The Gaming Iconoclast: Is Ignorance Bliss?
Ignorance is bliss. -- Thomas Grey Knowing is half the battle. -- G.I. Joe It goes by many names -- Rumor. Speculation. Innuendo. Suggestion. Suble hints. Vague allusions. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Slips of the keyboard. Loose lips sinking ships. Detective work. Snooping. Unearthing forbidden ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: A side of PlanetSide
"Come on, you apes! Do you want to live forever?" - Unknown WWI platoon Sergeant, as quoted in the epigraph of Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein This sort of chaos, of being flung into the maw of an overwhelming and relentless foe, very succinctly sums up the jovial insanity of Massively's foray ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Deity not included
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. - Judy Bloom (Hey, just be glad you didn't get another Neitzsche quote*) The fantasy-based worlds our characters inhabit are, almost without exception, richly steeped in legend and brimming with lore. This is doubly true for those that have come to parturition ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Fighting Ennui
A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation. -- Friedrich Neitzsche The first person who considers TGI to be poetry is a perfidious and nefarious cad, who is not to be trusted, and any pretentious wanker to use the phrase "blank verse" when speaking of it ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Old (Un?)-Faithful
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot. -- Oscar Wilde The notion of having one main character or avatar that claims the bulk of one's play time and attention is fairly straightforward. It simplifies raid life for your officers, for one thing -- ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Jumping Ship
In the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson No matter where you go, there you are.-- Buckaroo Banzai Recently, in The Daily Grind, Brenda brought up the subject of taking up a new game in addition to, or instead of, one you currently play, and ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Taking Sides
"Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" "Oh, I'm not any kind of witch at all!" -- The Wizard of Oz What about you? Bastion of righteousness or purveyor of deceit? Some folks, to be certain, put a lot of thought into this, balancing role-play, game and class mechanics, racial traits, and a whole ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Discomfort Zone
A mind, once opened, can never be shut again. -- Alfred Einstein Have you ever wondered how the other half lives? Maybe you're a tank, and know the intricacies of threat and mitigation inside and out, but can't figure out what those finger-wigglers at the back are going on about. Or perhaps you're ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Whither Shortcomings?
Many MMO aficionados cut their roleplaying teeth on one of the many pencil-and-paper titles that formed the early generation of multi-player gaming. In addition to rolling (and rolling, and rolling, and rolling) some dice to come up with their basic stats and traits, character generation involved a ...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Max Mynn
Our characters spring forth, fully-formed, after just a few clicks, a few deft keystrokes (we're not doing anything so archaic as rolling dice anymore, are we?). They stride into their world built to face down epic challenges, confront any adversary, and never, ever break a sweat. They are engines ...
