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Those of You Who Are Not Huge Geeks, Please Avert Your Eyes. You Don't Want To See This.

Feb 11, 2010
By .
Gaming, Geekery

Believe it or not, I dreamed up a computer system that could assist tabletop role-playing games like this back in roughly 1983, back when it was still D&D First Edition. Of course, back then my design sketches looked suspiciously like a table-top Pac-Mac console, and required lots and lots of floppy disks.

But this is an amazing use of technology for an old hobby I remember very fondly. Now that I've gotten over most of my ashamed-to-be-a-geek issues (geek has worked out rather well for me, thanks), I'd game again in a second. But when? The main impediment to me tabletop roleplaying — like the main impediment to me playing epic board games like Twilight Imperium or Advanced Civilization — is not that I've outgrown it. It's that I just don't have huge chunks of free time without interruptions lying around any more. Maybe when the kids are in college. There should be a good group of long-time gamers in the old-folks home, annoying everyone with the 30th retelling of GenCon 1981.

Last 5 posts by Ken

13 Comments
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13 Comments

  1. Jeffrey Ellis  •  Feb 11, 2010 @12:50 pm

    Ha. I was actually at Gencon in '81. Wait, no, it was '84 or '85. Anyway I took first place in the RPGA AD&D tourney.

  2. Patrick  •  Feb 11, 2010 @4:29 pm

    Speaking of huge blocks of time, you know what will happen when Generation X is put out to pasture?

    77 year old men painting models and playing Warhammer 40,000 at the retirement home, that's what will happen.

  3. Patrick  •  Feb 11, 2010 @4:34 pm

    Also, in 1983 we were playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, with the thieves lifting gems from the statue on the cover of the Player's Handbook, not first edition D & D.

    I sorta miss AD&D, just because the rulebooks contained things like unedited drunken rants from Gary Gygax about the virtues of Conan as compared to the shame and weakness of Gandalf.

    Gygax was wrong, mind you. I love Robert E. Howard, but I suspect Conan never matched up against a strategist as brilliant as Gandalf.

  4. Ezra  •  Feb 11, 2010 @5:38 pm

    Patrick, I'll be at DunDraCon this long weekend, and there are already 70 year old guys playing 40K there.

  5. Brian Dunbar  •  Feb 11, 2010 @7:22 pm

    It’s that I just don’t have huge chunks of free time without interruptions lying around any more.

    You ain't kidding. I bought the new edition of 'Axis and Allies' last fall, figuring it might be fun to play with my now teen-aged boy who likes those kinds of things.

    Except the last time I played I was 21. A group of 6-8 guys played in the barracks over duty weekends instead of sleeping. Why not? The only thing we were doing that weekend was standing guard shifts on a small base: the only things to do there were eat, sleep, work out, and bowl.

    Now .. a four-hour block of time is hard to carve out.

  6. Brian  •  Feb 12, 2010 @6:26 am

    The main impediment to me tabletop roleplaying was not having any friends from '68-'86.

  7. Randall  •  Feb 12, 2010 @6:32 am

    It is tough to get the time, but we have a gaming group that meets every other Saturday for RPG-ing. (Currently Shadowrun). We start at around 3ish and go until midnight.

    All professionals or corp types (the irony of a bunch of cubicle dwellers playing Shadowrun is not lost on us) and all with kids. It works out okay.

  8. Professor Coldheart  •  Feb 12, 2010 @7:33 am

    I've heard lots of bad things about the Microsoft Surface from people who've used them. That being said, this looks cool. And (as the blog post you link to points out), the cool takeaway is exploring the possibilities of the system, not necessarily this product as the end-all.

    (Also, you're welcome to play Traveller or Shadowrun in my neighborhood any time)

  9. Rliyen  •  Feb 12, 2010 @8:24 am

    @ Patrick:

    Yep, the 40k saw will be relevant to me.

    In MY day, our men could move as far as the guns should shoot!

  10. Base of the Pillar  •  Feb 12, 2010 @1:04 pm

    Has anyone tried using Google Wave for these kind of things? I read some random thoughts about that as a gaming tool pre-release but nothing since.

  11. Nim  •  Feb 12, 2010 @5:56 pm

    I taught my kids how to play D&D 3e when it first came out.. they were like 8 and 10 or something. I highly recommend teaching kids to play, it's great for their imagination, though you might have to help them out a bit with the game dynamics.
    Some of the most fun I've ever had gaming was with kids in the group, (if you can withstand a good 20 mins of laughing your head off because kids RP in such funny ways)

  12. Doug  •  Feb 13, 2010 @11:05 pm

    Or just play unplugged. Keep track of the counters and turn and scoring yourself.

  13. Grandy  •  Feb 14, 2010 @4:22 pm

    Gygax was wrong, mind you. I love Robert E. Howard, but I suspect Conan never matched up against a strategist as brilliant as Gandalf.

    Here here.

    I'm pretty sure there was a time I could quote from some of the obscure portions of the AD&D DMG (which had the big demon on the front that a would-be party of adventures was probably about to get eaten by). My buddy actually had the version of the Deities & Demigods that had Morcook/Lovecraft pantheons (there might have been a third ripoff pantheon but I can't recall); with respect to the authors of D&D they got Odin wrong (unsurprisingly; nobody sits down to create bunch of gods with D&D stats unless they thing at some point, somewhere, players are going to fight these gods. No matter how ridiculous that idea may be. Odin was probably the most powerful thing in the book. Stormbringer notwithstanding).

    Anyway, I always remember to pour one out for my homie Gutboy Barrelhouse.