Game Night Is Fun...Game-All-Nighter Is More Fun

Let me just open with this. The fact that during the all-night gaming marathon on Thursday I and my friends talked too loudly and covered up the movies Vic was trying to watch was one of the factors, a "last-straw" factor, in our breakup. It in and of itself was not a major sin (well, it was pretty bad), but it contributed. So I'm sorry, Vic, if you still read and comment. And now I will speak no more of it, focusing instead on the good that came from that evening.


Oh my. We have to do this again sometime. It was originally supposed to be a Lord of the Rings marathon movie watching experience for Ricky, my RA (residential advisor), who recently vouchsafed to me that he had never seen any of the LotR movies. Scarcely restraining my impulse to burn him as a heretic on the spot, I instead invited him to an all-night movie marathon. I would also invite several of my Game Night friends, which was especially important, seeing as one of them actually owned the movies and I did not. We figured we'd bring some games along, during the dull parts, maybe just as a sideline.

Imagine our surprise when, the day of the event, Ricky cancelled on us. He said he was busy. No biggie, we figured, we can do this without the guest of honor, eh? Not like all of us have pressing social engagements that we're skipping for this. So we arrived, around 7:00, and set up a game of Citadels while we waited for everyone else to show up. All told, there were seven of us.

Citadels was entertaining. We switched around a lot of the profession cards, and changed the rules somewhat so one card was no longer randomly thrown out. Instead, the last two cards were discarded after everyone chose theirs. It made things somewhat easier, and prevented people from getting stuck with the Queen constantly. It was just as well, really, since there was no King card. There was an Emperor card in its place; the Emperor could crown anyone on the board King, and then the new King would have to give the Emperor a gold piece. So, of course, this was less a blessing than a really aggravating occurrence for most of the game, being able to choose first notwithstanding.

After Citadels, we started a game of Paranoia. For anyone who's never played, Paranoia is the RPG for reckless and suicidal players. It takes place far in the nuclear-scarred future, where the remnants of humanity live underground in a massive complex dominated by a psychotic and homicidal AI called Friend Computer. (The Computer is your Friend. Not feeling friendly enough is treason, punishable by summary execution.) There is technically a system in place that allows for wounds and hit point damage, but nobody ever uses it. The slightest damage is generally enough to completely annihilate a PC. But that's why we're clones: we can jump into a new clone body when ours is destroyed. True, we have to ration them somewhat (we only get so many), but it allows for interesting plays that quite often result in a Total Party Kill, or TPK for short. One example: Thermonuclear hand grenades. You get the picture.

Normally we traipse around Alpha Complex and perform various errands for the Computer while trying to avoid anything that smacks of treason, which includes but is not limited to: disrespecting the Computer; disrespecting a citizen of higher rank; interacting with an object beyond your security clearance; catching an object thrown at you that is beyond your security clearance; dropping an object thrown at you that is beyond your security clearance (That's a waste of Computer resources!); saying the wrong things in earshot of the Computer or one of its agents (read: anyone); being a communist or a mutant; not killing communists or mutants on sight; being suspected of sympathizing with communists or mutants; having the Computer think, just in passing, that you are a communist or a mutant (note: everyone in this game is a mutant and probably a communist); leaving your shoelaces untied; standing in the wrong place; breathing too loud; and failing to love the Computer for its infinite sense of justice, kindness, and mercy. You get the idea.

But this time, Matt (the Game Master) decided to take things in a different direction. Yea, for today, Paranoia and D&D would clash mightily. We entered the Tomb of Horrors, a Dungeons & Dragons scenario, one that is designed to inflict TPK as often as possible. We were free from the capricious whims of the computer, but every action we took, if it was the wrong one, ended with "You fall into a pit trap and die." This seems somewhat excessive for a D&D adventure, where players get precisely one life, but I suspect Matt was scattering pit traps in the manner that a boxer being battered by Mike Tyson might scatter teeth: randomly, painfully, and with a lot of blood.

We were aided in this endeavor by being able to choose a pair of mutant powers from a list beforehand. I picked Transmutation, shaping matter, and Electroshock, which is self-explanatory. Others picked such combinations as Energy Shield and Regeneration, and one adventurous spirit, Kevin, chose Matter Eating and another I can't recall because he never used it. His response to any situation was "eat it." This vexed Matt, as he tended to wax eloquent when describing the various deadly rooms we were entering:

Matt: "You come across a large room full of ornate furniture, dust on every surface. Elaborate tapestries cover the walls, and intricate carvings festoon the uncovered portions of the walls and ceiling. The room has a baroque feel to it, and you can sense in the musty air a definite feeling of foreboding. In the shadows, you spot a flicker of -"
Kevin: "I eat it."
Matt: "What?"
Kevin: "I eat it."
Matt: "Eat what?"
Kevin: "Whatever."

Kevin used up all his clones fairly quickly. An irritated GM can kill you quicker than, well, Mike Tyson. One among our number had Desolidify, useful for avoiding the various pit traps and other such hazards, but every time he went ethereal, if he fumbled the roll, he would get molested by an incubus (male version of a succubus, known for haunting the ethereal plane). This became something of a running joke, as he rolled notoriously poorly throughout the adventure. Fortunately, those among us who rolled poorly could fix these problems with Perversity tokens, small black glass tokens, a set number of which were distributed by Matt at the beginning of the adventure. They were essentially a means of bribing the GM into fudging the die roll in your favor. Occasionally he would declare "Perversity for everyone!" and scatter them around the table. This would cause a frenetic grab-fest for the tokens that resembled a demented version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. But the main means of acquiring more tokens was to steal them from the GM when he wasn't looking. And thus, the cycle continued.

With my powers of Transmutation, I would often transmute obstacles from our path. After turning three successive things into doors (a pile of rubble, a trapdoor-floor, and a less impressive-looking door), I became known as the master of creating doors. Electroshock was used far more conventionally. In one memorable instance, in order to destroy a skeleton that was menacing me with a large sword, I tried the following tactic. It is important to know that we were allowed ad hoc "narrow specializations," skills we could make up on the fly, if they were deemed sufficiently narrow.

Me: "I take an ad hoc skill."
Matt: "Which?"
Me: "Gauss rifle design."
Matt: "...What?"
Me: "You heard me. Can I have it?"
Matt: "Sure, I guess."
Me: "Ok. I take all the metal within my reach and transmute it into a Gauss rifle."
Matt: "Now hold on a second..."
Me: "Can I try?"
Matt: "Eh, sure. Roll it."
Me: *rolls* *succeeds* "Woot."
Matt: "Great. Now what?"
Me: "I use my Electroshock to energize it."
Matt: "Oookay. Roll it."
Me: *rolls* *succeeds again* "Awesome."
Matt: "You fire the Gauss rifle. The skeleton is obliterated into pieces too small to be detected with the naked eye. You have blown a hole in the walls that leads all the way to the entrance. Then the Gauss rifle crumbles to dust and you can never make another one."
Me: "That's fair."

This caused one of us, I forget who, to relate the story of the time one of their characters, a mage, had to deal with a seemingly invulnerable demon that was terrorizing a city. He had a couple of portal gates that were linked to each other, but not much else. He aligned them in such a way that an object could fall through them endlessly, acquired a boulder, and let it fall through the portals until it accelerated to roughly 0.7 times the speed of light. (It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense.) Then he realigned one portal and aimed at the demon. The GM's memorable phrase was "Okay. It takes 82,000 damage. But it can save for half." It wasn't quite as invulnerable as it had boasted, it happened.

Lots more stuff happened in Paranoia, but I don't really remember it. We did manage to survive the Tomb of Horrors, but only with a lot of help from the GM. (He "reloaded from save" once and allowed me to take back a situation that would have ended the encounter when I rolled a natural 20 for retroactive continuity.) We played Fury of Dracula, which I'm convinced I've written about before. I was Dracula this time, and instead of putzing around at sea (which makes one very easy to find), I putzed around in Eastern Europe. They did find me, but at night, and I was more than ready for them.

...Or so I thought. To do battle, the duelists roll opposed 6-sided dice. Out of probably 15 die rolls, I won...one. Lost the rest. Lost the game because of it. I'm bringing my own dice next time. Bugger it.

We stayed, playing games and occasionally glancing over at the movies that were playing, until about 7:15 AM. A memorable experience, and one I'd quite like to repeat, in all aspects but one which I have previously described.

So, there's that. Then there was Saturday. I played many games on Saturday, but the one that stuck in my mind was the Grand-Prix simulator. We had little cars which we raced around a little track, rolling dice to determine our speed. These were quite unusual dice, mind. Which dice we rolled was determined by which gear we were in, from 1-2 (first), 2-4 (second), 4-8 (third), 7-12 (fourth), 11-20 (fifth), and 21-30 (sixth). We had a four-sided die for first gear, which had only 1s and 2s on it. We had a six-sided die for second, which had only 2 through 4...you get the idea. Why we need a 30-sided die for sixth gear and 21-30, I don't quite understand, but I suppose it made things more interesting.

The game was slightly realistic, in that it tracked tires, brakes, gas, body damage, and engine damage. Through turns, you had to stop a certain number of times, which symbolized taking them more slowly than straightaways. I goofed up badly on the first turn, which resulted in me having to slow down to 1st gear to make it out intact. This caused me to be very far behind everyone else. To explain this, I suddenly realized my car driver's identity: he was Jebediah, the world's first Amish race-car driver. Or should I say, race-cart-and-horses. This was seen as extremely amusing by the others. When I flubbed a roll in fourth gear, the remark was heard "This is God punishing you for going too fast! And wearing buttons!" Accelerating, I commented "We have to increase our speed! Fetch the caffeinated oats!" Roaring along in sixth gear, someone said "You're going so fast, your horseshoes are melting." When I made a pit stop, I rolled badly and was forced to remain still for a turn. Someone said "Of course it's going to take a long time. Your mechanic is a friggin' BLACKSMITH."

Whereas others used a pole to determine their position, I used a pole to churn butter as I raced.

So. Great fun there. All sorts.

And as for the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, huh. I wonder. I'm kind of running out of entertaining links, here. Ooh, here's one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=epKpY2BHEp8 It's from the game Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. It features the totally awesome Cyborg Ninja battling various foes, from Snake himself (a master fighter) to a variety of nameless goons to a two-hundred-foot-tall nuclear deathtank. Quite bloody, but very very awesome.

REPLIES.

Wednesday's first (I have got to stop doing this):

Matt: Well, I suppose. But anyone who pulls out Ego Erasure with Elvish Harbinger instead of one of the more potent elves (Priestess of Titania, Wren's Run Packmaster, Immaculate Magistrate, Jagged-Scar Archers) doesn't deserve to run a proper Elf deck.

Steve: Not hypocritical at all: I didn't say any of it. And plus, I just love jerking around Magic players who take it too seriously. It's a game, I say, you shouldn't consider yourself better than someone else because you memorized the rules and they didn't. I was speaking to a less insane player about how one of the "serious" players scorned me for not knowing a specific and old card. His response? "They have to make themselves feel superior for knowing more about Magic than you, since they have absolutely nothing else to feel superior about. These people are nerds to the bone." That cheered me some. I can endure Shmovacs, and I prefer Corn Flakes or Reese's Puffs.

Vic: You know, even though you explained it, it still doesn't make absolutely any sense.

...

Dad: I doubt I'll ever truly understand. Even if things had gone differently, some things are just meant to be eternal mysteries. It's not that baffling, I tried to explain it as best I could.

Dad: I doubt I'll ever truly understand. Even if things had gone differently, some things are just meant to be eternal mysteries. It's not that baffling, I tried to explain it as best I could.

Mom: It does? I'll have to go back and listen to it again, then. She is quite clever, and you can visit the library when you drive me back in January. Think on that for a minute. While Jesus was under orders, he still had a great deal of power.

Mike: Good on yer, Queenie. And yes, I think they could have just said "embedded in his brain" and it would have been better for all concerned. Just like the Uruk-Hai saying "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" despite having never been near a restaurant in his life.

Now Friday's.

Mike: Not your fault. It had been coming for a while. Don't blame yourself.

Mom: I am too.

Michelle: Doubtful. Highly doubtful. I'm convinced that ending it was the best possible result. If we got back together, it would probably just be for a few weeks, limping along, then it would crash and we'd be in a worse position than we are now.

Steve: I'm slogging through. Not like I have any tough finals left, anyway.

Dad: We worked things out as best we could. We're in the best possible position at the moment, I believe. And I can't believe Steve has any kind of good advice. Will wonders never cease.

Jake: Tag. It works. For a while, anyway. FCATs are like the anti-Tag, it seems. I'll get over it. In time.

The end.