The geek in me.

Platonic Solids

I’ve heard them called that on occasion.

What the F*** are you talkin’bout Dio?

These!!

Back in the 80’s, I, along with many many young’uns were introduced to this game, that had a few pieces required to play, but held the entire world and many many others. AD&D. It opened ME up in scope and curiosity. Especially since, If I wanted to play, I usually had to be the DM. That was fine, but frustrating as I sometimes wanted to be that player character and just bust stuff up,,, Being the DM did something to me though. It taught me how to hold different personalities apart for when they would be needed. I could act the role of the belligerent princess or the foulness of the most evil whatever as needed. It taught me to flesh out a world so that my players weren’t trapped in the Monty Haul effect, which quickly loses interest in most people. (the few players that loved the monty haul games are now politicians. Go figure.). ( It also encouraged me to read more, exploring for such personalities, The world is interesting, but the people make it strange.)

The best part of AD&D was it’s lack of limitations. The only limits were the imagination, and the collaboration of your players taught you quickly how to make something ‘more real’. Feed back was instantaneous, and being unscripted (for the most part) Improv was encouraged.

It did get me in trouble a time or two, trying to improv my way out of a sticky situation IRL. LOL. I found out quickly that optioning the truth would do you better then. And I also found that even the truth can sometimes be unbelievable.

It also focused my internal desire for a certain amount of order. Maps became friends, quick notes on key points were essential. BUT, heavy details became onerous nightmares. There was such a thing as To Much Information. I found out early a key concept: “Perfect is the enemy of GOOD”. and I was a Good DM, seeing how I ended up the DM for several player groups over the years, with campaigns that would span months.

I still have my dice. All that I kept with me through my stint in the Marines and after. I would still have ALL of my books if my Ex hadn’t decided to store all of my stuff in a leaky basement while I was in Kuwait, *sigh*, First editions, Monster manuals (three if I recall correctly) the first editions of the players handbooks up to when they started making things strange in 86, two versions of the DMH, Must have been twenty or more books in that box along with reams of notebooks on campaigns I had developed and ran. Probably had 10# of Mini’s in there too but those all disappeared when the box ended up in the trash, a moldy decaying pile of waste paper. Hell, those books weighed more than all of my texts in Senior year, but I would still lug them to a buds house for a weekend of crazy mind-blowing IMAGINATION.

But,,, I still have my dice.

Still get a little goofy and make a saving roll, just for old times sake.

You can usually spot the odd gamer (remember when that meant someone that played D&D, not controller jockey?) by some odd quirk of language. I know BC is an old gamer by his use of the XXXXX-Orc terms he pops on occasion. You can spot them by the outside the box thinking that was so common among us gamers. We had to think outside the box because you weren’t playing some scripted video game within the confines of a program: you were playing against the imagination of someone else that had all the pieces of all the programs of all the games to use and ANYTHING could change in the course of one dice roll to the next.

It taught us to do something I don’t see much in the younger generations now.
THINK!

I was introduced to gaming about the same time as I had my failure at school, the one that revolved around history. And when I was forced into going back to history the next year, the two points meshed PERFECTLY, and were likely why I was doing so much better then. Not that I became a better student, but that I wasn’t bored out of my ever loving mind anymore. I started seeing how “This” effects “that” and “those” become “these”, and my world opened up even more. It certainly didn’t hurt that my History teacher like having us kids role play events either, which made school feel more like my weekends; not a droll endeavor to struggle through. (and I loved it because I was able to be the Player Character then, where my weekends I had to be ALL the NPCs,,,,)(and why when I returned Home after Desert Storm I was shocked to find that people remembered me and wanted to know what movies I could be seen in. I had developed a reputation for acting that I never pursued.)

Well, the world never shrank back after that time in my life, It’s only continued to grow larger, more complex, but the one aspect that never really changes is HUMAN NATURE, and Gaming did more to teach me about human nature than all of the courses I took through my school years ever did. I got to see ‘good kids’ turn into absolute megalomaniacs when the dice went against them. I got to see shy timid people become CONAN THE DESTROYER when they had a moment of ‘letting the walls down’. I started seeing past the masks that everyone wears (not the diaper of shame of current times, but the masks we wear in our day to day to protect our inner souls) and see the real person beneath.

Its not always a nice thing. There are some real vile and loathsome creatures wandering this reality. There are also some wondrous creatures that borderline Angelic, but they tend to rare, and elusive. And if I can’t get a glimpse fairly quick, I get nervous about that person. I found that the better the mask, usually, the worse the person at the core. Not always, sometimes the mask is protecting a very sensitive person hiding deep down inside (I was that person a long time ago, but I found that I could ‘act’ my way up out of it, and still be honest. HI!, My names Dio!)_. And sometimes, there is no mask; what you see is what you get, and what you get is most always way more than you want to handle without hazmat gear and a crane. Or at the very least, an EOD blast suit. I have a close friend in INDY that is of that nature. Love the man to death, and he is hell on the socially correct. If you were offended, watch out, he was only running at idle till you spouted off,,,, I laugh harder with him around, even when we are dead serious.

And the masks I see now, seem dead, as if the person inside is as dead as they look. The Diapers of shame hide more than just a signal of virtue, or someones bad teeth. They hide emotions, intentions, and make people NOT people. I despise what the Powers have done to the world at large by this ONE THING. Maybe we can get back to that age where people did things like social interaction games, roleplaying, ENJOYING BEING ALIVE. But its going to take some time to regroup from just one years worth of psychological damage inflicted upon entire populations. Even as a former DM, I couldn’t imagine the things I have seen over the last 21 months. It takes a truly sick soul to wish the things done on humanity that have been done over what amounts to a cold bug.