Exalted art by Christopher Stevens

Shuffle away your cards, I'm going back to the books for this installment. And it's another d10 game, to boot!

The tagline for Exalted is pretty interesting. While most RPGs have you starting out as a powerless neophyte in a big, cruel worl, Exalted let's you begin as a godlike being with a starting roster of impressive powers. Like the PC game Black & White, your interactions with the population of your native land and followers is just as important as taking on quests and enemies. This is a game where you and the other players must ask the difficult question, "Is it better to be feared or revered?"

It's a nice gimmick and good way to set Exalted apart from its other White Wolf brethren. Your typical adventure in Exalted takes place on a whole other scale than most other pencil and paper games, resulting in scenarios you just don't see in Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade. While the physical process of playing the game is the same as any other, the different scale can help players adjust their perceptions and the game can even act as a palette cleanser of sorts when the usual d20 stuff grows tiresome.

The game's influences are many and varied, but I guess if one wanted to oversimplify it could be described as The Bible crossed with the anime Ninja Scroll. There's an "anime" look to the art, provided by Brian Glass and UDON studio, another thing separating the game from most others on store shelves. I have the Second Edition book myself, and it has tons of comic inserts that, if not for the digital coloring, look like something you'd find in Shonen Jump.

Exalted was designed to be the launching point for a World of Darkness-like setting called the "Age of Sorrows". This is a pre-history setting where the bronze age meets feudal Japan, and certain divine people are gifted the powers of various deities. (Interestingly, the Age of Sorrows was originally intended to be a canon precursor to the World of Darkness, but as time wore on, these connections were made less and less.) The titular Exalted have slain their predecessors, The Primordials, and are in the process of divvying up the world.

There are seven varieties of "Exalts", or character classes, in the core book and several more were introduced in various expansion books. Among them are various godly and demonic archetypes like the Solar Exalted (Apollo) and Infernal Exalted (Japanese Oni). While these groupings simulate the bloodlines from Vampire, the "flaws" that balance characters in d10 games are represented by curses.

(This is something I totally forgot to mention during my multi-part reflection on the World of Darkness; Flaws are a system of defects used at the point of character creation designed to balance out a really strong character. In some games, you have the option to make a more powerful character at the cost of adding extra flaws to your character. Curses operate much the same.)

This game hit at a time when anime and manga were bcoming fairly ubiquitous in the united states and series like Inuyasha were gaining quite a following. Adventures like those seen in Inuyasha (or shows like Dragonball or Saiyuki) were pretty easy to replicate using Exalted's rules. I guess you could look at Exalted as a method of getting your otaku friends into pencil and paper RPGs.

(There's also BESM and the Tri-Stat games, but that's a topic for another post . . .)

Like all White Wolf properties, there was no shortage of expansion materials and original novels based on the lore and setting of Exalted. Each branch of the Exalted and every school of Essence manipulation could be explored to its fullest. But before you go hunting on eBay . . .

2016 sees the release of a Third Edition for the game. Released just this past April, this game borrows bits of new mechanics from the "New" World of Darkness introduced in the mid-2000's. Once I'm out of this Ramen phase I currently exist in, I'll have to give this one a look.

Thanks for reading!
Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
More galactic battles: Work/Shoot

A ki blast from the past

An infant is rocketed away from a dying planet. On Earth, he's given a moral compass and raised to represent all that is good. His alien biology gives him powers far beyond those of mortal men. He grows up here among us, fighting to protect our world from devastation at the hands of criminals, war mongers, and galactic tyrants.

Sound familiar?

The parallels between Goku's origin in Dragonball Z and Superman's origin enraptured my young imagination. Superman comics don't always land with a modern audience, and even I was growing tired of the Man of Steel in my adolescent and teenage years. DBZ seemed like a fresh take on an old favorite, and the martial arts stuff didn't hurt either. I had a new obsession, and a new world to explore.

In 2000, card games seemed to be everywhere. From the lunch table at school to the back room of a dingy card game shop at the mall, there was always another collector, another player, another rival. Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering were already invading my headspace on a daily basis, but when my love of deck building and battling crossed over with my love of Toonami's latest hit cartoon show, "hopeless" doesn't even begin to describe how deeply I fell into it.

The Dragonball Z Collectible Card Game from Score wasn't the first DBZ game; that distinction goes to the Ani-Mayhem game. However, Score picked up the license and ran with it just as the DBZ phenomenon was really coming into its own. The strange-at-first spikey-haired protagonists used to be relegated to the import pages video game mags like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Gamefan, but now (thanks in no small part to the anime boom of the late 90's and early 00's) it was pretty hard to avoid.

This game was a learning experience, both for new players and for the designers of the game itself. While Pokemon and Magic both used a system that was similar enough that new players of either game could cross over, DBZ used a strange new rules system that would require a little getting used to.

In place of setting various monsters or summons on the play field, the DBZ CCG employed a system of "personality cards" that centered your deck and play experience around one main character, or "main personality". Powering up your main character through various means would allow you to level up your main guy or gal and that's how forms like the now-infamous Super Saiyan stages were achieved.

Combat consisted of hurling attack cards at your opponent during a "combat phase" and waiting to see if your opponent could deflect them with cards of his or her own. A preliminary "non-combat phase" allowed players to boost their main personality's stats or use other cards to stack the deck in their favor. Non-combat cards could be compared to Pokemon's Trainer cards or Magic's Instant and Sorcery cards.I always found this system clumsy and the vague rules inserted with the initial starter sets only led to many time consuming disputes about who exactly did what.

One aspect of the game that I did enjoy was dealing damage. Rather than marking hit points on a given character with damage tokens or somesuch, once the values were calculated you would damage the opponent by bumping cards off the top of their deck into their discard pile. The notion of both players using their actual decks as life meters was endlessly fascinating to me. I know this most likely wasn't the first time something like this made its way into a card game (Magic had Millstone for instance), but it was my first exposure to the concept and I thought it rocked.

Let's talk about promos. The rarest of the rare (sometimes).

The DBZ CCG was flooded with promotional cards, some of which becoming the game's very first big ticket items, going for a quite a bit of scratch on the then-fledgling eBay. The thing about "rare" and promo level cards in DBZ is that they were usually quite a bit stronger than the stuff you'd get in booster packs. This led to a "whoever has the most money will have the best deck" kind of situation and gave early detractors of the game something to latch onto when backing up their ire.

The sets themselves were based around the various story arcs from the show. You had the Saiyan Saga, the Frieza Saga, the Trunks saga and so on. This led to what must have been a challenging hurdle for the game designers moving forward: as characters on the show become stronger with each arc, how will older cards stay useful and/or relevant?


Therein lies the major problem with Score's game. They never found a way to keep most of the cards from earlier sets viable. Combine that with ever-shifting rules and constantly revised errata and you have a hot mess of a game. It also didn't help that there wasn't a clear vocabulary for in-game terms. Some cards were worded so vaguely that they were banned in my area altogether because of the disputes they caused. This didn't derail the gravy train for some time though, as new expansions were bring churned out up until 2006. It makes sense, as that's when I personally remember a lot of fans at this time transitioning to different "more sophisticated" genres of anime.

(Not me tho! Hair and yelling and punching FOREVER!)

At that point in '06, the paths diverge for players hungry for more DBZ card gaming goodness. Virtual expansion sets for Score's game showed up online and the game has a dedicated following to this day. Meanwhile, Bandai snapped up the license in 2008 and started their own card game line with different rules.

This card game, like so many fads from my junior high days, came and went like a raging storm. It was a whole lot of sound and fury while it was here, but as soon as it dried up, nothing remained but desolation and empty wallets to tell it had ever been. Thanks for reading!

Twitter: @ChrisBComics
Facebook: chris.bearden.98
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
More gaming stuff: Age of Mega

My Ascension (Part 4)

Reboots. We all hate 'em, am I right?

Well, if you were to poll the internet about pretty much any relaunch or reboot, you'd see that the shock of the new is enough to drive fanboys of any hobby into a frothing madness. This applies to the World of Darkness games I've been blathering on about for the last few posts.

In August 2004, White Wolf attempted to inject new life into the World of Darkness with some slick new RPG books, using character types that were similar in name and tone to the their previous line. Vampire: The Masquerade became Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Apocalypse became Werewolf: The Forsaken and so on and so forth. They also introduced some new character archetypes in the form of Promethean and Geist, referring to golems and ghosts respectively.

2004 was probably the peak of my personal interest in playing and running games. Back in those heady days, I'd run a D&D game here and there, a Star Wars session every once in a while, and a weekly World of Darkness campaign. Mage had been my favorite of the original line of books, so when the new edition, Mage: The Awakening was announced, I set aside my bias toward the old World of Darkness and decided to give the new stuff a go.

My initial impressions weren't positive. It had nothing to do with the new lore, clans, and powers but rather, the system itself had been modified by those sneaky little devils consumerism and synergy into something designed to sap a bit more money from eager gamers who wanted to dip their toe in d10.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the World of Darkness books could cross over, but were also capable of being played independently. For example, if the only book you had was Changeling, all the rules and systems were explained within and could carry over once you got a new book like Demon or Hunter. The new books that started dropping in 2004 employed a "core rulebook" a la D&D or Star Wars entitled, you guessed it, World of Darkness. Along with rules for normal "mortal" characters, this book had a foundation for the rules that was not replicated in the others. You had to at least buy this core book before you could dive into the others. It rubbed me the wrong way.

Wanting ever so badly to put my new books to use, I decided to let my frustrations go and embrace the New. Part of easing me into the process was the astounding work in the book Promethean: The Created. Promethean characters were tied to things like Frankenstein's Monster and the Jewish Golem; homunculi would wander the world long after their creators had passed, inadvertently harming the world (and other players) around them. These characters were antithetical to teamwork and were almost designed to be played solo. It was a burden to have one in your group. An interesting burden rife with storytelling potential.

The new Changeling lore was fascinating as well. Horrifying incidents like child abduction and substance abuse were reframed as the influence of things "from beyond", yet it was done in an ambiguous way to make players more paranoid. "Is this really my life?" "Is this really my son/daughter?" It was creepy and worked on levels well beyond the usual let's-fling-powers-at-each-other kind of thing that a lot of World of Darkness games could devolve into.

It's my impression that the New World of Darkness (funny I keep calling it new, it's over a decade old at this point) employed a tone within it's rules and explanations that rubbed people the wrong way. There was an emphasis on theater arts and certain terms that had been pen and paper staples up to that point were abandoned. It never really bothered me to be honest. Call 'em a "dungeon master" or a "storyteller" or a "chronicler", it still boils down to rolling dice, taking notes, and doing funny voices at one another. Nonetheless, this new attitude might have acted as another strike against it.

But don't fret, oldies. Even though this abominable reboot continues to thrive to this day, it will never erase your Masquerades or your Ascensions. As a famous author once noted when asked about theatrical versions of his works "ruining" the originals, "My books are fine. They're right there on the shelf."

Thanks for reading! Let me know how wrong I am in the comments section, or on Twitter where I go by the handle @ChrisBComics. And they call me that because occasionally I do a little Back Issue Diving.

Next time on Tabletop Legends - I'll be jumping back into the world of collectible card games and I'll give you a hint as to which one: It rhymes with Fraggin Mall Tee. See ya then!

My Ascension (Part 3)

Mage had been my formal introduction to the "World of Darkness" series of games. These were interlocking RPG settings that ranged from Vampire: The Masquerade to Demon: The Fallen and everything in between. The core d10 rules were (mostly) the same, allowing characters of all types in interact with one another.

(Be careful, though. They weren't all balanced to the point of being chummy. For example, you wouldn't want to be a novice Hunter and get on the bad side of your Vampire buddy. There's definitely a food chain.)

Each new book exposed another layer of the "World of Darkness", or oWoD. The books I played most with are collectively referred to as the oWoD since they're the "old" World of Darkness. Just over a decade ago, a new series of books with updated rules and setting started flooding shelves which fans lovingly refer to as the "New World of Darkness".

Anyhoo, Vampires, Werewolves, Changelings . . . they all walk among us, living in their secret societies, enacting their secret rituals, and participating in their own feuds and fiefdoms. The lengths that authors like Mark Rein-Hagen went to present these worlds as parallel to our own has always fascinated me. If you've ever seen Blade or read an Anne Rice novel, it's not hard to imagine how a group of vampires could be posing as club kids, but in books like Changeling, fae lore was applied to some rather common human occurrences. These clandestine societies aren't emerging, they've been here all along, coexisting (or at least, attempting to) with mankind.

Use of the "real" world in oWoD games was encouraged so much that eventually publisher White Wolf would eventually put together city-specific sourcebooks. I never had any of these myself, but I could see a younger me getting absorbed into the Chicago or New Orleans sourcebook, cross referencing the landmarks mentioned in each with their real-life counterparts. It's a neat angle, and a fun way to expand a game.

The interconnected nature of these games led to some hilarious altercations during my time as a oWoD storyteller. One player was a Vampire of the Camarilla sect, adhering to strict traditions and enforcing Kindred law. He clashed quite a bit with the two free-wheeling Mages in our group, who wanted nothing more than to expose shams like "The Masquerade" as if they were The Lone Gunmen or something. Those particular players didn't get on so hot in real life either, resulting in bickering from both sides that would morph in and out of character. Funny how players try to create a character that isn't like them, but most times in the area of role playing, let their own personality traits shine through.

The World of Darkness was always something I wanted to be more involved with, but I drifted away from gaming for a spell and even got rid of my books. (D'oh!) In 2007, I saw some of the New World of Darkness products at a Barnes & Noble and decided to give them a try. Naturally, there was a lot of hate from older fans about them even existing, but I was surprised at what I'd found.

To be continued . . .

Thanks for reading!
Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com

My Ascension (Part 2)

Monism is the belief in a singleness or oneness of a concept. A center point that applies to any art or discipline. As a technique evolves over time, divergent paths form.

Monism is at the center of Mage: The Ascension. According to the lore presented in the core rule book, groups like the Nephandi of the Near East brought about the "Mythic ages" through their study and worship of deific forms. "God" is a word that gets thrown around a lot, especially in my neck of the woods, but it's a fitting title for these thoughtforms, as they shift bodies and slither from one century to the next.

A single God. How quaint. How simple it must be to live under one divine structure. You're probably wondering what this has to do with a role playing game. It's all about communicating with gods! Let's circle back to that tiny apartment where I participated in my first Mage session . . .

Like a 'Nam flashback, the scene returns to me. I can "see" it still. My character attempted to use matter manipulation to trap an agent of the Technocracy within the wreckage of his own overturned S.U.V. After a jump-scare right out of Terminator, my fellow mages and I were relieved to learn that the Technocratic agent was in fact disabled, and his final threatening gesture was little more than a death rattle.

(Assuming robots can "die", but that's spitting hairs.)

Before we could celebrate out victory over the establishment, Paradox set in. While bending metal and rubber and concrete to my will was an impressive feat, I'd upset something old and primal in the universe. A strange sensation enveloped my character, then a sharp pain. Then a bulge appeared under his shirt . . . I remove it to find something that wasn't there before: a tiny limb, fresh and pale and underdeveloped was growing from my abdomen.

I made a mistake. My magic hadn't been coincidental enough. I'd pushed on the walls of reality and reality said, "No bruh," and pushed back. So there we were, running back to our safe house after barely surviving a bout with the Technocracy, a gimpy little arm protruding from where it shouldn't.

I warned you things would get weird.

A couple of years later. A different campaign. A different character. I had much more history and lore under my belt, and I was better prepared for what my storyteller was going to throw at me. And I had a secret weapon, to boot. I had "God" on my side, or at least something very similar.

A member of the Virtual Adept (one class of Mage), I utilized telecommunications to make my psychic commands more coincidental and less offensive to the universe. Thanks to Neil Gaiman's American Gods, I had a different understanding of how deific forms might operate in our world and I wanted to use that knowledge to the fullest.

Our group had infiltrated a secret hideout of the Void Engineers, a subsection of the Technocracy that specializes in extradimensional travel. They'd found something from beyond, a very old and very powerful machine that could tip the scales in their favor and obliterate magic once and for all.

Attempting to stop them from cracking the dimensional barrier and recovering the Old Machine, I used a megaphone to not only magnify my voice, but give a destructive sonic force to my words. Like the voice of the Almighty in Dogma, techno-skulls cracked and exploded from the force of the sound. My previous character's trick with the wrecked car paled in comparison to this stunt, but thanks to coincidental nature of the move and a hot roll of the dice, I received very little in the way of cosmic punishment.

The Judeo-Christian God might have sat this one out, but Hermes, master communicator of the Greek pantheon, was by my side.

As you can see, Mage: The Ascension (and all of the White Wolf games for that matter) tends to dip into much stranger territory than your usual run-of-the-mill Dungeons & Dragons game. To be honest, the two scenarios I (poorly) described up above are two of the more tamer instances of my friends and I tampering with forces beyond our comprehension.

Having at least a rudimentary understanding of how Mages work, the next step was to integrate some of the other character types from the World of Darkness. Free-wheeling mages fighting cyborgs is fun for a session or three, but the real wacky stuff begins when you incorporate vampires, lychans, and fae lore into your campaign.

It was time to go book shopping!

To Be Continued . . .

Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
More gaming stuff: Age of Mega

My Ascension (Part 1)

After having cut my teeth on Dungeons & Dragons and the Star Wars d20 role playing games, I thought I was hot snot on a silver platter when it came to pencil and paper games.

But I wasn't hot snot at all. I was a cold booger on a paper plate.

Y'see, while Wizards of the Coast's games taught me the basics of how to build a world and run a campaign, it was Mage: The Ascension that taught me how to RP.

Yeah, that's right. Mage. Not Vampire: The Masquerade or Werewolf: The Apocalypse, but their ugly cousin Mage. The friend and fellow role player who brought me into the fold described Mage as "The Matrix before The Matrix". The Wachowski's science fiction opus was still fresh in my mind as the coolest thing since Super Nintendo, so it was the kind of descriptor that drew me right in.

(Well, I did have a brief run-in with the Street Fighter d10 game, but that's a whole other can of beans for another time. Let's just say our first and only game ended with Spanish matador Vega losing a bout due to what I now know as erectile dysfunction. I'll leave it at that. More to come in the future . . . maybe . . .)

Mage, and the rest of its World of Darkness brethren, aren't too dissimilar to D&D or Star Wars when it comes to the components used. You need pencils, character sheets, dice, and a couple of heavy hardback books. But that is where the similarities end. World of Darkness games (WoD for short) employ one kind of die for all decision making, from diplomacy to initiative to damage: the d10.

What's neat about this is that in a pinch, you could even play the entire game with a single d10. Of course that would make for a pretty long day at the office. The systems in the game have you performing multiple die rolls for single actions and trying to get "successes". For example, a player might have a chance to roll up to eight dice for damage from a particular weapon, but only die rolls of let's say, six or higher count as successes. The number of successes determines the actual damage dealt.

(Eh, explaining the minutia of these things might not be my strong suit.) 

Anyhoo, back to the differences. Characters in WoD games don't really "level up" in the traditional sense. Instead, experience points are used to upgrade individual stats and skills. I always liked this from a role playing standpoint. Rather than just having your character get magically stronger, you can explain your growth as training in a particular skill. It makes the whole thing feel less like Diablo and more like Final Fantasy X, with its sphere grid system.

The books themselves are a real treat. Whereas the D&D Player's Handbook is literally just a collection of races, classes, and other stat fields to be filled, the WoD books mix rules with narrative and have little short stories set in the world strewn throughout, simultaneously introducing you to a mysterious new contemporary setting while also being (for the most part) well-written little supernatural ditties.

I was immediately stricken by this as I flipped through my friend's Mage book. I probably couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but this strange new game had so much more personality than the d20 I'd encountered before. This world felt so fleshed out and full of nuance, while D&D felt vague and almost too open ended for me.

My first Mage session consisted of me and two other guys running for our lives from the Technocracy and trying to make sense of our bizarre and often inpredictable abilities. It was a learning experience and our Storyteller (the WoD version of a dungeon master) felt the best way for us to learn to swim was to be tossed into the deep end of the pool.

Like it says on the tin, Mage is a game about magic and how it functions in the real world. The influences on the setting are all over the place, from Kabbalah to modern chaos magic. As I would soon learn, the trick to using magic in Mage isn't about balancing spells per day or mana points, it's about making the things you do seem coincidental, so as not to disturb the fabric of reality and alert the fascist and very Agent Smith-like Technocracy to your presence.

When a player oversteps those boundaries, reality bites back. And that's where things can get weird . . .

To Be Continued!

Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
More Gamer Stuff: Age of Mega

You'll never catch 'em all

I saw a video yesterday claiming that my old Pokemon cards could be worth serious cash now that Pokemon Go have reinvigorated the franchise. I hope, for my sanity, that the video was blowing the actual figures out of proportion, since I got rid of my cards a while back. That's right--I traded in my nest egg for peanuts, which is why I'm writing this from a one bedroom apartment instead of a yacht somewhere.

To be honest, the scummy side of collectible card games (collecting, hoarding, selling online) never really appealed to me. I consider myself a gaming purist. I like to play the game, learn its systems, crack it open, and figure out what the best possible deck I can construct is. It probably reads as pretentious, but I'm just not a big fan of the parasitic collectors' mentality. It's about the love of the game, maaan.

Pokemon was my first card game. Well, as long we're not counting Go Fish and Bridge. I'm not exactly certain where I got my first deck, but I remember the first place I saw the cards: the school cafeteria.

The lunch table was our weekday battleground. Well before any one of my peers was old enough to really develop taste, fads were all encompassing. Nearly every kid in my junior high school at least brushed up against the Pokemon craze. It became such a menace to the faculty, that the powers that be even had to enact a ban on card games of all types. I remember the message coming across the P.A. system on the morning announcements; I still like to refer to it as "Black Friday".

(Of course when I mention "Black Friday" in a hushed whisper to my friends, they assume I'm talking about shopping, so maybe that day which will live in infamy needs a new moniker . . .)

There are always levels of fandom. For every five kids that bought booster packs and collected the cards, only one of them might actually know the rules to building a deck and playing the actual game. Heck, maybe one in ten even had a rulebook, since they only came with the Starter Set. So naturally a system of backyard rules developed.

In our "backyard rules", energy cards were mostly considered chaff and went unused. Players would drop their Pokemon on the play field willy-nilly, and the same would occur with Trainer cards. Attacks were declared without any thought given to their energy cost. Coin flips were rigged. Resistance to fighting type Pokemon was regularly ignored. Haunter could put your Pokemon to sleep effortlessly, and all you could do was fight back tears as he Dream Eater'd your Charizard three times in a row, uninterrupted.

It was anarchy.

A close friend of mine would later take on the Herculean task of teaching me the proper rules and how to go about building a functioning deck. I was a dense little kid, so I imagine it must've been a great deal frustrating to explain these rather abstract concepts to me. I still remember his game winning Scyther set up using the Double Colorless Energy, a combination that would result in a turn two K.O. of most starter Pokemon. Slowly but surely, gears started turning and the mechanics of the game made sense to me.

Then, of course, Magic: The Gathering happened. I don't want to diminish Pokemon in any way, but I always felt like Magic was Pokemon's more sophisticated older sister. The games were similar enough in their mechanics however, that the more I learned about Magic, the more I understood about Pokemon.

The Pokemon card game's time in my life came and went in about a two or three year window. I most fondly remember the first five sets (Base, Jungle, Fossil, Base 2, and Team Rocket). I vaguely recall getting some of the Gym Challenge preconstructed decks, but I'm not sure I ever used any of them. By then, Magic, D&D, and various and sundry other games were consuming my time and allowance.

The game continues to this day, although it is no longer under the Wizards of the Coast umbrella. Just like the video games and anime upon which the game is based, new generations of Pokemon creatures crop up every couple of years, making the game's tagline, "Gotta catch 'em all" even more of a bad joke as time wears on.

You can never catch them all, young padawan. But you'll learn that in time, just as I did. Thanks for reading as always, and you can drop me a line on Twitter (@ChrisBComics) or via e-mail (backissuechris@gmail.com).

Wizards of the Coast likes to cross the streams

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just re-release it."

That may very well be the motto of Wizards of the Coast. I can't say for sure, I've never been in their offices, but that does seem to be their formula for success. It's not just from a product standpoint either, it also applies to their game design philosophy.

If you compare the Pokemon card game and Magic: The Gathering, you'll quickly notice how similar the games are. They both use a finite resource (Lands in Magic and Energies in Pokemon) to pace the game and the manipulation of those resources can "swing" the game in one player's favor. With Magic, Richard Garfield and his team had stumbled onto a system that was infinitely malleable and with the five colors designed to balance one another out, a network of checks and balances formed over time. WotC's R&D department mined this when designing Pokemon. With fluffy cuddly anime creatures in place of gothic horror and medieval trappings, they could sell their core game to a whole new audience of little kids and video gamers.

Now let's look at Dungeons & Dragons for a second. D&D employed an ever expanding system of dice, maps, counters, and character sheets. It evolved over time and from publisher to publisher to include new varieties of dice and more complex, intricate rules. The more complex it got, the more potential there was for character nuance. There were only a handful of classes early on, but by the time we got Third Edition, there were several options for players of all personality types. Hand to hand fighters could embrace the Monk class rather than just be "yet another fighter" and spell casters could now come in a plethora of flavors, whether they be religious in nature like the cleric or arcane in nature like the sorcerer.

WotC's Third Edition D&D products were big sellers and the d20 system itself caught on the same way a game development kit like the Unreal engine might. It could be shaped to any setting with just a few tweaks and changes to terminology. So when Star Wars original tabletop outing from West End Games flopped, who do you think was there, ready to graft their coveted new d20 system onto an established (and very profitable) property?

Oh, and did I mention Star Wars Episode One was on the horizon?

 The Star Wars Role Playing Game was quite a brilliant little piece of plastic surgery. If you peel back the layers even the tiniest bit, the game's D&D roots show through, and not just because of the dice and character sheets. Magic employed by spell casters in D&D was converted into The Force. Rather than the limitations brought on by spells per day, players had to spend "force points" to commit feats like grabbing a weapon that had been knocked from one's hand or zapping a foe with lightning.

Speaking of Force Lightning, the morality/alignment system that had been a staple in D&D was modified quite cleverly into a Light Side/ Dark Side mechanic. Characters who enacted heinous deeds would become drawn to and corrupted by the dark side of the force, a curse that could sometimes manifest in deformities and other grotesque punishments.

(One thing I really dig about the Star Wars d20 game is how the whole game can be played from one core rulebook. No monster manual or dungeon master's guide required, although there are Star Wars-themed equivalents if you want to expand your universe and go beyond the films.)

I'll always refer to myself as a dungeon master, but if I were to tally all the hours spent in either of the two primary d20 settings, my time in the stars fighting the Empire probably dwarfs my time fighting beholders and kobolds. This was the game that taught me how to run a game as well. After a friend and I attended a game session featuring some of the "cooler, older high school kids", I saw how a DM (or GM in the case of Star Wars) conducted oneself and how communication with the players and setting a scene could enthrall a group of people.

Anyway, kudos to WotC, soulless corporation that I'm sure they are, for perfecting a formula and unleashing it on my pre-teen mind. They might paint your trash gold and try to sell it back to you, but remember: as much as you might take issue with the changes in Fifth Edition or Sixth Edition or whatever they're on at this point, there's some dork like you who's going to experience it for the first time.

Thanks for reading!
Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com

Little plastic heroes

Commissioner Gordon was dead asleep when he got the call; there's a disturbance downtown. He arrives on the scene to find his best officers at war with someone calling himself "Constrictor". The freak with the coils is a new face to Gordon, but new weirdos are always crawling out of the woodwork in Gotham City.

"We'll take care of this," a commanding voice reassures him from behind. Gordon spins around to see a man in a black jumpsuit and visor. "I'm Cyclops. Tell your men to stand clear."

Gordon and the others hardly have time to react as a bright red flash envelopes the street. "Constrictor" takes an optic blast to the face and staggers back. Just when the cops and their mutant savior think order has been restored, a massive figures appears from behind First National. It brushes against the third story of the building and sends debris flying.

Gordon recognizes the giant from the news. It's an alien named Sinestro, spotted in battle with the Green Lantern near Coast City every now and then. Within the massive yellow frame is the culprit himself, cackling as chaos reigns down on Gotham's finest.

That is your average game of Heroclix, if you bother to try and cram a narrative into it.

As a young tabletop gaming fanatic, one of the bigger crazes had passed me by: Mage Knight. Derided by some as a "dumbed down" version of the miniature gaming classic Warhammer, MK was a tabletop strategy game with pre-painted figures designed to work on a grid. It was a quick and dirty version of Warhammer in my opinion, and while it was quite popular, the price per booster value and my adolescent income kept me away.

Two years later, the superhero themed successor to MK, Heroclix, appeared on shelves. A friend of mine bought the two player starter set (or two one player sets, I can't remember) and brought it over one Saturday morning. After fiddling with the rules for a mere hour, we were already having 200 point battles with relative ease.

(One hour is hella quick when learning the rules to any new tabletop game and I don't think I've picked up any game quite that fast. This stuff is streamlined, baby.)

Adding to the appeal of Heroclix for me was the comic book angle. By this point, I was an avid reader of pretty much any Marvel or DC title I could get my hands on, and I had even ventured into "indy" books like Hellboy and Usagi Yojimbo. I was at the perfect age to want to reconstruct my favorite battles or even attempt previously unseen crossovers between characters from different publishing universes.

The game's mechanics, between special rules on cards and color coded rules on the figures' dials themselves, allowed for pretty much any superpower, from Gambit's energy-charged playing cards to Superman's flight and invulnerability. Non-powered heroes like Batman could even the playing field thanks to abilities like "outwit", which would allow him to disable another character's power for a turn.

And let me just say, of all the Heroclix matches I won against my friends, there wasn't a single one that didn't involve me abusing the outwit power with the dark knight or Prince T'Challa.

The game took on the life cycle of any fad. It had an intense following for a short period of time and then the competitive scene just sort of dried up. On a national scale, the game did much the same thing, fading into obscurity around 2003. Topps would take on production of the game, but by then, it had faded in my personal rearview mirror.

Six years later, the NECA (National Entertainment Collectibles Association) would snap up the rights to keep the game going, and through some canny moves like unveiling new prize and deluxe figures at prominent comic conventions like SDCC, would inject new life into it.

Heroclix for me represents a transitional state in my personal gaming history. It was with this game, I would come to appreciate the hobbyist side of gaming; collecting, repainting, and building that perfect picturesque army or superhero team. But little did I realize, a juggernaut (not Cain Marko) called Warhammer 40,000 was waiting for me right around the corner . . .

Customizing figures became a pastime of my friend, the same one who introduced me to the game. He even had a local Warhammer enthusiast repaint some of his figures and make some, let's call them "modifications". Lex Luthor's head on a Green Lantern figure? The GREEN LUTHOR is born!

Me? I was trying to put together my very own Justice Society of America, which was a favorite title of mine at the time. But then I got sidetracked trying to build the perfect Gotham City police team, and then there were the giant figures like Sinestro and the mutant-hunting Sentinel. Oh, and then of course I can't forget my Silver Age Avengers led by the Wasp. And then there was--

Well, as you can see, things spun out of control pretty quickly. Thanks for reading!

Twitter: @ChrisBComics 
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
More Superhero Stuff: Back Issue Diving

A poor man's video game

I remember looking at a friend's copy of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebook when I was too young to really "get" it.

Thumbing through the pages, I was stricken by the illustrations and the blurbs of text describing each monster, item, or spell. There were also stats and equations along with each one. I must have been visibly scratching my head because something prompted my friend to explain it to me.

"This number is the damage. This is the strength requirement . . ." and so on.

I imagined a role playing video game in my mind. I'd only seen a few up to that point, so the game in my mind's eye was probably Shining Force or Earthbound. As he explained how the dungeon master and the players would incorporate each stat into the game, the picture in my head grew clearer.

"Oh! So this is like a poor man's video game!" and my friend reluctantly agreed.

I didn't mean to tear down pen and paper RPGs with that comment; that's just the way I pictured it in my head. I wouldn't actually play in a campaign or own any D&D books until a couple of years after that, but this notion of "video games you play in your mind" stuck with me.

It's funny. There's no thought given to using one's imagination. We do it all the time. Given the framework of a game, with hard rules and statistics dictating things, "playing pretend" suddenly takes on this whole other context. Heck, there was even a certain amount of fear-mongering from concerned Christian parents about the psychological effects of playing these games and the demonic themes expressed by some of the monsters and in-game deities.

Anyone up for Mazes & Monsters?

It isn't hard to imagine young me circling back around to D&D later on in my adolescence. Magic: The Gathering was already slowly consuming my life, and it contained the same sword and sorcery elements that my young mind seemed to gravitate to. I guess my appreciation for D&D (and other tabletop games in general) came from an increased attention span and the patience one finds while being tormented regularly in junior high school.

D&D wasn't just a poor man's video game. It was escape fiction that put the player in the driver's seat. Unlike the empowerment I'd found from constructing a really good Magic deck, D&D would allow me to become someone or something else entirely. And when I eventually stepped into the role of dungeon master for our little troupe, I could become a god!

I'm sure it was no small coincidence that I got into D&D just as it was being scooped up by Wizards of the Coast, makers of Magic: The Gathering. Like Disney buying Marvel Comics over a decade later, these giant corporations were absorbing all of my passions and force feeding them to me ad nauseam.

I've recently uncovered my old 3.0 books and I think they warrant some further exploration as I travel back in time and revisit my gaming roots, but for now all I'll say is thanks for reading and keep playing those poor man's video games.

Follow me on Twitter (@ChrisBComics) for more random encounters.

Magic: The Gathering flashes in my memory

Obviously I don't have enough blogs, even between my comic book ramblings at Back Issue Diving and my wrestling analysis at Work/Shoot, so here goes another one. This is a special place for all of my tabletop gaming memories, be they sweet or sour.

I was quite awkward in my youth and social interaction didn't come naturally, so gaming was my escape. Whole new worlds were contained between the covers of DM Guides and sourcebooks, and in those worlds I could become something more than myself. Brave, strong, smart, and imposing . . . everything I wasn't as a pudgy lad.

Before pen and paper role playing games enveloped me, collectible card games were my "in" at the local game shop. (Armchair Commanders in Corpus Christi, R.I.P.) I'd fiddled with Pokemon, mostly just collecting the cards and scouring the schoolyard for holofoils, but the real beginning of my paper passion was the old standby, Magic: The Gathering.

The game itself began life in 1993, but players were well into the Masques and Invasion blocks by the time I cracked my first booster. I *think* the preconstructed deck pictured above was the first purchase I made, but I also remember getting a box full of junk cards from a schoolmate, so I can't say.

I saw the similarities in game design between my two card game hobbies right away; Pokemon had energy cards while Magic had lands, Pokemon had trainer cards while Magic had instants and sorceries. I'm sure it was a bumpy transition at first, but soon enough I was piloting a white weenie deck against my friends, using Angelic might to purify the land and scorch my foes with my holy light.

Pokemon slid farther and farther into my rearview as I became engrossed with the Magic saga, thanks in no small part to the stunning artwork that has always been a staple of the game. Wizards of the Coast, the game makers, spare no expense in getting the best mind-blowing art that blends Tolkien's fantasy stories with the stranger settings of Marion Zimmer Bradley. There's even a bit of steampunk in there from time to time, thanks to the Goblins and their zany inventions.

I would eventually meld my love of Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons of Dragons into a lengthy roleplaying campaign using the setting from a few of the magic sets, chiefly the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks. That's my "golden era" of Magic. Those cards, those decks, those dark themes . . . that's the stuff I always go back to whenever I feel the tingle to get in the mix again.

I did buy some cards last year and I have to say, as much as things in Magic might change from a minutia perspective, the game is basically the same. I was back to battling after only a few hands.

As I dive deeper into my personal history with tabletop games and CCGs, I hope to find a common link between them. There's something scientific in these games, something that plays havoc with my brain chemistry and keeps me coming back every few years. Anyhoo, thanks for reading and hit me up on Twitter (@ChrisBComics) for more frivolity.