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.