nerd apocalypse 2

NERD APOCALYPSE 2 of 2

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Note:
"And my most excellent survivalist & post-apocalyptic novel, "Glasses, Pulleys and the End of Bread" which James hasn't reviewed yet, probably because he's still dazzled by its goodness :)" :
http://solsysbooks.blogspot.com/
This book is from Ave, one of  my few European readers.  I've reviewed this before but it was only half done ( it is now completed other than a middle chapter revision from what I understand ).  This novel is huge.  English is his second language but you can barely tell.  Don't expect perfect American structure and flow, but really his English is better than mine or yours for the most part.  I bring it up to limit the comments about the writing style.  Read it for the story.  I was impressed and look forward to finishing it.
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When I was a wee lad of about thirteen or fourteen, not too long after I watched Star Wars in the theatres about four times and recorded that movie on an audio cassette player at the drive-in window speaker to listen to it another twenty times or so, until the cassettes wore down, Mom ( bless her heart who even though she was a bit of a grumpy gus having to deal with me every day still instilled a love of reading in me-perhaps self preservation?-and fed it voraciously which is a trend I’ve only denied a few times myself due to fierce budgetary constraints ) bought me the first boxed set of Dungeon & Dragons, the pioneer role playing game.  I didn’t even have a clue how you were supposed to play it, it was so novel, and it took one of moms friends from work husbands, a geek which was also a novelty, to explain it was a game you talked out between players and referees.  My dad was always competitive and animated during confrontations, a skill well suited to his sports playing and being a cop, but I was completely opposite and hated and avoided both people in general and confrontations in particular ( being a reclusive clown helping in that regard ).  This was before the general public had been widely introduced to the concept of extroverts and introverts.  Anyway, I took to non-competitive role playing games like a fish to water or a liberal to Hilary. 

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The late 70’s and early 80’s were the time of role playing games, killed later by computers and computer users who were also game players and who combined the two.  Not killed as in role playing itself but killed as a medium.  No longer were thick books compiled or consulted, no longer were referees asked to create worlds and oversee them.  The computers did all the scut work and you just paid the cover price and enjoyed your solitary romp through a fantasy world, only interacting with other players online.  Gone were groups gathering and socializing, to a large degree.  Gone were paper books of rules, other than as computer program manuals.  I didn’t particularly miss it, burning out on fantasy books and games, then starting to get laid so gathering with the boys for game night lost all importance, but in thinking about revising my habit as a source of future entertainment I started to research what was still available in non-digital form.  To my chagrin, my old favorite games were hideously expensive, each manual twenty to thirty dollars ( and you needed more than one manual per game, such as Players, Game Masters, Monsters ), far more expensive than a lot of great reference books you need for rebuilding civilization after the collapse.  No way was I going to shell out that kind of scratch.

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There used to be a LOT of the games out there.  Not just D&D but its competition like Tunnels & Trolls, and various other genres like Twilight2000 which was post nuclear war in a military unit or Traveller which was science fiction.  There was espionage and post-apocalypse with mutants.  I’m sure I had a western, but can’t remember clearly.  Most disappeared with the advent of computers but a few popular ones were bought out by specialty companies and kept in print for old schoolers such as myself ( at boutique printer prices, even though now with Print-On-Demand most of the cost is profit for them ).  But one original company still seems to be around at reasonable prices, Steve Jackson Games ( back in the day, popular for a nuclear war card playing game, if memory serves ).  They have a reasonably priced book ( $10-$15, new, less used ) called GURPS ( available through Amazon ).  Which is a universal role playing game using standard six sided dice ( a headache back then were finding and buying, although not using, bizarre dice like twenty sided ).  You can make the world of your choice, fantasy or space opera or super hero’s or post-apocalypse mutants or zombies or whatever, while only buying one set of game rules ( all games back then were proprietary and fiercely independent.  You went from fantasy to space, you learned a whole new set of rules.  D&D was monster and magic heavy, while Traveller was high tech heavy with planets having different tech levels [ the Druid Dude would have been proud ] and the only thing approaching magic was psionics, which I never used as I wanted Star Wars, not Lord Of The Rings, by that time.  Yes, Darth Vader was disturbed by the Imperial officers lack of faith and used psi to choke his ass, but that was one dude in the universe, not a common skill a group of traveling blue collar types would possess ). 

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Most folks refuse to be proud of being a nerd or geek, or avoid any activity that might get one classified as such, but you should still consider the allure of role playing games.  You use your brain in a fun and creative way and for hours  the real world disappears.  You can relax your competitive nature and just enjoy the company of friends.  It is escapism.  But mentally challenging escapism, not mindless entertainment paid heavily for.  TV turns off your brain, games stimulate it.  Something to consider.

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