Cerise Magazine

A Canon for Gaming?

William Shakespeare. James Joyce. Virginia Woolf. J.R.R Tolkien. These are familiar names, some more accepted by the designators of literary classics than others. Now imagine another set of names by their side. Will Wright. Richard Garriott. John Romero and John Carmack. Roberta Williams. Sid Meier. We know our great computer game designers but we rarely speak of them. Rarely are they afforded the same respect that we afford the great authors: their games are not considered essential to understanding the medium. When someone like me starts talking about the merits of one particular title or another, we are unlikely to be speaking from the knowledge of a core set of canonized games. Any English teacher will tell you this leads to trouble. We can’t see the precedents of our own form if we do not know those precedents. We can’t envision the games that are to come if we don’t know where we’re coming from.
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Not to take social consciousness to a hysterical level, but what did the Green Imp ever do to you, huh? Okay, maybe he was spawned in the depths of hell by unnatural forces bent on the destruction of the world and all that is good in it, and maybe he’s even a little bitey at times, but wouldn’t you be if you were minding your own business one afternoon and a group of humans dressed like Renaissance fair cast-offs showed up in your field and tried to lop off your head just because they were only ten points away from White Mage Level 3? (more…)

I was 8 years old when the Nintendo Power Pad came out. Until that point, my little gray box console was only good for shooting ducks and guiding Mario through Koopa’s castle. The Power Pad changed that. It combined the thing I loved most, video games, with the thing I loved least, exercise. Compatible “games” let users run races, compete in the Olympics, and imitate a Manhattan street cop. Unfortunately, fitness video games had a long way to go back in 1988. The Power Pad fizzled into that big game graveyard in the sky…or, most likely, just the back of the closet. The pad was like many Nintendo components at the time, just not made for continued use. After I had been tromping on it for a couple months, it stopped responding to my hurdle jumps and 100-meter dashes. I was willing to blow on a cartridge for 20 minutes in the hopes of it working again, but I was not willing to do the same for a game that tricked me into exercising.
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Hi, my name is Carla, and I don’t play D&D.

This makes me an oddity among the gamers I know, female and male, old and young. Sure, they all play other games, too, but every single tabletop gamer I’ve ever met either used to play or currently plays Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve had wonderful gaming groups, supportive gaming groups, interesting and creative gaming groups where I couldn’t participate for weeks or months at a time because they wanted to play D&D and I didn’t. Dungeons & Dragons didn’t appeal to me for a variety of reasons, but mostly that it didn’t feel accessible to me with my (still new!) background of d10 gaming, and I wanted more emphasis on the roleplaying and less on the dice – more role, less roll.
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I learned to play Dungeons & Dragons because my cousin Brian (who lived with my parents, my older brother, Erik, and me for several years) wanted to put together a game, even if that meant playing with two little kids. I got into computer games because Brian and my father were both early fans of that amazing new machine, the personal computer.

I kept playing tabletop games with Erik as I grew up, and I’ve played through several computer games with my brother or my parents along for the ride (one memorable Christmas, the four of us and my mother’s youngest brother took turns playing Riven and completed the game before the goose was cooked). I met the newest addition to my family, my husband, on a MUD.

I guess you could say that I’ve had some experience in gaming with family! So I’d like to share some ideas based on my experiences so that you can set up some game time with your family.
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In the media’s onslaught of Microsoft coverage following the disappearance of Grand Poobah Bill Gates from day-to-day operations, MSNBC published a hits and misses list of Microsoft products over the years. It includes the Xbox as a “hit,” though it notes that Nintendo’s Wii has been the runaway console sensation in the last couple of years and that the Xbox has suffered from some technical glitches that might have pushed late adopters over to Playstation3. Overall though, it has been a decent investment on their part, the author concludes.
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I have always enjoyed creating villains. For me, they are the heart of a good adventure. A well-sculpted villain gives players an object to loathe and pursue over the course of many gaming sessions, or perhaps even an entire campaign. Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to devise a villain who is both a suitable antagonist for the game and genuinely threatening and dangerous. For obvious reasons, no Game Master wants all of their players’ characters dead before the adventure gets going, but if nobody feels threatened by the villain, then something’s clearly missing. One solution to this is the “Guest Star” villain.
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Many RPGs follow heroes into battle against villains with a clear, nefarious agenda. The Tales of series has frequently deviated, blurring the lines between good and evil. Legretta the Quick of Tales of the Abyss represents such non-standard opposition and brings a strong feminine presence to the game’s antagonists.
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This year, the excitement and planning for WisCon (“The World’s Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention,” held every year over Memorial Day weekend in Madison, Wisconsin) started early for me, when several of us from Cerise and sister-site Girl-Wonder.org put in a request to throw a party at the con. We were allotted a room for Saturday evening, and the plotting for a truly excellent party – codenamed “Capes and Consoles” – began. The party wasn’t the only thing going on, of course. Here’s an overview of all the cool things I did at and leading up to WisCon:
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As we walk, the once-vampire introduces herself as Ivy, asks me a few general questions about my life, and doesn’t say much else. She is quiet, but not shy. She only talks when necessary, like a soldier. Or a commander.

We approach a cluster of cabins that, at first, look just like all the others, except that there is a pickup truck parked behind one of the cabins, piles of fabric and weapons strewn across the picnic tables, and there are groups of tired looking people dressed in black and standing and sitting on benches.

“Welcome to Monster Camp,” Ivy says.
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