Tag Archives: Games

Back in the Driver Seat

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It’s been a while since I’ve run a D&D game. The schedules of adults combined with a pandemic crushed that creative bit of things for a long time. I’ve posted on here about being invited to play. The game turned from fantasy to horror and that’s not exactly ‘my jam’ as a friend would say. Yes it was fun and there are memorable stories from the few sessions we’ve run. Once again, the schedule of adults looked to wreck that gaming chance. I volunteered to step in and attempt this long distance gaming thing as the game master.

I’m glad I volunteered. The rest of the players seemed to be on board with the idea. All I needed to do was figure out how 5e worked compared to what I knew, work with everyone on character creation, design the adventure, tailor it to the characters, figure out how the online tools were going to work and THEN actually run the game. Easy peasy, right?

Oy. I must have forgotten how much work it is to stay ahead of a handful of very sharp players. I was (and am) glad that I did this. We had a couple of bumpy patches in our first session. A couple of communication errors (mostly on me) and some adjustment to the online environment, but all in all I think it went as well as could be expected.

The best part was that we’ve already come up with a bit of story that’s going to stick with us. A gift that will keep on giving as this party of intrepid adventurers continues to move through the game world. Fear the grain shortage and buy your bread now! You should watch:

Here we go!

Digital Native?

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I was having a conversation with a friend about digital ownership. That wasn’t all the conversation was about, but it was a significant part of what we covered. He was telling me about a group of people that had put a lot of money into this digital venture and then it was suddenly gone.

By pure coincidence I got this notice today:

That’s it. A program I’ve been using for a while is going to just stop. The notice popped up right after an “upgrade”. No recourse, no options ~ they’re done. If you’ve put any amount of money into this program… sorry. You’re done. Use it up before April.

This is a game, and I’ve never actually spent any money on it. It was running on the ad revenue from me and clearly that’s not enough for them to keep going with this program. The money amounts for “in app purchases” never really looked like anything more than ten or twelve bucks. I still wouldn’t spend my money on it…

And that’s part of what’s making me think. My friend was explaining this other group of folks had dropped tens or hundreds of dollars on “digital real estate” and would often spend significant amounts of time in these digital locations. I have to admit that I don’t get it. I’m trying to draw parallels to spending money on going to the movies or some other form of entertainment, but the amount of money seems terribly disproportionate to me. I’m not sure where the block is for me… but it definitely doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

I suppose the value of entertainment is in what you get out of it. While hundreds of dollars seems desperately irresponsible to me for purchasing video game… anything frankly, if I didn’t have the ability to get up and out of the house on my own I’d likely see that differently. That digital real estate would be my way to vacation. I wouldn’t get photos at the airport, I’d get screen shots of that one time when this really cool thing happened ~ right?

I will probably have this added to the tally of “Luddite credentials” that I have, but I just don’t ever foresee myself being willing to put so much money into an item of entertainment, and particularly never a digital thing. I’m already very nervous about the number of “books” that I don’t own via Kindle. I do my best to download copies to an off line location, but I can’t say that I’ve gotten them all. Even if I did get them all, what if the reader equipment I have fails to function? I get the queasy feeling that I’ll eventually be dealing with some other kind of entertainment / digital upgrade nonsense about something that will cause me to add to my pile of vinyl records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, VCR tapes…

I suppose I have to chalk this up to the price of entertainment and the illusion of ownership. People will pay what they want to have fun and be part of something entertaining. I won’t be paying to join an online WoW server any time soon, but I hope the folks that do have a great time while it lasts.