I trekked out to Kyle’s place on the other side of the city to play in his second one shot first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Gary Gygax memorial game. There was six players (including me) and all bar Phil rolled up characters on the spot.

Kyle has strong opinions about, well, pretty much everything. But his strong opinions about old school gaming are that you should do it properly. And properly in the case of character creation means roll 3d6, six times. In order. So no swapping around stats in order to make a good character, no rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest. No rerolling unless A) your character is unplayable by the rules or B) your character is dead.

My first character was stillborn. With wisdom of 4 he was too silly to be anything other than a thief. Unfortunately, with a dexterity of 5, that wasn’t an option either. Back to the dice I went.

The second go was a bit better. In fact so much better, one of the other players accused me of bribing Kyle with the zucchini I’d brought him out of our garden. And so was born Wilgo, crazy hobbit thief (if I’m going to impinge on copyright, why not go all the way?).

We ended up with

• Mo – human cleric of the God of Goats, played by Ben
• Bo – dwarven fighter, played by Elizabeth
• Kagg – a human fighter with 1 hit point, played by Colin
• Erwulf – a decrepit human cleric of the god of the High Hills, played by Jon
• Li’lip – a second level elven magic user who had survived the previous Gygax Memorial Game, played by Phil
• and the aforementioned Wilgo

The idea of this was to have fun and not take any of it to seriously. Kyle facilitated this by setting us down in a village named Bob. As a result, I decided that Wilgo was an ‘emo’ halfling, complete with dyed black hair and bangs. His tagline was “you’ve heard of the Shire? I come from the Hood” and he named himself the Blingseeker.

Unfortunately, Wilgo didn’t lie long enough to get much bling. After a solo fight with a lone kobold, and a more difficult fight with a larger group of the same, Wilgo stepped on a caltrop and died, presumably of some horrible, fast acting infection. One of Kyle’s other rules was that a number of faceless adventurers were waiting outside the dungeon, ready to step in as needed and thus Zilgo was born. Zilgo was nearly identical to Wilgo in everyway, except with less money, worst stats and more hit points.

Subsequently Bo and Erwulf also met messy ends at the hands of the kobolds, to be replaced by characters whose names I forgot to write down! We made our way into the lower caverns, killed a basilisk and retired rich.

It was a good fun afternoon with a good group of people. I’m not sure I’d be looking to play like that very week, but I would definitely make the time to remember Gary again in suitable fashion. Looking over the above, I think that the game was more abotu the process than the story, such as it was. There were still some cool bits – a lake of breathable water with a damp cavern below stood out particularly. But it’s hard to recreate the humour and fun of the afternoon. So thanks to everyone for a good time!

Too often in the SF that I have read (perhaps a couple hundred of books over the years, so it is very possible that I might not have read the right sorts of SF), way too often are the issues surrounding diversity/Otherness presented from the dominant culture’s point of view. While many SF authors over the years have taken great pains to avoid the “White Man’s Burden” point of view dominating their stories of First Contact, all too often the notion of “discovery” that creeps into these tales is that these Others (perhaps analogues for Africans, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, etc. in US society today?) is that these “discovered” peoples (aliens) are ciphers, are often dangerous or at least potentially threatening, and that too often there isn’t a concerted effort even to “understand” these alien groups.

I remember reading A Wizard of Earthsea several times before it really clicked with me that Sparrowhawk and his people were non-white (specifically ‘red-brown‘ according to Ursula LeGuin) and the Kargish people who are the enemy of Sparrowhawk in the second book int he series, are white. As LeGuin puts it

My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn’t see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn’t see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had “violet eyes”). It didn’t even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn’t they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future.

In my experience, RPGs fall into the same trap. Most fantasy worlds feature primarily white people, usually surrounded by white demihumans, in a world with vague similarities to medieval Europe. In these worlds, the other is usually humanoid monsters, some with odd aesthetic similarities to real human cultures (I remember wither WFRP or D&D having hobgoblins who look like Mongols, but I can’t find the picture right now to prove it). Even worse is the oft-mentioned fact that, with a few exceptions, the ‘evil’ version of a normal RPG race is invariably black skinned.

I’ve tried to consider this in my own games. My last D&D campaign involved a group called the Dareco who were dark-skinned humans who worshipped dragons and were ostracised for it. But it never really gelled in the campaign except for an occasional backdrop. But I’ve played more female characters than non-white ones in my time.

Ultimately, people do play RPGs (in general) for escapism and its fair enought to not want to engage too heavily in the problems of the world while doing so. And, further to that, the tendency of sci-fi and fantasy to take real-world genuine issues and make pat plot hooks out of them is hardly something we want to encourage. But it would be nice if we tried to be more inclusive – it woudn’t make it any less fun.

But I thought it would be nice to have some new year resolutions that I actually do want to achieve so here they are:

RPGs

1. Play in a regular campaign, work allowing. This should happen as I’m supposed to play in my friend Dan’s ‘Mythic Japan’ game, using the World of Darkness rules.

2. Run/Play at least one of the following games that are on my shelf but have never been opened in anger:

• D&D Rules Cyclopedia
• GURPS 4e (preferably using the complete collection of Transhuman Space books I have)
• Dark Heresy – the Warhammer 40k RPG.
• Angel – I had a great idea for a game set in Hong Kong in the lead up to the handover. Hong Kong is a city I know fairly well, having lived there as a kid and having visited at least once a year for the last three years as well, but no one I’m likely to play with really knows it at all.

3. Work on the campaign world I’ve got kicking around in my head – a grim, dark fantasy world with lots of malevolent faeries.

Video Games -

1. Finish at least three of the following:

• Grand Theft Auto 4 – I’m on the last bloody mission and can’t manage to finish it. Bah!
• Rainbow 6: Vegas – similarly, I’ve got one level to go. I refuse to buy the next one until I’ve finished this.
• Call of Duty 4 – I’m roughly half way through, and being annoyed by a sneaky level.
• Bioshock & Mass Effect - barely started these, but I was enjoying them both and with the sequels due either this year or next, I’d better get onto them!
• Fable II – again, barely started, but it’s a loaner so better get on with it!

As there’s nothing I’m actually looking forward to coming out on the 360 any time soon, I hope this resolution isn’t too hard.

2. Play online more – I have a Xbox Live Gold account which I’ve used next to never (OliveTheMage is anyone is looking to play). Currently it’s a waste of $100 a year so I’d like to either use it or drop it entirely.

Books

1. Read a bit more!

2. Read more of the Fantasy/Sci-fi classics that Gollancz publish. I’ve been working my way through some good stuff in 2008 – finally read Elric and some Gene Wolfe for example – but I’d like to make a concerted effort to read some of the origins of these genres.

3. Review. One thing I’ve like to do on here is review some of these books. These won’t be major reviews, but hopefully they’d be a good way of organising some thoughts on the books I read and perhaps even generate soem discussion.

Board Games

Once my friend Duncan gets back to Melbourne, I’d like to do at least one serious, all day, board gaming session. Perhaps a return to Axis and Allies?

So there you have it. Check back in 12 months and I’ll go through what I achieved!