Gameplaywright.

Jeff Tidball is a guy who used to work for Atlas Games, where I met him when we played a lot of On The Edge CCG. He even worked for That Company for a while at the California office. Anyway, he's collaborating with another guy on a new blog called Gameplaywright. It's positioned at the place where games meet story, and quite scholarly so far. As the guy who tells the jokes at the strip club, I find this particular convergence fascinating.

The way I quote myself works is not entirely understood.

What it's like to write for games.

Erik Wolpaw was asked, "So what do you think is the hardest thing about writing for games?" His answer is almost too true to be funny.

At strip clubs, there’s a guy whose job is to talk between the strippers. He tries to do a good job and be entertaining and enthusiastic, but everybody’s just there for the nakedness. That’s a professional writer trick we call called an “analogy”. What I really mean is that game writers are the game equivalent of the guy who talks between the nude girls at strip clubs. Nobody cares about what that guy does, and anybody who does care is probably a little maladjusted. So I’d have to say the hardest part of being a game writer is learning all the writing tricks like “analogy”.

He totally nailed that answer.

The way I quote myself works is not entirely understood.

More games that saved lives.

During World War Two, British Monopoly makers Waddington smuggled many useful items to POWs in their boxed games.

During World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany. Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes.

Real money, maps, compasses, files, and other items that helped POWs escape arrived without inspection by the German guards.

Wishing to hide this less-than-stellar upholding of the Geneva Convention, they happily welcomed Red Cross aid packages for POWs. So throwing Monopoly games into the care kits along with food and clothing was met with little scrutiny. Monopoly was already a well-known game throughout Europe, and the German guards saw it as the perfect way for their detainees to remain occupied for hours.

Makes me think of Escape from Colditz. The coolest fact is that Monopoly was so well-known that the Germans didn't even inspect them.

Mind you, moose bites can be pretty nasty.

A 12-year-old Norwegian boy was saved from a moose attack by his knowledge of World of Warcraft.

Hans Jørgen decided to play dead. He laid completely still, eye to eye with the Moose for a long time before it whirled around and took to the forest. The idea about playing dead, Hans Jørgen got from the online role playing game World of Warcraft.

You see, the Hunter class learns a skill called "Feign Death," and that's the button this young boy pushed on his keyboard that day in the woods. Figuratively speaking.

Play WoW. It could save your life.

The way I quote myself works is not entirely understood.

No more reporting for duty.

STCCG provided me with a new career. Now it's gone, and I feel sad.

LWC worked at a local gaming store, and Dave, the guy that managed it, was friends with the folks from Mayfair. One weekend, the Mayfair dudes came into town to demo games at the shop. That night, there was a barbecue at the Dave's house. We had fun playing Speedway, the original Indy 500 design that became Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix.

At one point that night, Darwin Bromley gave Dave a packet of playtest materials for a Star Trek CCG. Dave threw it at me, saying, "Here, you like Magic, play this."

We played, I sent in my comments, and eventually I was offered the chance to preview Star Wars CCG. They flew me to Norfolk for a playtest, and soon thereafter I was offered a job at Norfolk-by-the-sea. The rest, as they say, is history.

Every time I play a card with no cost I think fondly of STCCG. So long, old friend, I'm gonna miss ya.

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble.

No, that's not a movie or a book. It's a game, and you can download a demo. It's not anywhere near as salacious as it sounds, with a nice 1920s sensibility.

The wickedness of little girls has been well documented both in classic literature and in modern games, from Great Expectations to Rule of Rose -– and straight into the memories of our own high school days, when we moved in clandestine societies governed by unspoken laws. This theme gets a Roaring Twenties kind of patina to delectably twisted effect in Mousechief’s Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, a pleasingly innovative hybrid between an RPG and a stat-based card game.

It reminds me of Sissy Fight but it's a much better game.

Fuck you NFL!

Coach: Well boys, we've battled our way into a tie at the end of regulation. So here's the game plan: We're gonna run a lot of power off tackle stuff, we've got lots of time. Dink and dunk until we get into field goal range and win this fucker.

Brett Favre: Fuck that, watch this!

"To be honest with you, when I let the ball go, I thought it was underthrown," the 38-year-old Favre said of his bomb that ended the second-shortest overtime (16 seconds) in NFL history. "The ball stayed up in the air a long time. ... Fortunately for me, it fell in the right place. We keep finding ways to do it, and we do it together. It don't get any better than it was at the end of this game."

He's right. It don't get any better.

(Interview and lots of reaction shots from the gorgeous Deanna a definite plus. Also, this statement from the article is stupid: "The only two cities where he hasn't thrown a TD pass are Baltimore and Pittsburgh." Uh, Ellington Missouri? I can think of a few more.)

Fantasy football survey.

Regarding your team's performance for the 2007-2008 season:

(a) I have Tom Brady on my team and I won my league.
(b) Other.

High score?

From our Yahoo Fantasy Football league, I find that my St. Louis Ducks have the "Viagara High Score of the Week." You'd think that Viagara would be an award for the low score of the week, and make it bigger. Maybe that means that my high score will last all the way until next week. I'll call my doctor if it lasts for more than four hours.

Two styles of games.

What is the essential difference between "Euro" games and American games? I'm glad you asked. The split comes from World War II.

Europeans fought World War II on their own soil. It was their homes being destroyed by tanks and guns and bombs. This is why their games are about building, buying, and trading.

(I would have a quote here about how building things is better than blowing them up, but I couldn't find one.)

Americans fought World War II on foreign soil. The collateral damage happened to somebody else's country. Therefore, they like games about killing things and blowing things up.

The latter point is best summed up by General George S. Patton: "Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed."

When I started running Swiss format tournaments for That Company back in 1996, players didn't understand losing and continuing to play. Americans understand single elimination, that's how things are done. You lose, you're out. We are a brutal and unforgiving society.

You can see this dichotomy in action when a group of American gamers finish a fine round of games like Adel Verplichtet, Puerto Rico, and Princes of Florence... and then reach for a game of conquest like Risk or Axis & Allies. The urge to blow stuff up is strong in Americans, and we can't be without it for long.

We know, deep in our heart of hearts, that building, buying, and trading are for girly men and girly girls, and blowing up stuff is why those barrels are there in Doom.

(Read more about this important issue in this Geeklist. Which happens to be funny as hell.)

Your new Guitar Hero controller.

Okay, not really, without some serious work. But this guy made a guitar in the shape of a teenage girl. In fact, "a vintage mannequin transformed into an electric guitar."

It's called "Teenar, Girl Guitar." Weird, huh? More pics on this blog.

My guitar mentor Joe Schaedler always said that guitars were female cause you plugged the cord into their socket.

Gen Con ramblings.

We flew out on Misty the Arctic Fox (that was the animal on our Frontier plane's tail). One of the stewards said she was a pole dancer. The stewards are funnier in the back of the plane.

I'm still looking for my "signature drink," so Thursday night I had a Heineken, a white Russian, a glass of red merlot (from Mario Andretti's winery) and Jack & coke. My head and stomach were confused by this, but it all went down pretty well.

Friday we had a meet and greet at Jillian's and the bartendresses there (pictured in their SOE Gamer T-shirts) were making the drinks really strong, but I stuck to Jack & coke.

Later that evening, we played some Notre Dame and I enjoyed it very much. I brought home some 24 TCG and got hooked up with some sweet promos (thanks, fellas). Haven't played it yet, but it looks pretty cool.

I hath returned.

Really tired from Gen Con this morning, but I thought I'd favor you with a pic of our lovely booth babe pirate wench, voted by all the WizKids (even the women) as Best of Show.

She wanted a sword on Thursday, and by Friday she had a nice, ornamental wooden cutlass. I told her not to hit anybody, but she broke it on some guy's head.

She told me a horror story of a drunken idiot at the Brickyard 400, but I told her that these guys lived in their mom's basements and were scared of women.

More items of relevance to come. Stay tuned.

Alka-Seltzer tag.

We cover all kinds of games here at IQM. Today's installment is Poor Man's Laser Tag. Besides, I'd rather be shot in the eye by a water gun than a laser. I'd also rather have a full bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.

Then, the object of the game is to get the other person's Alka-Seltzer wet. As the tablet reacts to the water, it will start foaming and eventually fall off the string. The last person with an Alka-Seltzer necklace is the winner.

It's good for an upset stomach, too. Don't get the generic brand, it doesn't dissolve as well or as fast.

Off to Gen Con.

"The Best Four Days In Gaming," says the website, but I'm pretty sure a strip poker marathon with Alessandra Ambrosio (see sneaky commercials post for a peek) is better.

Anyway, it's been a couple of years since I've been to this shindig, so I'm kinda lookin forward to it. Although I have to work the booth all weekend, sigh. If you're there, come by and give me a break so I can pee or get a drink!

I plan to post every day, but can't make any promises. See you on the other side!

Legends of Norrath.

The newest game from SOE Denver. It's an online-only TCG based on EverQuest/EverQuest II that you can play both as a standalone PC client and launched from within either MMO. Check out the website, the art is terrific.

Cyberwar not as exciting as we thought.

A funny comparison of Gibson's classic Neuromancer "Operation Screaming Fist" and real life cyber attacks. One of my Shadowrun players kept wanting to know why we had to break into buildings in order to steal data. Looks like he was right all along. I rewrote a scene from one of our futuristic Wars TCG stories to include a wireless connection. I was so inculcated by Gibson's view of "the future" I forgot that wires are so twentieth century.

What's your GH band name?

Or maybe "names" if you've started more than one. My band's name, as I mentioned before, is "KILR." Used that for GH and GH2. Don't know if I'm gonna buy the 80's one, I'm still working on GH2. The song lineup for III looks better to me so far.

KILR plays gig in Detroit!

Of course you know that my Guitar Hero band is called KILR (spelling is for soft-rock bands). You know this because you have nothing better to do than catalog the minutiae of my blog.

I know some of you are much better (I play on Medium and I'm happy with 3 stars) and further along than me, but I got through twenty-one (holy crap, 21! I didn't know that until I went back and checked) songs last night. Woot!

I had one of "those moments" (when I say to myself, "I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M PLAYING THIS SONG!" accompanied by chills and massive amounts of dopamine and adrenaline) when I played Tattooed Love Boys (I had played bass on this with Dr. Heimlich, but this was my first time on guitar) and my new favorite GH song Killing in the Name. (I'm Tom Morello! Look at me!) God, that song is awesome. I was jumping around and singing along. Pretty scary.

Another freaky moment for me was going back to play Jessica. I skipped it because I knew the song and thought I would never get through it. (I felt the same way about Crossroads, which I eventually beat.) I never in my wildest dreams as a self-taught guitar player in 1973 thought that I would be even trying to follow along with a Duane Allman solo. Weird moment.

Jesus, I'm such a poser. I downloaded Killing and I've never heard it before except on the radio, and I didn't know that the guy screams, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" over and over at the end. Radio sucks ass.

Stupid people do stupid things.

Why didn't they take time to feed their kids? They were playing video games.

What's wrong with that second sentence? IT'S ALL WRONG! They were too stupid to know what is right and wrong. That's the real answer.

It's not the video game you're playing. It's not the TV show you're watching. It's not the music you listen to. It's not the books you read. YOU'RE JUST FUCKING STUPID!

Video games don't make people stupid. People do stupid things because they're stupid.

Again, I trot out my usual statistic: If video games made people so stupid they didn't take care of their children, even 1 percent of video game players, there would be tens of thousands of cases like this.

I found this image on Fark. I'm not sure if it applies to the guy who wrote the original article or me, but it looks nice.