I Was A Teenage Dungeon Master

A few blogs ago I referred to my shady past as a role playing games fanatic. I feel that it is now sufficiently far in the past that I can speak out about it.

Sufficiently far in the past and – I should add – sufficiently rehabilitated.

The world has come on a long way from believing that Dungeons and Dragons promoted Satanism – see Tom Hanks’ 1982 movie debut “Mazes and Monsters” for details.

It has even made it through the assumption that anybody who engages in such activities is a sad, lonely spree-killer in waiting who will never have sex with a human partner – thanks in large part to the triumph over the nerds over popular culture. The internet and video games have, in some way, made my wasted adolescence acceptable – nay, even avant-garde – in glorious retrospect.

Now, the weekends my friends and I squandered pretending to be wizards – in our own heads, FFS – or moving little lead men around bedroom floors in completely heavily carpet-distorted “battles” is deemed evidence of our “old skool” credentials rather than of our blatant social ineptitude and weirdness. 

Hell, we were in it long before every town had a Games Workshop. We had to get to Nottingham if we wanted goblins to paint.

I could have spent those five or six years learning something useful. Like how to speak to girls. Or how to enjoy physical exercise.

Or becoming an expert in anything – ANYTHING – other than the fighting statistics of imaginary monsters or lists of magic spells.

So I am not celebrating any après-la-lettre cultural vindication. Even if it's ok to like dragons now thanks to Game of Thrones, it was certainly NOT ok to like dragons back in the early 1990s. 

I still regard that period of my life as a very poor use of my finite lifetime. That’s not to say I didn’t have fun – I just had no appreciation of what other kinds of fun were out there.

Anyway, back to the title of the blog. Unless you were playing D&D – or rather Advanced D&D, because D&D was for thickos – the referee was a gamesmaster. I ran our group’s AD&D campaign though, so I was – formally – the dungeon master.

At the time, that was not a funny name to us. It denoted this guy:

Not this guy:

Being the dungeon master meant that I had to come up with the stories and challenges and whatnot, while my friends played characters in the world I had dreamed up – barbarians, clerics, assassins etc.

In retrospect, I can’t figure out why we just kept buying more and more of these different games – so as to play the same basic “swords and sorcery” scenario under yet another set of rules.

It’s always swords: anything involving guns had to confront the problem that getting shot usually results in swift death (or at best, immediate incapacitation) no matter how many experience points you have.

That’s why sci-fi is best suited to wargaming rather than role playing – because it doesn’t immediately mean you have to go home (or outdoors) if your little space marines or chaos squats in exo armour die in droves.

At least I got out in good time, thanks to the greater attractions offered by underage drinking and paid employment. It’s a slippery slope – one day you’re a teenage dungeon master, the next you’re a middle-aged English Civil War re-enactor. 

Seven Pieces of Folk Wisdom Debunked (that will blow your mind)

You must excuse my recent lack of blogging. I have mostly been working in the medium of Facebook status updates of late.

Today, I want to debunk, puncture and lampoon some bits of folk wisdom, which people continue to say, despite being manifestly and demonstrably untrue.

Why? I dunno. Attention maybe?

Muscle is heavier than fat

I have comforted myself with this for years. Whenever I start an exercise regime, and the immediate results are weight gain – I reassure myself that this is the reason.

It may be true for the same volumes of the two substances (look it up yourself – what do you think I am? Wikipedia?) but my problem is not a giant rubber ring of muscle around my abdomen.

He won’t get there any faster

I don’t know if real people actually say this or if it’s just something that old women in sitcoms say when someone overtakes them.

This is just wrong. All other things being equal, he will get there faster - because he’s going faster. There might be traffic lights ahead, but if he goes really fast, he’ll get through them before they go red.

Bullies are really cowards

Now, I know that this one has an educational or moralistic purpose behind it – but again, it’s just not true. Picking on someone weaker than oneself does not necessarily mean that you’re a coward.

It might mean you’re an arsehole, but that’s not the same as cowardice.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Derived - I’m told - from Nietzsche, this has been debased into what “Loose Women” might deem philosophy. That is, it is bollocks that people repeat without thinking how completely false it is.

A life-threatening illness or injury will almost always leave you more susceptible to future ill-health. Nobody increases their resistance to bullets by shooting themselves.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight

While I have found that a red sky at night does indeed usually presage pleasant weather the following day, I think it is probably ascribing an unfairly restricted set of interests and concerns to shepherds to say – without qualification – that not getting rained on is a source of “delight”.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning

Shepherds are often up and out before sunrise and are therefore fully aware of weather conditions. No warning that comes too late is worthy of the name.

Also, very few people are shepherds. The amount of folk wisdom that applies directly to them is entirely disproportionate to their social, economic or demographic significance.

Don’t play with it or it’ll fall off

This is actually true. 

The Cat Who Let Himself Go

Rufus is our Maine Coon cat. He is nine years old. Or ten. I can never quite remember.

Anyway, he’s quite old by cat standards. Middle-aged at the very least.

Late last year, Rufus’ long-term companion Dudley died and we got a new cat, Simba.  

Dudley was of indeterminate but great age. He was fully grown when we got him and he lived for at least twelve more years. My wife may correct me on these details – the point is not the precise number. The point is, he was spectacularly old.

Anyway, imagining that (i) Rufus would be lonely and (ii) that this time (contrary to all previous experience) the kids would be interested in a new animal for more than a couple of days and that the new animal would not spend its entire life in hiding from the kids, we got Simba.

That was the name he came with, and the children insisted we keep it.

Anyway, Simba is now around two years old. So he’s a lot younger than Rufus.

New boy Simba

As you might expect, they do not get on brilliantly. Although they have settled into a tolerable routine, it is premised on Rufus bullying Simba whenever he gets the chance. He has even started to bully the dog a bit, sitting in her beds for pure wind-ups. 

At the same time as this new side has come out in Rufus, he has also pretty much DOUBLED his weight in the last six months. The long hair (semi-long hair, Elvira would correct me) in the picture above conceals it a bit - but it's basically the same thing as an enormously fat man wearing a even-more enormous football shirt to conceal his blobby contours. 

Rufus was never much of an athlete, and he still isn’t. So it’s not like he has stopped exercising.

The only thing it can be is that Rufus is eating EVERYTHING he gets the chance to eat.

The question is, is he doing this to intimidate Simba or to protect himself? Or, has he just decided, “Look at that young guy – I can’t keep up with him. And as I had my balls chopped off nine (or ten) years ago, what’s the point?”

I literally don't give a toss

David Bowie and his Opinions

“Scotland – stay with us”: so said David Bowie (via the medium of Kate Moss) at the Brit Awards earlier this week, causing a frenzy of online speculation over “what did he really mean?”, “how should we reassess his entire life and work in the light of that remark?” and “is it still ok to love him any more?” in the media.

You might as well be asking what David Bowie meant when he said “ha ha ha, hee hee hee, I’m a laughing gnome and you can’t catch me”.

Strange how “The Laughing Gnome” never seems to come up in the regular broadsheet Bowie wankfests.

I find the perplexity of apparently grown adults (men mostly) hearing an ageing pop star expressing a political opinion they disagree with pretty hilarious. Not as hilarious as Bowie’s performance in “Labyrinth”, but still pretty funny.

I don’t know why David Bowie supports the union, or for that matter why anyone would expect him to support Scottish independence. I suspect he wants Scotland to stay as part of the UK because he’s an old man and old men like things to stay the way they know them. Particularly old men who live abroad.

Surprise! Everyone has opinions. All the people of Scotland will have theirs too and those are the ones that matter. Well, the ones that bother to vote.

My opinion - which is worth precisely as little as David Bowie's - is here. 

Failing to Achieve Mindfulness

This weekend, I undertook an experiment: I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t muck about with my smartphone for two whole days.

The motivation came about on Friday evening, when I received a bunch of depressing work emails which I didn’t want to read. I knew, however, that I would not be able to resist doing so unless I took some dramatic action. So I declared to Elvira that I was going to “go without” until Monday.

By “go without” I naturally included a number of exceptions:

• Use as a music player was ok.
• People ringing me was ok.
• Amusing the children by showing them my photos was also ok.

Essentially, it was a matter of not using the internet.

What were the results of my experiment?

Well, I managed not to look at it all weekend.

I thought about looking at it a lot.

It’s the sort of thing one does at any empty moment. When you’re waiting for someone or something. When you’re bored and hoping something interesting might be there. When you’re in the middle of a conversation... and so on.

Did I learn anything from this experience?

No.

I’m afraid my life was not especially enriched. I didn’t discover new or wonderful vistas of anything that I was missing out on by not checking Facebook in every spare 30 seconds. The world didn’t end because I didn’t read the news. No new cat video went unshared. Nobody was deprived of important developments in my life. 

Maybe you have to do it for longer to achieve “mindfulness”. All I achieved was an inbox full of even more crap than it was on Friday evening. 

Calpol – The Miracle Drug

I have often wondered which medical speciality would be the quickest to learn, and whether other consultants look down upon their colleagues in the “easy” departments.

For many years, I presumed it would be something to do with feet. How much can go wrong with feet that you can’t blame on some other part of the body and make some other specialist responsible?

However, since becoming a parent I have come to the conclusion that training to be a paediatrician must be easier even than foot doctoring, because 95% of childhood health problems have one single cure – and that is Calpol.

For those of you not in the know, Calpol is paracetamol in a pink sugar solution. And it cures LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

When you are an adult, you wouldn’t dream of taking the same medicine for – say – a headache, an upset stomach, a cold, skin complaints, trench foot, hammer toe etc. And yet, Calpol sorts all of these out in children.

This is not just me saying this. I cannot remember a time taking our kids to the doctor (well,  a time of Elvira telling me about her taking the kids to the doctor) where Calpol has not been foremost amongst the medically-mandated remedies.

And kids bloody love it (admittedly, the white version does raise the occasional eyebrow, despite tasting exactly the same and having identical medicinal properties).

Granted, there may be some problems that Calpol can’t solve. But why is the top priority of the entire global pharmaceutical industry not the synthesis of an adult version of this miraculous wonder drug? 

Sometimes the best ideas are hiding in plain sight. 

Skylanders: Pester Force

My kids are obsessed with Skylanders. Your kids may be as well. Alternatively, you will have no idea what I am talking about.

Allow me to explain. “Skylanders” is, in the first instance, a series of computer games and, secondarily, a gigantic range of associated tat. There are seemingly hundreds of individual Skylander characters (some of whom are pictured above) and in the games, they run around doing quests, fighting, upgrading and buying stuff.

What – as far as I can see – makes this different is that to play any of these characters, you have to buy a figure of them.

A Skylander on a Portal of Power

The figures themselves are no great shakes. You can’t move their arms or legs and they appear to be of the same quality as something you’d get with a Happy Meal (despite being priced at £8.99 upwards...).

But, you stick this figure onto the “Portal of Power” – some sort of data-reading device that plugs into your

games console – and, hey presto, you are controlling that character on-screen.

Boys' infantile mania for collecting, listing and classification of made-up fantasy worlds has been successfully harnessed. Pokemon's "gotta buy 'em all" mantra has been successfully transferred to the physical world. My kids are five and three, but this has them completely hooked. For this week, anyway.

Now, I am not a “gamer”. When I was a kid, I had a ZX Spectrum and a Commodore Amiga – and I played a lot of games on them, from Jet Set Willy to The Secret of Monkey Island. I did own a PlayStation One and the original Tomb Raider and subsequently a PlayStation Two and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. But I played the games I had when I had nothing better to do and had no desire to acquire any more or find out about acquiring any more.

My interest in gaming came to an end when I was unable to complete the “flying a ridiculously uncontrollable biplane through a bunch of hoops and then landing it safely in less than a minute” task about 2/3 of the way through San Andreas after about 100 attempts.

I wasted far more of my youth doing role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.

So yes, I spent a lot of weekends as a dungeon master – go on, get it out of your system and we can move on. Finished?

Role playing games then were like computer games are like today, only in your head. In principle, you could choose whatever you wanted to do within the limits of your character’s abilities.

Freedom of choice, simplified

Computer games can now appear to do something similar because their memory capacities are so enormous as to give the illusion of freedom of choice, by storing so many different option-scenarios (rather than the “go left”, “go right” or “jump” options I am familiar with).

The whole matter of my RPGing teenage years and the damage it did to my ability to function as a 20-something are deserving of a blog in their own right.

The reason I mention these games is that, sooner or later, everyone who was into it got seduced into the matter of buying more and more supplementary bits and pieces – lead men or additional rule books or whatever – so that they didn’t have to imagine quite so much. It's hard work using your own imagination, whereas buying stuff is easy.

What I have to show for this today is three biscuit tins full of Space Orks in the garage and a well below average stock of interesting anecdotes from my mid-teenage years. 

To return to Skylanders. What the company responsible has done is genius – they have created a computer game that you have to keep buying more things for in order to get more out of it. Some bits, I am told, can only be accomplished using a character of the appropriate element (you know - earth, wind, fire etc). So if you don’t have one, you have to get one or you’re stuck.

Neither the Nazis nor the Soviets nor even fizzy drink manufacturers ever found a way of turning kids on their parents so effectively. You have to had it to Activision . They’ve come on a long way from the Spectrum version of “Ghostbusters” I used to play in the mid-1980s - complete with incomprehensible speech synthesis that mangled the word “ghostbusters” into something that sounded like “granny bastards” being shouted through a paper-and-comb.

Yes, I have to applaud this Machiavellian brilliance, even while I am disquieted by my three-year-old talking to me about “the undead”. I have to applaud it because I wish I’d thought of it.