Beauty And The Geek

As I was putting my face on, Elton came over to examine the proceedings and also to potentially tickle me. Fortunately, I was putting on my eyeliner, so had an excellent reason to tell him to not try anything funny.

E: Ah hah! So you cannot move, right?
Me: Forced movement does not count as part of my move.
E: (silence) Did you just quote a D&D rule at me?!
Me: Yup. True sign of nerdism.
E: Nerdism, a religion born of the 21st century.
Me: No lah, I'm sure there were like cavemen nerds.
E: (laughs) How is that possible?
Me: It took a nerd to invent the wheel.
E: Why did it have to be a nerd? It was probably some slacker farmer.
Me: Nah, it was a nerd caveman, slacking at home while the other cavemen were hunting. He was probably trying to make dice.

That said, I'm quite impressed by the creativity of gamers. Now that there's the 4th edition of D&D out, a great deal of fan-created stuff have been flying all around the internet. And it goes beyond just character sheets (we had those a long time ago, because the character sheets in the books really suck, and it's almost like a legacy they feel they must carry on); people are coming up with these "power cards" and bases for miniatures and crib sheets. One dude even made this template that you can cut out, stick, and have an envelope for your power cards right there on your sheet. Anything to make the gaming experience a little easier.

Elton started a 4th ed D&D campaign a few weeks ago and I'm having fun. As a 3rd ed gamer, I find it a little difficult to let go of the rules I've grown up with. But I have to say, I do like some of the changes to the rules.

One of the main complaints was that the game has become too simplified. True, it's no longer as customizable, but the good thing is, it's a lot more forgivable. It used to be that we planned things out backwards, starting from level 20 and figuring out what you needed to qualify for whatever prestige class you wanted to play. If you wasted one of your feats on something stupid or put your skill points in the wrong skills or just took the wrong class, you might not be able to get into the class you wanted, hence the need to plan things out beforehand.

For 4th ed, you can retrain all you want, which means you can let things be a little more organic and just go with the flow. Which is good, when you have a full time job and don't have the time or energy to put that much effort into gaming anymore.

What I really really like is the fact that tanks aren't useless anymore. It used to be that tanks had a difficulty in getting the bad guys to focus on them and not, say, the party caster. Now we get a whole host of funky abilities (yes, I play a tank in a group full of guys), and it's so very dangerous to ignore us. My current character is a water genasi swordmage and I'm just loving it. Even at level one, we've got a number of tricks up our sleeves.

Gaming with a bunch of guys hasn't been an issue for me, I guess mainly because I've been gaming with the same bunch of guys. The core group, Elton, Peeyush, Dzaki, hasn't changed, and the rest I've gamed with in one way or another, so they're used to me. In general, they're pretty ok. I guess maybe because all of them are older than me and had time to grow up. I've known this bunch for seven years already, so they've had sufficient time to stare at my tits and move beyond them.

But there are some gamers I wouldn't play with, mainly because they'll do things like a) overprotect my character, even when I'm playing a tank or b) make it a point to kill it. I've heard horror stories of GMs asking a girl playing a female character for her character's menstrual cycle, because "wild beasts might be attracted to the smell". (At point of writing, Elton went, "You're kidding!" over my shoulder. I'm not.)

I guess it's really a matter of how socialised your geeks are. There are some who have never, and I mean, NEVER had any female contact in their lives beyond their mother, and those are the sort who'd ask for your character's menstrual chart. Thankfully, the guys I game with have had girlfriends before. Maybe girlfriend for some, but hey, at least they had some action.

Which is why I'm a little bemused by this female gamer who wrote a book about her gaming experiences and is now the resident female voice at the D&D headquarters. How incredibly unlucky must she have been to be able to write a book about her shit experiences? Why is there a need for a female perspective on D&D? The extent of my girliness in my gaming career has been a fully pink set of stationery, pink frosted dice (courtesy of Elton. I used to have a set of red ones that I can't find anymore), and an aversion towards classes and races that have ugly pictures. But I've not exactly interpreted rules in a "female" way or thought, "Hmm, how can I make the barbarian more girly?"

Then again, I guess she deals with the menstrual chart bunch, who think we're aliens anyway, so perhaps there is a need for a so-called female perspective on the game. So long they don't blame us for the game dumbing down.