Gaming Muggles

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Non-Gaming Spouse

Last night I kinda barged into an interesting conversation on twitter between some of my fellow TGENerates.  This morning I thought I would write a bit about it, in a very non-standard blog post for me.  While I don’t refer to her as a Gaming Muggle…  I guess that would probably be a potential term for my own spouse.  She doesn’t identify with the term gamer, even though she owned an Atari, a Nintendo, and currently plays more mobile games than I will likely ever play in my life.  However because she tends to play spider solitaire or sudoku…  she doesn’t consider it gaming.  The truth is gaming left her when it went three dimensional, and what I mean by that is… she is capable of dealing with two dimensional planes and moving objects across them.  However since her eyes never fused completely, she struggles with depth perception type tasks… especially in the virtual world where there are far less visual queues so to where an object is in relation to other objects.  So I can remember her happily playing Tetris Attack in my college apartment, but once we moved to the Nintendo 64…  that era was pretty much dead to her.  My wife however is absolutely a geek, and we actually met due to our at the time shared IRC addiction.  We were introduced by a man in Belgium, even though we grew up thirty minutes apart.

I will admit I have always been more than a little jealous of “gamer couples”, and seeing them in the various games I have played exploring these virtual worlds together.  That said I know in the case of my wife and I we would probably just drive each other insane.  We are both extremely good at the things we do… we just get to the same conclusion in vastly different ways.  For example when we clean the house we tend to divide and conquer, each taking specific rooms.  The reason being if we are trying to clean the same room at the same time we just end up getting in each others way.  My fear is that in gaming the same would be true, with her taking one path, and me taking another…  but ultimately ending up in the same location at the end.  She has this inborn sense of direction that I have always coveted, because I have to navigate based on landmarks… and get completely lost when those landmarks are missing or have changed.  I can enter a subdivision and within minutes have no clue which direction I am going anymore… and somehow she can magically tell me exactly what our heading is at any point during the trip.  So I think she would honestly probably be far better at navigation than I would even in the virtual space.

Keeping Grounded

Over the years I have come to realize that having a non-gaming spouse is actually a big benefit for me personally.  Everquest was essentially my first MMO, and it bit hold of me hard.  Essentially the ability to explore a fantasy world was the sort of thing I had always craved, and giving me an always on persistent world to do it in…  was absolute crack.  The truth is that for most people that got really hooked on that game… it was in fact like a drug.  There were more than a few people that I know that changed almost everything about their lives to adjust to doing things in Everquest.  The ones who had it worse in a way were the ones with spouses also addicted to that game.  I watched my friends alienate other friends, blow off jobs, and ultimately destroy relationships because of it.  While playing I watched more than one marriage disintegrate, as some folks simply forgot to keep checking into the world.  Bills may or may not have gotten paid, kids and animals may or may not have gotten fed.  There was a bit of a dark underbelly to that game, and as a result it made me realize how lucky I am to have someone to forcibly pull me out of some of those mires.

To answer Liore’s question…  how does one balance?  Well having that person that isn’t doing the thing that you are doing… helps me at least realize that there is a world other than the games I happen to be playing.  It isn’t exactly easy sometimes, especially considering that the reason why I game as much as I do is because my spouse is often busy with her own work.  My wife is a rockstar teacher and because of that ends up spending upwards of eighty hours a week working on this or that item for her classroom.  She takes it all super seriously, and because of that they have piled on so many extra duties.  So there are a lot of times where I am busy with a game, and she is busy with lesson plans… and we are in completely different rooms conversing over instant messenger.  It works… because we know we are in this together.  The relationship is in the little things, and the fact that for the most part we “get” each other.  I made the comment last night that “marriage is a strange thing…  you never really know what is going to work… until it does” and that really is the case.  I don’t know how or why it works… but it does and we have been together nineteen years… and married seventeen.

Complimentary Differences

I think the reason why we work is because on some levels we are completely and utterly different people.  There are times it feels like the only thing we share in common, is our love for each other.  I love Horror and Science Fiction movies… and she loves Home Improvement Television and Crime Dramas.  She is very religious… and I am pretty deeply anti-religion in general.  But the strange thing is…  or differences make us stronger as a whole.  We are unlike most couples in that from the moment we go together we were pretty much a team.  Hell in college we pooled all of our resources into a joint bank account and pretty much supported each other, and I know married couples that have never had a joint bank account in their lives.  This common sense of struggle together means that pretty much everything is tackled as a team.  So if I don’t know how to do something, and she does… and then sometimes she doesn’t know how to do something, I do…  we have a wider range of skills that make it easier to tackle things.  I think the fundamental truth is that we have faith in each other, to do the things that we know we can’t ourselves.

What also makes it work is that for the most part we “get” and respect the things we choose to do.  While I may not understand the concepts my wife is teaching… because Math has always been my weakest area…  I get why she needs resources that her school cannot provide her, and never begrudge getting those items regardless of cost.  Similarly my wife doesn’t necessarily understand why I love Star Wars or Lego.. or the countless game franchises I do… but she is constantly on the look out for things she knows I will like.  The other day she found me an awesome R2-D2 skull cap that I plan on rocking this winter when it gets cold.  She has also come home with Legos that she happens to find on sale somewhere, thinking I would like them.  Similarly I am constantly searching for whatever things she is into, and have gone to silly lengths to track down whatever it is that she is hunting for.  So while I might have a “muggle” wife…  she certainly knows the important bits, and at the same time reminds me that there is a world just outside our door as well.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 – Castle Amber

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Today we're having a look at the second of the D&D Expert level modules, Module X2: Castle Amber, written by Tom Moldvay. X2 is a weird module both in style and content. In many ways it's similar to Gary Gygax's later Wonderland-inspired Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, drawing both directly and indirectly from multiple literary sources including Zelazny, Poe, and most strongly, Clark Ashton Smith. Castle Amber also introduces a character who goes on to become incredibly important to the ongoing Mystara setting, Etienne d'Ambreville.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 - Castle Amber
That's a 100 foot tall colossus formed of corpse flesh,
just so you're aware.

Castle Amber is split between a dungeon crawl (through the eponymous castle) and a more loosely describe adventure through the lands of Averoigne. Averoigne is described as a province of an alternate earth, based on the French province of Auvergne. Averoigne was the setting for a number of stories by the writer Clark Ashton Smith, four of which become mini-adventures in this module. Before reaching Averoigne, however, the adventuring party must brave Castle Amber and make it out intact.

The Amber family were originally the d'Ambreville's of Averoigne until they were forced to flee across dimensions and found refuge on Mystara in Glantri, a magocracy briefly described in The Isle of Dread. Being a family of powerful mages, the Amber family rose in power to the point that the head of the family was made a Prince of Glantri. The seventh Prince of the Amber family, Stephen Amber (or Etienne d'Ambreville) was one of the most powerful mages in history. Then the entire family and their mansion (Castle Amber) vanished. That was over a century ago.

The party goes to sleep one night on the road and wake to find themselves in the foyer of Castle Amber, penned in by a choking mist that prevents their leaving. To escape, they have to explore the mansion, encountering numerous members of the Amber family of varying levels of sanity, and ultimately find a gateway that transports them to Averoigne. In Averoigne, more adventuring is required to find a way back to the adventurer's home world.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 - Castle Amber
The first of the Amber family the players meet is Jean-Louis.
He likes to put on boxing matches using artificial people.
He's one of the relatively sane ones.

Many of the encounters in the mansion draw from the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, with clear references to Hop-Frog and The Fall of the House of Usher for example. Many of the Amber family have been cursed in some manner, often transformed into animal men. Even the encounters with normal monsters tend to be written in keeping with the off-kilter feel of the mansion, such as an ogre who killed Janette d'Ambreville and has been enchanted to believe it is her.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 - Castle Amber
Also there's a woman and a unicorn sleeping in the garden.
Spoiler: She's a gold dragon. Don't touch her chest.

In the course of exploring the mansion, the party can learn that the family was cursed when Prince Etienne was murdered by his brother, Henri, and Henri's wife, Catharine. To escape, they will have to travel to Averoigne through a portal in the castle dungeon and find Etienne's tomb. This leads to the second portion of the adventure where the party must explore Averoigne to find four magical items which can be used to summon the tomb. Each of those items is a reward from a short adventure drawn directly from one of Clark Ashton Smith's stories.

On reaching the tomb the party discovers that Etienne is not truly dead, but was trapped within his tomb waiting for the adventurers to free him. He teleports them all back to Glantri, resurrects up to four characters that died during the adventure (there are a lot of save or die opportunities in this module), gives everyone a magic item, and vanishes. Adventure over.

This is a module that I've never had the opportunity to run, but have always wanted to. In a lot of ways it feels like something that might better fit in Ravenloft than Mystara; it has a gothic weirdness feel throughout that would be right at home in the Demiplane of Dread. I'd probably modify the hook so that the characters are actively seeking the home of the Amber family so that it's less of a railroad, and I'd definitely want to turn a lot of the save or die encounters into less fatal punishments. Overall though, it's a really neat module with a lot to recommend it.

As I mentioned before, Etienne becomes a key player as Mystara develops. We'll see that more in depth when we get to the Glantri Gazetteer and later the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set. In short though, after being freed from his state of living death he goes on to ascend to immortality through the use of the Nucleus of the Spheres, a nuclear reactor buried deep beneath Glantri in the remains of crashed spaceship. Mystara can be weird, y'all.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 – Castle Amber

by
Today we're having a look at the second of the D&D Expert level modules, Module X2: Castle Amber, written by Tom Moldvay. X2 is a weird module both in style and content. In many ways it's similar to Gary Gygax's later Wonderland-inspired Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, drawing both directly and indirectly from multiple literary sources including Zelazny, Poe, and most strongly, Clark Ashton Smith. Castle Amber also introduces a character who goes on to become incredibly important to the ongoing Mystara setting, Etienne d'Ambreville.

That's a 100 foot tall colossus formed of corpse flesh,
just so you're aware.

Castle Amber is split between a dungeon crawl (through the eponymous castle) and a more loosely describe adventure through the lands of Averoigne. Averoigne is described as a province of an alternate earth, based on the French province of Auvergne. Averoigne was the setting for a number of stories by the writer Clark Ashton Smith, four of which become mini-adventures in this module. Before reaching Averoigne, however, the adventuring party must brave Castle Amber and make it out intact.

The Amber family were originally the d'Ambreville's of Averoigne until they were forced to flee across dimensions and found refuge on Mystara in Glantri, a magocracy briefly described in The Isle of Dread. Being a family of powerful mages, the Amber family rose in power to the point that the head of the family was made a Prince of Glantri. The seventh Prince of the Amber family, Stephen Amber (or Etienne d'Ambreville) was one of the most powerful mages in history. Then the entire family and their mansion (Castle Amber) vanished. That was over a century ago.

The party goes to sleep one night on the road and wake to find themselves in the foyer of Castle Amber, penned in by a choking mist that prevents their leaving. To escape, they have to explore the mansion, encountering numerous members of the Amber family of varying levels of sanity, and ultimately find a gateway that transports them to Averoigne. In Averoigne, more adventuring is required to find a way back to the adventurer's home world.

The first of the Amber family the players meet is Jean-Louis.
He likes to put on boxing matches using artificial people.
He's one of the relatively sane ones.

Many of the encounters in the mansion draw from the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, with clear references to Hop-Frog and The Fall of the House of Usher for example. Many of the Amber family have been cursed in some manner, often transformed into animal men. Even the encounters with normal monsters tend to be written in keeping with the off-kilter feel of the mansion, such as an ogre who killed Janette d'Ambreville and has been enchanted to believe it is her.

Also there's a woman and a unicorn sleeping in the garden.
Spoiler: She's a gold dragon. Don't touch her chest.

In the course of exploring the mansion, the party can learn that the family was cursed when Prince Etienne was murdered by his brother, Henri, and Henri's wife, Catharine. To escape, they will have to travel to Averoigne through a portal in the castle dungeon and find Etienne's tomb. This leads to the second portion of the adventure where the party must explore Averoigne to find four magical items which can be used to summon the tomb. Each of those items is a reward from a short adventure drawn directly from one of Clark Ashton Smith's stories.

On reaching the tomb the party discovers that Etienne is not truly dead, but was trapped within his tomb waiting for the adventurers to free him. He teleports them all back to Glantri, resurrects up to four characters that died during the adventure (there are a lot of save or die opportunities in this module), gives everyone a magic item, and vanishes. Adventure over.

This is a module that I've never had the opportunity to run, but have always wanted to. In a lot of ways it feels like something that might better fit in Ravenloft than Mystara; it has a gothic weirdness feel throughout that would be right at home in the Demiplane of Dread. I'd probably modify the hook so that the characters are actively seeking the home of the Amber family so that it's less of a railroad, and I'd definitely want to turn a lot of the save or die encounters into less fatal punishments. Overall though, it's a really neat module with a lot to recommend it.

As I mentioned before, Etienne becomes a key player as Mystara develops. We'll see that more in depth when we get to the Glantri Gazetteer and later the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set. In short though, after being freed from his state of living death he goes on to ascend to immortality through the use of the Nucleus of the Spheres, a nuclear reactor buried deep beneath Glantri in the remains of crashed spaceship. Mystara can be weird, y'all.

The Perks of Prestige

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This weekend marked the first of WildStar’s new in-game events. For their initial event they chose to do a double prestige weekend. If you’re unfamiliar with WildStar’s currencies, prestige is gained from PvP, and can be used to purchase PvP gear, as well as generally useful things like ability points and pets. Yes, pets are useful, they make me happy, that’s useful!

The Perks of Prestige

Looking very good for a fresh 50

I spent most of my time on my main, and frankly did so much PvP that I started getting sick of it by the end. I even chose the PvP version of the weekly elder gem quest just to try to force myself to participate as much as possible. By the time I burnt out, I had obtained a full set of PvP gear, upgraded half of it, fully runed including my 8-piece class set, and yes, purchased both pets and the blackhood cosmetic gear set.

After I had my fill of PvP I swapped over to my engineer, who has been lingering at level 47 for over a week now. I started out in Grimvault, but as soon as the Crimson Badlands quests opened up I hopped over there and started working on dailies. I had full rested plus a flask of R&R to reset my rested when it ran out, so the leveling went very quickly and I hit 50 before I knew it. And what did I do immediately upon hitting 50? PvP.

It turns out that even the vendor PvP gear at 50 is a huge upgrade from leveling gear. It also turns out that the engineer prestige PvP gear is one of my favorite sets in the game. So I spent the remainder of my evening doing even more PvP, and managed to finish out the event with a full set of the prestige gear for my engineer. I love how it makes you look like one of your bots, even down to a cute smiley bot face on the chest piece.

Now that the PvP event is finished, there’s still no rest for the wicked. Shade’s Eve is already upon us. I’ll be sure to let you know how that event goes once I rush home from work and check it out today!


The Perks of Prestige