Gaming

I'm a gamer.  This has been true, I think, for most of my life; we started on board games and cards early, and we effectively LARPed most of the summers once we were old enough to figure out how to fashion bows and arrows and swords out of random tree parts.  We got a computer when I was in about 7th grade, and I became something of a Minesweeper addict for a while.  My cousins got us into pencil and paper role-playing games (RPGs) a couple years later.  I started playing on a MUD my senior year of high school (where I met my husband).  I'm now the leader of a World of Warcraft guild of about 120 members.

I think this shakes out to about 25 years of gaming, and I play three main kinds on a regular basis: computer-based RPGs, pencil and paper RPGs, and board games.

Computer-Based RPGs

World of Warcraft: this is the only computer game I'm playing regularly right now; I've played two of the three main facets of the game (player-versus-player and raiding) at various points; the only thing I haven't dipped into is dedicated role-playing, wherein you build histories and stories and adventures for your character with other players that aren't pre-scripted into the game.

Right now I'm mostly raiding and getting my secondary characters (the ones I play less often) better equipment.  I play a hunter, which is a character class that uses a ranged weapon (guns, bows, crossbows) and has a companion animal to assist in combat.  I've been playing hunters in WoW for a long time... say, over 8,000 hours of playtime in the past six years.  (I used to work only part-time.  Ahem.)

Raiding is cooperative game play where a group of players goes into an area to defeat the area's inhabitants, be it undead, dragons, some other dangerous creatures.  The setting can be anything from an actual dungeon to a fortress, cave, floating castle, or underground city - there are many variations, but the key is that the area is instanced - each group sees a unique identical copy of the area.  Raiding has gotten more complex as WoW has evolved; players are more sophisticated with regards to the game's mechanics, and this has allowed game play to mature.  Fights used to be:

• Character A (the tank) attacks the monster first to get its attention, and his job will be to keep its attention;
• Character B (the off-tank) will get the attention of any additional monsters that show up;
• Characters C, D, and E will cast healing spells to keep everyone alive, but especially A and B; and 
• Characters F, G, H, I, and J will deal damage to the monster in various ways without drawing its focused attention, until it dies.

Fights are now variations on:

• Characters A and B may have to trade the monster's attention back and forth to give debilitating effects a chance to wear off, or one may need to swap off to get the attention of monsters that join the fight; 
• Characters C, D, and E's jobs haven't changed as much (still casting healing spells), but removing debilitating effects, interrupting enemies' spell-casting, or casting controlling spells may be required more often now, and the playstyle of healing in general has changed;
• Characters F, G, H, I, and J are still mostly dealing damage, but they have more damaging effects to move out of, additional monsters that come in during a fight to control or kill, or some other special mechanic for a fight to learn and execute.

For the original version of WoW, multiply B by two to four, C-E by two and a half, and F-J by five: the original raids were for forty people.  Nowadays we have enough trouble scheduling raids for ten people; I'm not sure how we ever managed forty.

So, yeah, that's the raiding side of WoW.  I'm kind of looking forward to Diablo 3 coming out if it still has a single-player option just for the break in the complexity of social computer gaming.  Not that I'll stop playing WoW: I've been a guild leader for two years, which is basically managing a club.  I have absolutely fantastic officers who keep the raiding side of the ship going, and I do most of the administrative nitty-gritty stuff.

Pencil & Paper RPGs

My husband and I have been playing with the same gaming group since the day I interviewed at the library where I currently work, for the part-time position I started in here.  We actually met through MeetUp.com, but when they went to a pay system, we just started using e-mail to coordinate.  We play a handful of RPGs:

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition
• Dungeons & Dragons, 3.5 edition, both in homemade settings and in the Forgotten Realms
• Serenity, which uses the Cortex system
• D20 Modern, although I set it in 1903, using the Sidewinder book for some game data
• Pathfinder, set in the Forgotten Realms

Five of us trade around who's running the game.  We're currently playing in the Serenity setting, with a captain, a doctor, a crazy hacker, a pilot (me), an engineer, and an investigator.  One of the things I like about the Cortex system as a system is that when you're really good at something, you get to roll a lot of dice; in a Firefly type ship, my pilot rolls d12+d4 for agility plus d12+d4 for piloting skill checks.  Rolling both ability score and skill score for skills you have is kind of neat.

We briefly tried out 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, but it got dropped like a hot potato.  It's just not us.  Right now I'm really liking Pathfinder's updates to 3.5 edition Dungeons & Dragons.  I played a half-orc wizard for it, which was something of a change for me, because I don't usually play spell-casters.

Board Games

I got Settlers of Catan for my birthday; I've been playing it online until we get a chance to play it with people offline.  I'm bringing it in for National Gaming Day, along with Scrabble, Bananagrams, and Munchkin.  We've got several other games for that, but Settlers is one of my (albeit recent) favorites.

We've played Munchkin with our gaming group several times; it's kind of like D&D, except someone actually wins - you're playing to 10 points (levels), and whoever gets there first wins.  So while there is some cooperative play, eventually you're out to get each other.


I joined the Games and Gaming Round Table today.  I figure it's a good fit.