakfast Club, I saw a little of myself in all the male characters. None of them were me, but all of them were. I always wanted to be as self assured as Ferris Bueller, but felt like a working class version of Cameron.

But it wasn't just the teen films of Hughes that touched my heart. On the contrary, his films seemed to grow with me -- though some like Mr. Mom would be films my life would have to catch up to. In 1987 and 1988, Hughes wrote three films that have shaped the way I look at life and family.

Plains, Trains, and Automobiles is THE classic Thanksgiving film and Hughes keeps you laughing until the end...when you weep love for John Candy's character.

She's Having a Baby wonderfully captures the worry and stress of the soon to be father. When Jody and I were making our "family plans," I was constantly having flashbacks to the many times that she and I had watched the film. I didn't experience many of the anxieties that Kevin Bacon's character goes through. But when Clio was rushed off to NICU because she wasn't clearing the fluid out of her lungs and I had to simultaneously comfort my wife, accompany my other daughter Nora to her first bath, and run off to NICU to check up on my second twin, in a strange way it was Hughes' film that prepared me for the possible combination of joy, fear, sadness, and elation that accompanied the birth of Jody and my twins.

And then there's Uncle Buck. Who doesn't love Uncle Buck?

One could go on and on about how entertaining most of John Hughes' films were. One does wonder what happened after Home Alone that so many of Hughes' films became slapstick comedies about young children, though I imagine that might be an bi-product of being a grandfather. Besides, I kinda liked Drillbit Taylor -- which was his idea, if not screenplay.

Yes, I am saddened by the death of John Hughes, but I did find one thing that made me feel hopeful when I read the Hollywood Reporter obit. It included the clause, "He is survived by his wife of 39 years." It is nice to read that someone who wrote so well about family was married to the same woman for almost 4 decades. It's particularly nice when we live in times when we see so many public and messy divorces.

Thanks for the stories. Now...where to begin with the Hughes marathon. I think Vacation is a perfect place to start.

Dave Arneson 10/1/1947 - 04/07/2009 R.I.P.: Another Gaming Legend Passes Away

If it weren't for Gary Gygax and David Arneson, my Saturdays would look very different. Between the two of them, they created a game (and hobby) that has altered the face of recreation. When Gary and David organically created the role playing game called Dungeons & Dragons, I don't think they could ever have guessed that it would lead to the creation of so many exciting games. Without them there would have been no Champions, no Tunnels & Trolls, no Magic the Gathering, no Space Hulk, no Ultima, no World of Warcraft.

Without these men and their creation, the world would be less fun. Given the number of heated arguments about which edition of various role playing games is superior, the world would also be less interesting.

As I read the words, "these men" and "their creation," I realize that I am doing one of these men a disservice. It is true that the combined activities of these two men led to the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. They are after all the acknowledged co-creators of the game, as Wizards of the Coast's website so eloquently remembers. But in many ways Dave Arneson is the creator of the role playing game and of the continuing dialectic between mechanics and persona that moves innovation in role playing game design.

Role playing lore tells us that Major Wesely's Braunstein was the ur-roleplaying game. Major David Wesely was the first Dungeon Master (or Game Master), but role playing games may have died in their seedling state if not for the efforts of the first "role player." That gamer was David Arneson. I can try to describe what happened or what it meant for gaming, but I doubt I could do a better job than Ben Robbins from Ars Ludi. Ben writes:

Dave Arneson: Gamer Ex Nihilo

“Peaceful revolutionary. Gets points for printing and delivering leaflets to each of his revolutionaries, and more for handing them out to other civilians (who may be agents or guerrillas of course…). Starts at home. (B-4)”
–Braunstein 4, Banana Republic

When you started gaming you read all these books, and they told you you could be a cleric or a thief or an elf (or a vampire or a Prince of Amber) and they told you you should probably pick a caller and set up a marching order and listen at doors and all that other stuff. You marched your character around and talked in funny voices. Sooner or later you may have realized that the rules didn’t drive the game, your imagination did.

But what if you never had any of those books? What if no one had ever explained to you what roleplaying was? Were you a good enough gamer to become a gamer without even knowing what a gamer was? Could you have just started being a gamer out of thin air, without anyone ever telling you how to do it?

Dave Arneson did.

He lied, swindled, improvised, and played his character to the hilt. He came to the game with fake CIA ID he’d mocked up, so when another player “captured” and searched him he could whip them out. Other players were still moving pieces around the board and issuing orders like a wargame while Dave Arneson was running circles around them and changing the whole scenario. He was winning the game entirely by roleplaying.

You may think of Dave Arneson as one of the godfathers of GMing, but even before that he was the godfather of players. He was, literally, the proto-player.

###

“You’re the student revolutionary leader,” Wesely says “You get victory points for distributing revolutionary leaflets. You’ve got a whole briefcase full of them.”

Much later, having convinced his fellow players that he is really, perhaps, an undercover CIA operative, and that the entire nation’s treasury is really much safer in his hands, Dave Arneson’s character is politely ushered aboard a helicopter to whisk him to safety.

Far below the streets are still churning with fighting, plastic soldiers colliding with innocent citizens and angry rioters. In his lap sits the forgotten briefcase of revolutionary leaflets. “I get points for distributing these right?” And with a sweep of his arm he adds insult to injury, hurling reams of pages into the downdraft of the helicopter where they scatter and float lazily down upon the entire town…

Final score: Dave Arneson, plus several thousand points

Big whoop, you say, this is all old timey stuff. We modern gamers are way beyond dungeon crawls and listening at doors and all that primitive stuff. We have indie games and story games and narrative control and yadda yadda yadda.

Yes indeed. But even skipping the “standing on the shoulders of giants” argument or the “know your roots” argument, look again at what happened in that game: Dave Arneson was winning entirely by roleplaying. He isn’t doing tactical combat or playing some dumb-ass linear quest, he is making his own rules and being, for lack of a better word, an excellent player by any modern definition. He is making the game.

Don’t think Dave Arneson would kick your ass in some Sorcerer or Dogs In The Vineyard? Then you haven’t been paying attention. He would, as the kids say, take you to the net.

Modern gamers are pushing into new territory, but they’re also reclaiming old territory whether they know it not — the lands of their ancestors. If you’re an indie gamer or an avant garde gaming revolutionary, old school titans like Dave Arneson and Major Wesely are your peeps. They were trying things that had never been done before in their day too. They are your guys.

It is rare that people come along and create something truly new. The cliche that there is nothing new under the sun is very often true, but when it isn't we can be inspired and entertained in ways we never thought possible. Role playing games were (and still are) such a new concept in play that theorists debate whether role playing games are merely games or whether they are also a form of art. When you look at a group of gamers moving pieces around a board and rolling dice, role playing games certainly seem to fit nicely into the niche of game. But when you see those same people, descendants of Arneson's CIA agent, acting out their actions and creating entertaining narrative experiences -- some semi-scripted like a Christopher Guest film and others completely improvisational -- the argument that role playing games can be art gains some traction.

One thing is certain, role playing games can move the soul by being immensely pleasurable experiences. They can have this effect no matter how you play them -- hack and slash or persona immersion intensive -- the games make for good friends and good stories.

To repeat a thought above, they make the world more fun.

Thank you Dave for making the world a more interesting and entertaining place.

Who's the Master? A Rememberance of Julius J. Carry III (March 12, 1952 - August 19, 2008)

The end of one year, and the beginning of a new one, is a time for reflecting upon the memories of our past and the people who mentored, inspired, and/or entertained us. Over the next few days, I will be writing short remembrances of those among my favorite entertainers who died this year. I can think of no better person to begin with than Julius J. Carry III. Every geek/nerd has a list of actors that the geek/nerd will watch everything that actor stars in, no matter how bad. Typically, this list begins with Bruce Campbell, but not mine. Bruce Campbell is on my list, to be sure, but the top of my list -- and a very warm place in my heart -- has always belonged to Julius J. Carry III.

To understand my love for this character, one must look back in time to our pastel and neon colored past. I am, of course, referring to the 1980s. In this particular case, I am referring to the summer of 1986 and I had an obsession with Barry Gordy's film The Last Dragon starring Taimak and Julius J. Carry III, or -- as my obsession would have it -- starring Julius J. Carry III and Taimak. I absolutely loved the movie, much to the annoyance of my best friend Sean McPhail. You see, Sean had the movie on VHS and every time I visited his house I always wanted to watch The Last Dragon. Okay, either The Last Dragon or Hawk the Slayer, but the point here is that I would ask Sean to the point of nagging. His patience regarding this request, even granting that his answer was usually a sighing, eye-rolling NO, was really quite remarkable. I was pretty obsessed, and I am certain a little less than reasonable in the regularity and desperation with which I requested this film. My family didn't have a VCR at the time and Sean had to endure my bizarre movie cravings. Then again, it's his fault. He did introduce me to the film.

In The Last Dragon, Carry plays a character who is a fusion of what you would get if you merged Superfly with all the martial arts villains from the classic Shaw Brothers kung fu flix. In a word, Carry was the BADDEST thing I had ever seen on the screen. While, The Last Dragon is a Motown centric spoof of kung fu films, the film also beautifully satirizes MTV and it's a rip-roaring good time. Taimak makes a pretty good kung fu hero, if a bit limited in range, but it is Carry who steals the show. From the first moment Carry appeared on screen, to his fight scene with "Bruce Leroy" where he makes his hands glow -- you see he's a highly skilled fighter who can through intense focus make his hands glow -- I fell in love with this villain. The villain made the movie, and that movie made me a Carry fan.

Here's the fight between ShoNuff (Carry's character) and Bruce Leroy (Taimak), so you can get a glimpse of what hypnotized me as a teen.



There is no way that Samuel L. Jackson will be anything other than a caricature of this performance, if he actually plays the role in a possible remake of the film.

From The Last Dragon, I followed Carry to a couple of excellent television shows. First was the unforgettable geek extravaganza that was The Adventure's of Brisco County Jr.. This show had the geek irresistible combination of Bruce Campbell and Julius Carry. Dave Simkins, who worked with Carry on The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., has a short -- and kind -- remembrance. The show was quirky, fun, and set the stage for later Fox shows like Buffy and Firefly and USA's Burn Notice. Don't believe me? Watch an episode of Brisco, then watch one of the others. The "rhythms" of the shows are very similar. The combination of action and comedy, etc. I cannot imagine any of those shows being made were it not for Brisco -- though I doubt there would be a Brisco without a Wild, Wild, West, but that is another post entirely.

Then I followed Carry to a little sitcom called Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place. Carry was excellent on the show, as was Richard Ruccolo, and this show expanded my crush on the very entertaining Traylor Howard. It also introduced me to Nathan Fillion...What's that? Another Firefly connection? Sadly, the show became Two Guys and a Girl after only 13 episodes as the Pizza place was shifted to the side. After that, Carry got steady work as a guest star, but no regular lead/support roles.

Julius J. Carry III entertained me and conversations about the characters he played have turned acquaintances into friends. He died last August of pancreatic cancer at the -- to young -- age of 56.

I will miss him in the selfish way that all fans miss those who entertain them.

It's a Sad Day Charlie Brown -- Remembering Peanuts Animator Bill Melendez

Before I continue, I'd like everyone to take a moment of silence to reflect on how Bill Melendez affected your childhood. Melendez, who died on Tuesday at St. Johns Hospital in Santa Monica at the age of 91, was the "official" animator for the Peanuts movie specials in addition to working on the animated version of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." He worked on a number of other projects, to be sure, but those properties are the ones that had the greatest affect on me as I was growing up.

Here's one way that he affected me.

A BOY NAMED CHARLIE BROWN (1969), which Variety erroneously -- at least according to IMDB -- attributes to 1971, was one of my favorite movies growing up. It was also the story that made me most desire typical "Hollywood Endings," both in life and in film/tv. I hated that Charlie Brown lost the spelling bee. I was even more appalled that his loss was related to the thing he loved most in the world -- his pet beagle. You see, his misspells beagle at the climax of the story. I was heartbroken as a child, and I'm still heartbroken. I know that Charlie Brown, who is representative of the everyman, rarely gets to win in the Peanuts-verse, but I have always seen that as a kind of injustice. I want everyone to succeed in life.

Sure, I know that not everyone can become a successful actor, author, director, rock star, or statesman. That isn't what I am talking about. I am referring to the little successes that allow us to marvel at the world in which we live, the most important of which is a loving family that is free from tragedy. This is the stuff that dreams are made of. I want this for everyone. To further illustrate how the Charlie Brown film reinforced this desire, consider for a moment the role of Charlie's parents at the end of the film -- the lack thereof. Where is the loving embrace of a mother, or father, to console Charlie at the end of the story? Lost in "wah wah wah wah wah" land, no where to be seen by the audience. Charlie certainly has friends, Linus and Snoopy in particular, but what of family?

The Charlie Brown films made me long for a happy and loving family -- though like Charlie my experience was mixed. Certainly, my family loved me and let it be known. In fact, I had many a consolation hug after a tragic defeat. But my family life wasn't free of tragedy. In my late teens and throughout my twenties, I watched my mother as she struggled through addiction. More accurately, I watched as she slowly died from addiction. My younger sister, who lived at home with my mother, witnessed it more than I. It was a terrible struggle to which she eventually succumbed, more on that will be written on October 7th. But one moment comes to mind as I reflect on the absence of Charlie's parents after Charlie's loss, it is a memory of my mom in recovery -- in treatment at a center somewhere near Lake Tahoe.

My mom's parents, my grandparents, were still reeling from the hurt of having a daughter addicted to heroin and were looking for ways to cope. They latched on to the concept of "tough love," an important concept to keep in mind when one is an enabler which my grandparents weren't, seeking some magic trick to snap my mom out of the addictive cycle. They seemed to think that if they were "tough" that would help my mom, they focused on that more than the outward expression of love. I am certain they did what they did exactly because they loved their daughter, but their focus on one aspect of being a family in recovery prevented them from being ready for the likely inevitable "relapses" my mom would cycle through. That is, she would cycle through them if she was lucky enough to survive addiction. Sadly, my mom wasn't and I think that my grandparents regretted that they didn't spend more time giving comforting embraces to my mom and less time worrying about whether they were being tough enough.

I know I certainly felt that way. How many times have I asked myself whether I let my mom know how much, and how unconditionally, I loved her? Too many, and I have not always been satisfied with the answer.

What does this have to do with Peanuts? Well, in many ways my mom was Charlie Brown. She was "trying to kick the football" in life, only to have it frequently pulled away at the last second. This often happened as she attempted to advance her career. Unlike Charlie Brown, she had no Linus to offer "timeless truths." Her family was more present, and listened more than Charlie's, but her friends' consolation which she sought more often than the embrace of her children was rarely wise advice -- rather it was usually a detrimental escape.

Before this piece becomes too maudlin and makes it seem that Mr. Schulz creation was merely a catalyst that made me desire happy family life -- as well as appreciate the family I have, I should mention that Peanuts has also been a part of someone I dearly love's ongoing journey to success. My wife Jody is a winner of the 1996 prestigious Charles M. Schulz award for her college cartooning. It was winning this award that let Jody know that her dreams of entertaining people were possible. Not to sound too prideful -- I was able to be her Linus after she didn't win in 1992, a year so "bad" in the judges' mind that no one was awarded the prize. I told her that this only made the prize more legitimate and I let her know how convinced I was that she would eventually win the prize. She continued developing her craft and won the prize four years later when she thought her comic had improved enough. Jody is, if anything, her harshest critic.

In A World...without "Voiceover Guy"

According to Variety, Don LaFontaine died on Monday. The official cause of death has not yet been released.

I cannot recall how many movies this man convinced me to see with his trademark "In a world..." tagline. Part of me knows that "In a world without Don LaFontaine, future voiceover guys will seem like pale imitations."