July 24, 2006 at 1:29 pm (Culture)
What is so hard to pronounce about the word “paladin”?
I do not exaggerate when I say that probably 50% of all people I’ve ever played D&D with pronounce it puh-LAD-in. I used to fanatically correct them, but now I don’t generally bother. What’s alarming is not that people pronounce it incorrectly; it’s that years of exposure to the incorrect pronunciation of the word is starting to finally get to me: in my most recent D&D game, I came this close to saying it myself.
Gaming has a bizarre sort of vocabulary, so I suppose it’s not too surprising that a lot of that vocabulary tends to get mispronounced. A few examples from my own storied gaming career:
- for at least several years after I was first introduced to the term, I pronounced elite as “ee-light.”
- I also pronounced melee as “mee-lee” for many, many years. In fact, I’ll be honest: I still don’t really know how to pronounce that word. I usually aim for a vaguely sophisticated, French-sounding “may-lay.”
- one friend of mine (who is hopefully not reading this blog) consistently pronounced “salvo” as “slave-oh.” That’s not so much a mispronunciation as a complete misreading of the word. I never outright corrected him because I didn’t want him to lose face, but I did try to conspicuously use the word “salvo” in conversation (not the easiest task in the world) in an effort to correct him. To this day, I don’t know if it worked or not.
- and of course, there’s the classic “My character is a level 5 halfling rouge.” That’s one I see spelled incorrectly all the time, although most people pronounce it properly in spoken dialogue.
- (I won’t even get into “Cthulhu” and his ilk, because those are supposed to be unpronounceable.)
Any classic wordplay goofs that I’m missing?
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July 12, 2006 at 10:59 pm (Horror)
There’s a fun thread over at RPG.net about weird Americana–strange and creepy places to visit in the U.S. Great material for a horror RPG, and some pretty interesting reading if you follow some of the links.
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July 9, 2006 at 4:54 pm (D&D, Retro Gaming)
This weekend I had a chance to do some old-school, first-edition, dungeon-crawling, goblin-hacking RPGing. The stuff of which the first RPGs were made back in the 70s, before games got angsty and introspective and narrative and all that.
I was actually a bit nervous about running an old-fashioned site-based dungeon crawl. The game we were playing (Castles and Crusades) is a great little system for doing old-school gaming, so I wasn’t too worried about that. But “dungeons” have never really been my forte as a GM. I appreciate the idea behind them, and I like the just-have-fun-and-don’t-ask-questions aspect of most dungeons. But as hard as I try, I have never really been able to silence the voice in the back of my mind that asks those nagging questions like “Why does this random dungeon exist out here in the countryside? What do the goblins eat and do during the 99% of the time when there aren’t adventurers hacking their way through the dungeon? How does it make sense that there’s a beholder in this room, and there’s a green slime in the next room over, and a room full of giant ants across the hall?”
But I did my best to ignore those pesky questions of “realism” and just ran the adventure as written (the module we played was “Dark Chateau” by Troll Lord Games). And it was a blast! Driving home after the game, I was so excited that our dungeon crawl had gone well that I started reminiscing about other dungeons that I’ve enjoyed over the course of my gaming career. I came up with four dungeons that stand out in my memory as being particularly fun and entertaining:
- The ruined castle of Herubar Gular in the Trollshaws. This was from the sample adventure in the MERP rulebook, and I’ve run this adventure for just about every gaming group I’ve ever played with. This was a multi-level dungeon beneath a ruined castle–nothing too spectacular-sounding, but the real fun of this adventure was infiltrating the ruined castle to get to the dungeon. The castle layout allowed for some truly interesting tactical possibilities, and each of the groups I ran through this adventure came up with a different scheme (some successful, some not) for getting inside. As far as dungeons go, this one was pretty “realistic,” although there were some quirky monsters to encounter (a golem, a kraken, a few others) in addition to the usual orc patrols.
- Undermountain: The Lost Level. (Incidentally, one of the inspirations for this blog’s name.) This was a single-level dungeon crawl designed to be fit into the Undermountain uber-dungeon, but I just ran it as a standalone dungeon. Fun layout, great monsters (including a pack of animated severed skeletal hands–creepy!); this dungeon had nothing truly innovative in it, but all the pieces just seemed to come together. Also, you know how most dungeons have one or two super-poweful magic items hidden away so securely that the party could only ever find them with the GM’s blatant help? Well, this was the one such dungeon where the party stumbled across the Awesome Magic Treasure on accident, and without any help whatsoever from me, the GM. Cool!
- Nightmare Keep. Hoo boy, was this one ever epic. By far the highest-level adventure of any kind I’ve ever run (I think it was recommended for a party of 17th-20th level PCs), this 2nd-edition D&D mega-dungeon just about had it all. Because it was so high level, it featured all those insanely powerful monsters that you usually just read about in the Monster Manual but can’t actually use in your game due to their power level. I remember few details of this dungeon (and I’m sure I
mangled reworked it heavily to fit my gaming group), but I recall something about an undead dragon turtle and a demi-lich. Good stuff, good stuff.
- Forge of Fury. This was a lower-level dungeon published back when 3rd edition D&D was just coming out and they were trying to support it with a line of short adventure modules. We had a lot of fun with this dungeon, which involved a good mix of fighting and non-combat challenges–I remember an entertaining bit of diplomacy as the party tried to talk its way past a roper (a bizarre monster that was more powerful than the PCs). The final battle was against a young dragon, and was a tough fight for low-level adventurers; the PCs planned out their battle strategy very carefully beforehand, and it paid off when they were victorious. (I do recall that somebody failed a Dexterity roll and fell into a lake while wearing plate armor, though–I don’t remember how that worked out for them.)
Ah, nostalgia. I can’t say that these four dungeons were the best-designed or most brilliantly written ones available, but they stand out as some of the most fun old-school dungeon exploring I’ve ever run in an RPG. If you should happen upon one of them, pick it up, give it a run through and let me know if you had as much fun as I did. And watch out for the giant centipedes lurking in the room just down the hall–if you pass the gelatinous cube, you’ve gone too far.
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July 4, 2006 at 1:58 pm (Events, Wargames)
I’ve put a few photos from the Origins convention online. Nothing too exciting–they’re mostly photos from the “war room” and the ASL area–but have a look if you’re interested.
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July 3, 2006 at 1:51 pm (Events)
Well, I’m safely back from my road trip out to the Origins convention in Columbus. Much fun was had, much gaming was done, and much money was spent. I’ll post a few photos in a bit.
I had a great time. One of my main objectives (born of a trip to Gencon a few years back) was to spend less time wandering around gawking at stuff and more time playing games, and I feel that I succeeded. The vast majority of my time at Origins was spent in the “war room” playing Advanced Squad Leader. A few random thoughts on the Origins experience:
- Say what you want about their unkempt appearance, fanatic devotion to trivial topics, and their tendency to dress up in skimpy costumes clearly designed for much different body types than their own, but I find that gamers tend to be a friendly and enthusiastic bunch. I’m not the most socially-outgoing person in the world, but I forced myself to interact a bit more with people at Origins, and almost without exception the people I talked to and gamed with were fun and interesting people.
- I learned that when you play a single game for more than ten hours straight, you experience an emotional rollercoaster ride in which you alternate between wanting to never stop playing, and wanting to never even look at the game again. Sometimes you experience this addiction and revulsion at the same time.
- The convention center at which Origins took place is very large. The “war room” in which I spent most of my time was geographically about as distant as possible from the parking garage where my car (and game equipment) were stored. That meant that every time I needed something from my car (more dice, the ASL rules, Mt. Dew) I had to make an epic hike across endless halls filled with gamers, up and down stairwells, through twisty winding passages to get there. (On the plus side, maybe that helped to burn off a few of those Mt. Dews.)
- It was glorious to see people playing “monster wargames”–games so large that they require multiple tables to hold just the playing boards. I think the physically largest wargames I saw being played were a Europa match and some sort of massive Barbarossa campaign, the map for which occupied at least four tables.
- That said, there were fewer wargamers at Origins than I expected. The ASL crowd there was a bit on the small side–that made for a fun day-long tournament, but if you came looking for some all-weekend-long ASL action, it was up to you to organize it yourself once the tournament ended. (Personally, I enjoyed the smaller crowd since it gave the event a more informal and personal feel.)
- I’d originally planned to play as much Star Fleet Battles as ASL, but I ended up not even breaking out my SFB rulebook once. After the ASL tournament ended, I decided that my fragile mind simply couldn’t handle switching gears for a day of SFB.
- Only once did I nearly fail my saving throw and plunge my family into bankruptcy with frivolous game purchases, and that was when I was briefly seized by a desire to purchase lots and lots of Warmachine miniatures. I snapped out of it a few minutes later, but it was a close call. I played a demo game of Warmachine with one of the company reps, then started thinking about how cool it would be to own dozens, hundreds, thousands of miniatures, enough to make my own invincible army… but that way lies madness. I fled the temptation.
There’s more to be said, but I suspect I’ve bored you enough for one afternoon. To sum things up, Origins was a lot of fun, and worth attending if you’re in the area. Certainly not as big an event as Gencon, but if you’re having fun playing games, that shouldn’t really matter much. And next year, if you should spot me at Origins huddled in a corner surrounded by boxes of newly-purchased miniatures, go ahead and put me out of my misery.
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