The usual fare

I don’t remember where I got this but it always made me think about the perfect stag do. It’s originally from the first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and really proves that, to a degree, roleplayers of the day were ugly virgins.

I listened to an early episode of feartheboot on the way into work this morning (Episode 7 if anyone is interested) and they criticised the use of tables in some circumstances (roll for mental derangements, roll for plot points in a new town, roll for orgasm) while defending them in others (roll for Battlemech enemies, roll for random treasure/loot). I find that dichotomy to be really odd and illustrates a real liking for Monty Haul style campaigns. It doesn’t matter who the baddies are, they’re just random encounters and after we kill them we’ll take their #35 on the random treasure table. I know I’m taking that a little out of context and it was an early episode from about 2 years ago but I’m working through them and sometimes I really want to say “Hey, no, I don’t think that’s right” but, jeez, it’s two years ago so who would care.

Look at the assumptions in the table (getting back to the point). Didn’t this table tell you some things? Firstly, the players were likely to be all male, as were their characters. Secondly, all harlots were female (arguably a pimp or panderer can be either). That’s kind of shocking in of itself with modern sensibilities though unsurprising considering my gaming group consists of 4 blokes and this game was aimed at teenage dorks who weren’t great at sports.

If only I hadn’t watched Fear of Girls on Google Video (and the Wikipedia link) recently.

Makes me cringe.

That said, we may have been adolescents at one point and perhaps some of us fantasised about characters such as “Bathsheba Fullbubs” or “Calime Halfelven” but then that’s why this kind of material was in the books in the first place. We weren’t sexists when we were 12 years old, we were just confused and horny. RPG books catered to what we wanted to see and we didn’t see anything different between tough looking girls in chainmail thongs and the feeble representation of wet-blanket men in Barbie commercials.

I’m glad we can laugh about this.