Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition

The first time I played Dungeons & Dragons it was 1985. That was 23 years ago and I was 10. It was a pivotal moment in my development. If my life was a film, this bit would not be in montage – sandwiched between other things at 10 for half a second. It would instead be depicted in slow motion: The first time I saw the red box with the red dragon about to kill the human warrior on the cover; the first time I rolled a twenty sided dice; my first character (the same human fighter from the cover of the game); my first encounter with the fiendish rustmonster. Those were the glory days of roleplaying.

One grows up, games change and in my case I “grew” out of D&D and went for sci-fi (Shadowrun, Cyberpunk) and horror (Chill, Kult,Unknown Armies, Vampire…) amongst other roleplaying-games. I did manage to play every version of D&D along the way, but it didn’t grow up with me and I always thought it was too brightly “coloured”; its themes were too “obvious” with little depth.

Then came version 3 and a friend that wanted to try it out and I got hooked all over again. The game wasn’t simple; it had new rules, new art and new books. Then 3.5 came and added more rules and greater complexity and a ton more books. Being a Dungeon Master was a herculean task each week that easily took up to 10 hrs preparation time before the next 5 hour session. We ran the campaign for two years until we brought it to a climatic finale due to players immigrating to other countries but the experience was awesome. I was sad we weren’t playing once a week anymore, but I was also glad for the break. It was a lot of work and the rules often got in the way of the better story.

And so Wizards of the Coast are releasing the 4th Edition this May. My first thought was that it would be more of the same, but I’m happy to say that I think my first impression was wrong. I’ve read all their published design & development and playtest reports. I bought one of their prerelease books (Worlds and Monsters) and thought it was brilliant. I’ve watched their seminar talks at YouTube. And all I want now is it to be May so I can play.

I really don’t know how they rope me in each time, but they definitely understand the needs of their players – because they seem to be talking directly to mine.

Daft Hands

Simon Waterfall ( Creative Director and co-founder of digital agency Poke, and newly-elected D&AD Deputy President) came to South Africa later last year (2007) and gave a talk about the Internet. In that talk he said that there has never been more creativity outside of the creative industry as there is now. He gave this Youtube video as an example.

It is called Daft Hands.

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack

I’ve just watched Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure on DVD and what a blast! I don’t know how I’ve managed to muddle through my life and not know who this guy is. He’s a complete Nutter! With a captial “N” mind you. But insanity is often crossed with genius and he has a lot of that too. Somehow he manages to go through life attracting the absolutely ridiculous and has the enviable ability of being able to tell the tale on stage in front of lots of people with a slide show to gales of laughter. The DVD is a 2 hour one man show that is absolutely captivating, hysterical, unbelievable and strangely comforting. He sincerely asks that no part of his act be discussed out side of his act, so as not to ruin the plot – and I obey: just find it and watch it.

You can buy the DVD from amazon here. He has a whole bunch of other DVDs that look interesting too… especially the one that has him looking for other people (54 of them) that share his name.

Incidentally, if you don’t know what a Googlewhack is, here is a definition:

A Googlewhack is a Google search query consisting of two words, that returns a single result. Source

www.googlewhack.com

This has inspired me to become a googlewhack somehow. I need to find a way of being able to produce a googlewhack result. I’m not entirely sure I know how I intend to pull this off, but I’ll set myself a deadline of February 29. Let’s see.