It's been almost a quarter century now. I was 16 when my corruption took place. It was on a specific date, at a specific time, and at a particular place:
"We'll play Top Secret.
"What's that," I asked.
"Its a role-playing game," answered my good friend Mark B.
"What's that."
"You like pretend and stuff."
"How do you win?" A reasonable question I thought.
"You don't. You just play it."
"What?!"
By appearances we were just four teen-agers whiling away a summer afternoon (indoors, of course). Immediatly I saw who was in charge of the cell. He was referred to as The Administrator, a careful street euphemism for his actual rank of Game Master. My recruiter, Mark, placed a sheet in front of me. "This is you."
"Huh?"
"Well, it's not really you. It's your character sheet--"
The game master gently raised a hand. Mark stopped speaking and deferred to his master. For some reason I knew not to speak. I just listened to my new guru as he instructed me in the nature of The Game. I didn't understand. It sounded like a kooky game of sorts. How am I supposed to know what to do if there is no way to win. "Don't worry about it," he reassured me. "You'll understand as we go along."
I spent that afternoon for about five hours playing the included module that came With TSR's James Bondian role-playing game. It was pure special ops, a classic Goldfinger's plant mission, complete with black spy jumpsuit.
I peaked around the corner and down the hallway. There they were. I took a deep breath and rolled into the hallway emptying the magazine of my M1911 semi-automatic 45. The guards returned fire with their submachineguns. The excitement was palpable. The Administrator opened one of his many books. One hundred and ninety-two dice rolls and fourty-seven minutes later the firefight was almost resolved.
What's in those books that lets him know what happened to each and every bullet, I wondered. I was curious but I already knew enough that those books held secrets for his eyes only. Not being anything like a game master, the contents probably wouldn't make any sense to me anyway.
I was hooked! Moreso, I understood. It was clear to me now. I arrived home later and incoherantly tried to explain to my mother, "it's like you're actually there...it's not like a regular game...I mean...." She sensed that something was not right, but she didn't--couldn't understand. I had changed. She tried to speak to me but I did not hear her. I corrected her grammar, kissed her on the forehead, and went upstairs to my room to throw away my baseball glove.
I spent that summer playing Top Secret and was introduced to Advanced Dunegons & Dragons, you know, the real D&D. I could feel my geek genes activating and transforming me, and my so-called friends--my handlers--had me well in hand. I was taken to a local temple deviously disguised as a comic book shop/game store. Respectable society remained completely unawares.
I entered behind Mark. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me. Mark waived his hands, "it's OK. He's with me. He's only just starting Keep on the Borderlands. People went back to flipping through boxes of solid plastic-wrapped comic books. One guy was reading Uncanny X-Men and holding it such that the spine floated on his open palm and the pages naturally fell open. The man behind the counter was eyeing him with furled brows. Another guy was examining a boxed figurine, lifting it, checking underneath and the corners of the box, examining the scotch-tape holding the top closed; what is he looking for?!
A couple of guys were over by some racks filled high and low with small blister packs of something. They were debating something. "You're retarded. D'you know how many people it would take to prepaint each and every type of fig. It would take the entire population of China working on it full time. They'd cost twenty dollars each. Besides, nobody's going to buy them. What if you don't like the colours."
"Yeah, I guess you're right; dumb idea."
At the time I wasn't sure what they were talking about. Actually, what I was thinking was, "Where are all the girls?"
Mark was checking out his reserve bin while I browsed around. There were so many cool stuff to look at. Then I saw it tucked away in the corner on the very top shelf. Star Fleet Battles. It had a glowing aura around it. The cover image showed Federation and Klingon starships having at it. Yes, I said to myself, yes, of course. The starships were attacking each other across different axes. Of course space combat would naturally be in 3D. I understand.
The box began to stir. Like on an invisible cloud it lifted off the shelf and gently floated down into my open hands. The man behind the counter said something about a price but I didn't really hear him. I was caressing the box cover, "my preciousss."
On the bus ride home Mark was all excited about this new acquisition but I was staring out the window far away in my own world. I kept thinking of the man behind the counter. As we left I looked over my shoulder to see him looking right at me, grinning ear-to-ear. He understood.
Later in the summer I attended my very first con. It was being held at Concordia University's Sir George Williams campus. Our whole party joined a competitive fantasy role-playing session. I was surprised to find out that it wasn't D&D. Rather, it was the dungeon master's own invention; a paperless, diceless, mapless, miniless adventure. Oh joy.
We would be judged on our role-playing performance. My assigned character was a pacifist half-orc, esti'd tabarnac. You can imagine how endearing I was throughout the whole session continually trying to convince the party not to fight the various chaotic evil denizens of the module. "Can't we at least first try to see if we can work things out?" One player threatened to beat me up after the convention.
I don't know how the DM picked a winner amongst the fourteen equally monotone performances. I'm just glad that we didn't visit an inn and some player deciding to role-play a prostitution encounter. "Wench, what'll I get for 10 silver pieces?" You can imagine what the ensuing haggling between two teen-aged boys would be like. "That doesn't make sense. A BJ alone is 3 silver pieces, and one electrum piece is six silver pieces...."
Thankfully, that gaming session was short-lived. So we were wandering the halls a bit of the Hall building (wandering the halls of the Hall building, get it? Too funny!) curious about what university was like. I pass a classroom doubling as another gaming room. I had almost passed the room by when finally my brain finished processing the glance inward. What's this? It was a giant table dressed up looking like a model railroad setup. I enter to see the coolest layout including a stream, hills, woods, and these tiny little tanks. I was amazed.
Two older guys (at least 25) were running the game. They gave me the low-down on this game called WWII Micro Armour: The Game. One of the guys, unnaturally ungeekish (did he understand?), asked me if I want to join the next game coming up presently.
"Yeah, sure, but I don't know how to play."
"No problem; I'll talk you through it." He sat me down in between two other guys on my side of the table and we were facing-off against three other guys. (Where are all the girls?!) We were American and they were German. I was given command of a platoon of Sherman tanks. It is only months later that I came to know that they were a combination of M4A3s and M4A3E8s. For now they were just tanks, and obviously my fun would be limited insomuch as I was unaware of these finer points.
"Your objective is those clump of trees yonder." My new mentor pointed across the table just in front of the guy sitting facing me. "First thing you want to do is come up with a simple plan to get there without being seen." I would shortly come to understand why that was important.
I can do that, I thought. OK, I'll move the tanks around to the right of that hill and in between the hill and that little forest. I still did not know that it was actually a wooded area. But, I was really perplexed as to how this would be accomplished lacking any squares, hexes, or any other kind of spaces.
Our umpire walked us through the turn sequence. When it was time to move he let me know how many millimeters my tank could go. Cooool! I get it. OK, I'm getting this. Then he had the player in front of me roll some ten-siders. "OK," he says. "Again." The player obliges. "Aha. OK, one more time."
I was trying to follow along when he let me know that one of my Shermans was just hit and destroyed. "What! How? Who shot me?" He pointed to a small clump of bushes. "Yeah, so." Looking more closely I saw this tiny little 'canon' hidden in those bushes. "Bastard! That little thing?"
"Yup." We continued the game with other action going on to the right and to the left of me. It was my turn again. I had hardly touched one of my remaining Shermans when another was blown up. "What? Again? Son-of-a-bitch." Shortly thereafter another Sherman went up. "What the fu--!! How is this possible?!" Now I had it in for that gun. After three misses in succession I got my first lesson in spotting and the nature of a camouflaged German Flak 88.
I left that classroom a changed person. The guys were waiting for me in the hallway.
"Look. Look at his face."
"He has seen God."
"Isaac...your hair."
"I stood upon holy ground."
"Can you tell us, Isaac?"
"My eyes could not look upon him."
"Did he speak?"
"He revealed his Word to my mind, and the Word was miniature tanks."
My metamorphosis almost complete, I started to make the rounds of the game and hobby shops around the city. Back then one spoke of such establishments using the plural form.
Fastforward $600.
U.S. WWII Armoured Battalion (1944)
Like a three-dimensional decision tree, this led to tactical wargames like Panzer Leader and Arab-Israeli Wars; then to strategic wargames like Against The Reich and World War II: European Theater of Operations; and other games like Supremacy, Diplomacy, Settlers of Catan, and Arkham Horror; and that led to two games which led to two other games and so on and so on.
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Last edited on 2008-05-13 16:55:32 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Sun May 11,2008 03:32 pm
