Heh. But like I said, Cecil mis-quoted the passage slightly. He wrote “7758 h.p.” (meaning it takes 7758 hit points of damage to kill you), but the passage actually said “7758 x.p.” (meaning someone who killed you would earn 7758 experience points).
Plus, how do we know you’re really a huge ancient spell-using red dragon, and not just some smaller, younger red dragon using his daddy’s computer?
tracer, I can assure you that I’m a large red dragon. I know Cecil’s folly, but hey, 7758 hit points is a lot better than xp. That means that knights reading Unca’s article will see that I am not worth killing. Hey, anyone want s’mores? I got a roaster built in.
There are actual incidents on which these stories are based. But as usual, such stories get embellished. Do a web search on “Pat Pulling” or “Bink Pulling.” You’ll get tons of good hits. As they say on the X Files, the truth is out there.
This is why I posted the Stackpole link on page 1. He discusses not only the Pulling story but I think four or five others, all from information Pat Pulling was disseminating (so sue me, my dictionary’s at home. :))
However, as Ms. Pulling has shuffled off this mortal coil, even I’m inclined to say, “let’s not drag her name through the muck anymore.” After all, she did a marvelous job on herself.
One thing I will always remember (played AD&D from 1980 - 1986) was a Christian Science Monitor article about D&D published in about 1982. This piece of trash was so full of mis-statements, inaccuracies, and what could only be outright lies, that it destroyed any notion of mine forever that it was the “Most Unbiased Newspaper on the Planet”. The article was accompanied by a staged picture of a young boy with an exaggerated drugged experession, surrounded by lead figures of demons and devils, a giant pentagram, etc. etc.
I remember the final line of the article: “Who could possibly oppose such a game but a bunch of Christians?” “Most Unbiased Newspaper in the World” my ass.
Here’s a CSM related hijack - I had an International Relations class in college where one of the requirements of the professor was to purchase a subscritption to the CSM for at least one year - it was worth 2% of your grade. And no one complained in the least to the administration (and I was too spineless too also, and didn’t care anyways since I already had about a 98% in the class).
Tracer posted The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters link. Wow, that was funny. I hated playing in campaigns where they did all that crap.
Anyway, I played most of the RPGs out there (not Harn because I couldn’t find a group so I never bought the rulebooks and a few others). Anwyay, Champions was too bogged down with math. GURPS was pretty fun eventhough the action moved slow. D&D (I liked the D$D that was posted earlier) was fun initially but seemed to much like a cartoon. It was good for cinematics until they stared doing all the updates when they tried to make it more a skill based system rather than experience based system.
I miss playing Star Frontiers. I miss adaptin the various systems around to make it fit a different genre. Star Frontiers made a nice fantasy setting. Oh well. I wish I knew more people in the area that would be willing to put the time into roleplaying. Oh well… eventually.
Anyway, I had a friend’s mother tape us while we were playing D&D to see what we were doing. She thought we were learning how to be satanists. We learned that long before she started taping us playing at 10. The Chick Tracts were wrong. We learned all about Satan from Church long before we ever heard about it from D&D. (FTR, I am not a Satanist.)
I’ve got links to that story, the SEQUEL to that story, and character sheets for some of the major characters in that story and its sequel, on my homepage at http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw. (It’s about 2/3 of the way down the page, below my links for the Logan’s Run FAQ, Advanced Dark Sucker Theory, my anti-sovereign-citizen and anti-pure-trust-scam pieces, my fledgling anti-Wilhelm-Reich omnibus, and Gaea’s Rising.)
Attention fundamentalists: there is photographic evidence that gay pagan squirrel-totemists are in league with Satan! Contact Aenea, Falcon, etc. for proof!!
I’m a Christian, my dad is a Southern Baptist minister and I played from ages 11-17 or so (my brother too). This was about the era of the big scare and my folks were “curious” so my mom sat in one meeting for about 20 minutes, and decided nothing bad was going on and left. (we waited till she left and then told the DM that we wanted to start raping and pillaging).
I might play now if I had the right group of people and a good DM. The only thing for me is that I can get too involved in stuff like that, and as a Christian I have to watch where I’m spending my time and energy. I’d imagine most people of whatever ethos feel the same responsiblity to spend their time wisely, and of course, that’s not D&D–ask me how much time I spent/wasted on SimCity last week.
Still, if anybody needs an upper-level ranger specialized in unarmed combat, he’s sitting in my closet waiting to come out…
Well, I’d invite you to join us but I can’t remember where exactly you live and I’m afraid it would be one heck of a commute anyway! But if you’re ever in my neck of the woods…
Heh. I’ve never heard of the “Player’s Handbood” before, but assuming the author meant “Player’s Handbook”, the quote in the first sentence does not appear on page 31 of either the 1st edition AD&D or the 2nd edition AD&D Player’s Handbook. I doubt it appears on any page of either edition of the Player’s Handbook, although it might appear in the Monster Manual as a description of a certain kind of monster the players might have to fight against.
I also like how, because two boys who committed suicide had previously played D&D, their suicides were automatically D&D’s fault. They were also breathing before they committed suicide. Maybe breathing drove them to kill themselves! Lock up your sons, parents of the world, and don’t let them have any air!
Well, I consider myself a Christian (although some Fundies might diasagree), and I play and thoroughly enjoy D&D. On the other hand, my father, a peculiar brand of Fundamentalist, is adamantly dead-set against the game. I’d love to actually get him playing to see what it’s like…
Zev, ( I believe it was Zev, anyway), I respect your views on playing clerics, but I don’t see that playing a cleric would necessarily have anything to do with idolatry. In every campaign I’ve ever played in, the deity which is worshipped by a particular priest is exactly as much of an issue as the player chooses to make it, except insofar as the deity is good or evil. You could perfectly well play a priest of Yahweh, without having any effect on the game mechanics.
Finally, as to the presence of magic in the game: I think that 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 is relevant here:
Note that this passage does not refer to miracles, in the common sense of the word, in which a person requests something, and God decides whether to grant it. These are gifts; I can decide how to use my gift of intelligence without God’s specific approval, another might use his gift of physical strength the same way, and yet another might use his gift of prophecy or healing. How is “the gift of healing” so different from a Cure Light Wounds?