It’s night.

A light snow falls.

I’m on a quest with — well, I forget his name. Farklas? Firkas? Whatever it is, we’ve just exited some skanky hoarfrost grotto after cleaning the place out of whatever assholes lurked within.

Then I hear it — thwip — the sound of an arrow narrowly missing my skull.

I see Farkleberry run off. Which means, of course, he’s running towards danger.

Next thing I know, we’re ascending some steps just as some bandits are descending and oh, it’s on, it’s on like Donkey Kong playing Ping Pong while eating Egg Foo Yong. I’m targeting shadows in the dark with my bow. Notch an arrow. Time slows. Pop. Bandit’s head snaps back with an arrow in the cheek. Eat a dick, bandit. Eat a big old arrow-shaped dick.

I’ve no idea where Tackleberry is.

But then I hear it — a shriek.

It’s familiar but I’ve little time to think about it. I’ve got some blue-glowing magic-slinging knob-gobbler all up in my grill, trying to chill my bones with his ice-doom magic.

Then: the shriek again.

The shriek is no longer distant — it is upon us.

FWOOSH.

The screen lights up with fire! What the fuck? I stagger backward out of the flame, see the wizardy knob-gobbler is being roasted right there on the spot by a whooshing plume of flame.

Flame coming from a dragon’s mouth. A dragon that landed, ohh, about ten feet away from me.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I backpedal. Screaming like a little girl that just got peed on by a tiger at the zoo (and yes, I’ve seen that, and it is indeed a story for another time). I let fly with arrows, many as I can sling into the dragon’s skull.

The dragon takes flight once more. My arrows find no purchase as he soars into the sky.

And suddenly all is quiet: the bandits are gone or dead. Fucklas is gone, too — I’ve no idea where he is.

But one thing I know: I’m not letting this dragon get away. Because if I kill this dragon, I can eat his soul like it’s a big bowl of dragon-flavored ice cream. And from it, I can gain power: the power to breathe fucking fire. I want that. I need that. So, I spy the dragon in the sky, and I give chase.

The dragon lands in the distance. The beast illuminated by his own fiery breath, breath that blasts against some lone warrior standing against the draconian wretch –

Oh, holy shit. It’s Scott Farkus.

I bolt toward him in time to see him fall.

The dragon spies me. Takes flight. Circles. Again evading my arrows. Thwip thwip thwip.

Then — boom.

Beast behind me. I’m burning. On fire. All parts of me, going crispy.

I run. I’m not ready for this. I’m almost out of health potions. My life dwindles. But the dragon, ohhh, he’s quite persistent, and this motherfucker is up again and soaring above my head, and here I am stumbling around in the dark, panting and out of breath, and suddenly the dragon lands directly in front of me –

And then I see two shapes. One to my right. One to my left.

Huge shambling shadows.

I’ve stumbled into the middle of two massive wooly mammoths.

As an aside, it appears mammoths care little for dragons. I don’t know why this is, precisely. Perhaps because mammoths received swirlies from said dragon in elementary school? Maybe the dragon ate all the mammoth’s candy, or stole his keys, or pooped in the mammoth’s chafing dish. Maybe it’s just because mammoths are flammable as fuck and see dragons as a natural enemy.

Whatever the reason, the two mammoths — both high-powered Snuffalupaguses each — decide to get in on the action. Much to the chagrin of the dragon. The two mammoths tear the dragon a new asshole as I sit comfortably ensconced between my two shaggy impromptu bodyguards, flinging arrows into the hell-lizard. And my final arrow pierces the dragon’s head. The beast falls. His body catches fire and his essence is vacuumed into my body.

That, to me, is the essence of Skyrim.

The game does what I like games to do in terms of storytelling: it lets me assemble the story of my own telling. I don’t mind a game that has its own story to tell, but the games to which I really respond are the ones that give me all the pieces and let me put them together according to my own style of play. It cedes some narrative authority to me.

It’s in this way that the Elder Scrolls games have a lot in common with Minecraft, actually — both say, “Hey. Here’s a giant world. The map you have is incomplete. Feel free to wander around. Do the things we suggest. Or don’t. We don’t care. This is your world — we just put it here. Build. Craft. Fight. Run. Oh, and watch out — the monsters come out at night.” Hell, both games have dragons, now. Minecraft obviously takes the Elder Scrolls freedom and amps it up, but is also removes all external narrative elements. Skyrim has a story to tell; it just doesn’t care if you participate. Minecraft is rudderless, an entirely unregulated narrative experience.

If Minecraft is Skyrim’s spiritual cousin, then in a sense, Dragon Age I & II is Skyrim’s opposite — not in a bad way, mind, but in a way that’s worth noting. Where Skyrim puts before you an open world whose every physical and geographical component is a story-building element, Dragon Age (and other Bioware RPGs) offers a closed world with limited pathways whose game is in how you piece together the pre-defined story elements. In Dragon Age, the story is the game. (Which is its own kind of awesome.)

Skyrim says, “We have this big story and all these little stories and you can weave in and out of them or avoid them all day long. The map is big. Your legs work. Go find adventure.”

Dragon Age says, “We have this big story and all these little stories and you cannot escape them but what you can do is fiddle with the pieces and put them together in the order and fashion you desire. The map is small and the path is limited but the story is rich, so wade in and we’ll give you adventure.”

Both approaches are brilliant.

But right now, I’m excited by the overall openness of Skyrim. As evidenced by my account above. The above example is by no means the only random thing that occurred. Every session, a new weird adventure I stumble into. Some guy runs up to me on the road and tells me he wants to give me something for safe-keeping, but then a bandit chief descends from a steep hill and cleaves the dude in the head with an axe, killing him in one blow. Or I’m trudging toward an icy mountain temple and there on the path is a howling, pissed off ice troll and he chases me down toward one of the mountain altars and there at the altar is a pilgrim praying and suddenly she’s up and chopping into the troll with an axe that crackles with electricity. (She dies, of course. And I pillage her zap-axe.)

So grows the wonder of an open world with seemingly endless corners of things to do, monsters to slay, stories to experience, and wooly mammoth gangstas who will help you fuck up a bad-ass dragon.

Time to speak out with my geek out.

Writer-types, here’s your homework: go forth and play a roleplaying game.

No, no, put down that Xbox controller.

Here. Take these.

*hands you a pile of glittery multi-colored polyhedral dice*

They’re not pills. Don’t swallow them. They’re dice. You’ll choke. Stop that. Take them out of your mouth. Here, you’re also going to need some other stuff, too: a pencil, a character sheet, maybe some index cards, a bag of Cheetos, a 64 oz “Thirst Aborter” full of Mountain Dew, a 6-pack of beer, a pizza coupon, a can of spray deodorant, and a big overflowing bucket of your caffeine-churned imagination.

Playing a pen-and-paper table-top RPG is not going to make you a better writer.

It goes deeper than that.

It’s going to make you a better storyteller. And here’s how.

The Essential Ingredient: Characters In Conflict

Given the geeky composition of my audience, I assume that you grok the core experience of the average tabletop roleplaying game: a game-master orchestrates adventures for a group of players, all of whom control imaginary characters whose skills and abilities are laid out on a character sheet. A player says, “I want my character to see if he can use his Wombat Magic to steal the pocketwatch heart of the Toymaker’s Daughter,” and then he rolls dice in accordance with the rules to see if his Wombat Magic is a spell that can survive its own casting. Simple enough, yeah?

That’s really not the truth of the story, though. That’s just the nature of the rules.

The truth of the story — its essential element, its elemental essence — is that of characters put in conflict. And you see laid bare the nature of all our stories, right there: character-driven conflict. Even more awesome is what happens when you let the players just fuck around at the game-table without even trying to steer them. Eventually, they’ll start creating conflict. Tavern fights, dead cops, stolen items. While this may not always be true to the character it is true to the story: conflict must fill the vacuum and that conflict must be driven by the characters present in the narrative.

What’s more interesting to the players at the table is when their characters are at the center of the conflict. Not conflict driven externally by the world, but characters who are knee-deep in the thick shit.

This is their world, and their problems matter.

The Labor Contractions Of Birthing Good Story

Pacing is a really hard trick for storytellers. It’s ultimately too simple to say that escalation is the only order of pacing, because it’s not — you can’t just drop a cinder block on the accelerator pedal and let the story take off like a rocket. Eventually the engine burns out. The audience grows weary. Constant action is naught but the electric cacophony of a single guitar chord blasted over and over again.

This becomes abundantly clear at the game table. You know you have to ease off the gas from time to time. Let the players breathe a little. Let the characters talk to one another. Even the tried-and-true “our characters walk into a tavern” schtick reveals this, to some degree: they don’t kick open the door and start throwing punches. A tavern fight starts simple. Drinks. Laughs. A goblin says some shit. A paladin encourages restraint. A warrior gets all up in the goblin’s business. Someone throws a bottle. And then — explode. Spells and swords and shotguns and goblin venom.

And then you have the come down. The denouement as the fight ends. Wounds licked.

Session to session you can see the pace change, too — one session might be heavy on action, another session heavy on politics. Or introspection. Or melodrama.

You not only start to see exactly how important it is to keep the pace staggered but also how important it is to let this narrative chameleon show all his colors. A story is not one thing and it does not take off like a horse with a rattlesnake shoved up his ass — sometimes that horse needs to stop, drink some water, slow down the pace unless that old nag fancies dropping dead in the dust.

Writer’s Block Does Not Live At The Game Table

You can’t get writer’s block at the game table. Not as a game master, not as a player. You can’t be all like, “Yeah, I’m just not feeling my character’s actions today, let’s try again tomorrow.” It’s shit or get off the pot time, Vampire Cleric from Minneapolis. You gotta do something. Anything. Stab! Throw a Molotov! Hide under a car! Manifest your Vampire Cleric batwings and take flight above the city!

Same thing goes for writing. Shit or get off the pot. Do something. Throw a narrative grenade. If anything will remind you of this, it’s the act of rolling the bones with a couple-few like-minded gamer-types.

The Audience Is Waiting And Their Knives Are Sharp

They’re listening. And watching. And waiting.

Them. They. The audience. The other players.

This is a group activity. This isn’t something you do in isolation. You don’t sit over there in the corner fiddling with your dice and surreptitiously rubbing the crotch of your khaki shorts. You’re in the thick of it. Your words — whether as a player or, more importantly, as the game master — are the central focus. You can tell when you’ve hooked them, and can tell when you’re losing them. You shuck and jive and duck and weave and do any kind of narrative chicanery to keep the momentum going, to ensure that the table doesn’t spiral off into restless side-conversations (“Do you think an Alchemical Exalted would be able to beat Jesus, if Jesus were wearing like, Mecha Armor given to him by the Three Wise Men?”). You’re on stage. They’re on the hook. It is, as David Mamet writes, fuck or walk.

Your story is the story of the moment, and it reminds you just how important it is to keep the audience in mind — not just your intent as storyteller but their interests, their needs, their attention.

It also reinforces the cardinal rule:

Never be boring.

Because if you’re boring, they’re going to start talking about Dr. Who.

Unintended Emotional Resonance (Or, “I Like To Move It, Move It”)

Every once in a while, you’ll have a moment during a game session where it’s like, “Oh, holy shit. These other people are actually worked up over this story. I’ve inadvertently affected them.”

They’ll get mad at a villain. Pissed at one another for botching a plan. Sad at the death of a character. They’ll hoot and gibber, victorious over the death of the Necro-Accountant who’s been making their lives hell session after session. Their emotions worn plainly upon their faces, the masks worn away.

And then it hits you: this is part of your arsenal of storytelling weapons. To make people give a shit. Enough so that their heads aren’t in this alone; their hearts hop in the car, too, riding shotgun until the story’s told.

You learn how to do it there so you can do it on the page.

At The Table As On The Page: Anything Is Possible

You sit down at the game table and you start to realize: whatever I say is made manifest. Okay, sure, sure, maybe your skill check doesn’t let you automatically drive the car up the ramp formed by the crushed school buses and straight into the Kraken’s unblinking eye — but by god, you have a shot. And as a game master, this is multiplied infinitely upon itself, this god-like power to create realities from words in whatever direction you choose.

No constraints. Speak the word, and let it be so.

That, my friends, is the power of fiction. It’s the power of books, comics, film, and — duh — games. But it’s not just the obvious non-revelation that what you say at the game table is made into a fictional reality. It’s also the notion that you can say whatever you want. You aren’t contained by comfortable boxes of genre. You aren’t stopped by expectations and tropes. In fact, you’re often rewarded by jumping right just when everybody thinks you’re going to jump left. You begin to realize that the enemy to good fiction is doing the same thing over and over again. The enemy is fear, where you’re afraid of sitting there in front of an audience and telling the story as it lives and breathes. You don’t have to worry about the story as it lays dying in a cage shacked by rules of genre, trope, template or format. You have it all right there in your hand — a few dice in your palm, maybe a pencil, nothing more — all the elements of creation laid bare.

It’s an awesome — in the truest definition of that word — feeling.

One that will serve you well when you bring it to the written page.

Writer-Gamer Hybrid Types, Chime In

I know a good number of you came here originally from some of my game work or are yourselves gamers still — moreover, I know that the Venn Diagram of GAMER and WRITER has some big crossover in this audience. So add your two cents. Why should writers and storytellers play tabletop games? I know you have reasons I haven’t even considered. Spit ‘em out like broken teeth!

(Oh, and again I’ll mention: if you haven’t checked out SPEAK OUT WITH YOUR GEEK OUT, well, get on it, won’t you? Go forth. Speak your geek. Own your nerdery.)

So by now, you may have heard the news:

I am writing a SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY novel for Evil Hat games.

If it works out, I might be writing three of them, actually.

The first begins with –

DINOCALYPSE NOW!

All I’m saying is:

Psychic dinosaurs.

1935.

Get your head around that.

And once you have your head around it, I’ve some questions to ask you.

First up: if you’re a fan of the old pulps — and a fan of crazy adventure and pulp heroes and weird science and all that good stuff — then I gotta ask, what would you hope to see in a new pulp novel?

Second, if you’re a fan of SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY, what defines that game to you? What are the essential ingredients to any SotC adventure — both the adventure that unfolds with dice at your game table and the adventure that might unfold in, say, a novel? I’ve got a synopsis of the novel written down, but thus far I’ve got a lot of uncharted spaces. Which is why I’m here, looking to you to distill down what you feel — as a fan of the game — best embodies the awesomeness that is SPIRIT OF THE CENUTURY.

I’ll hang up and wait for your answer.

*click*

Man, that sounds like the dullest Indiana Jones movie of all time. “Indiana Jones And The Pretentious Story Analysis! He fights a swarm of metaphors! He punches Nazis off the top of the story arc!”

So, the wife and I finished Portal 2.

Single-player, at least.

This post will contain no spoilers, so you can go ahead and read it (I can’t promise that the comments section will be the same, as anybody who wants to discuss the game and its story may need to get all spoiler-flavored). (Speaking of flavored, did you see that there’s cupcake-flavored vodka? It’s true.) (Indiana Jones chops hashashayyin assassins with deadly parentheses!) (Shut up.)

You wanna know one of the things I really love about both the first Portal game and its largely-superior — which is saying a lot – sequel? It’s that they leave a great deal to the imagination. In this day and age, with the epic leaps forward in special effects and graphics, it’s easy to put everything you want in the story and the in the storyworld right there on the screen for all to see. Books do this but by dint of a different principle: they’re so chockablock with all those pesky words and pages it becomes difficult not to throw every ingredient into the pot. It’s the Kitchen Sink method of storytelling.

But Portal 1 & 2, not so much.

Here’s what I mean: Portal is, at its core (pun not intended until now), the story of a girl being put through a series of tests by a deranged wing de-icer slash artificial intelligence. It is a battle of wits and survival using the mighty portal gun, which creates a pair of connected teleportation portals on flat surfaces. Big crazy hilarious sci-fi action-puzzle game. That’s it.

You could stop there and, hey, fuck it, a winning equation.

But Valve goes the extra distance and creates layers to that experience, layers that are not entirely grasped or seen (though one could argue that they are keenly felt), layers comprising the story of the mad AI, of the testing facility and all of Aperture Science, of the “Rat Man” in the walls and the life of little turrets and so on and so forth. The characters they’ve created in this space — GlaDOS, Cave Johnson, Wheatley, the Rat Man through his scrawlings — are again fully-felt but not necessarily fully-formed.

That sounds like a bad thing.

It is the furthest thing from it.

In fact, it’s pretty damn rad.

Because what happens is, you still get the core (there’s that pun again) experience and story, and you also get all this added voodoo. But because the voodoo has gaps — unanswered questions, vague links, hinted suggestions — you end up as the player/audience member stepping into the breach and solving those variables yourself with your own story-bridges. On various forums you’ll find endless speculation who Chell is, who her parents are, who the Rat Man is, how all this stuff connects, how it connects to Half-Life, to Gordon Freeman, how the ending plays out versus how it “really” plays out. People are finding all these great little Easter Eggs and finding ways to incorporate them into this pastiche of story (some such incorporations are brilliant, others entirely boggling).

But what it does is, it creates this legacy — it ensures that the game is (another incoming and originally unintentional pun in 3… 2… 1… ) still alive long after it’s been shelved. Hell, the song “Still Alive”…

…contains its own weird little story clues and gaps, right? You beat the game, you think you know what’s up, then the end comes and this song plays and you’re like, “Maybe there’s more going on than I originally figured.” You think about it. You talk about it. You laugh about it. This legacy of mystery — created by not answering all the questions and not building concrete connections — endures.

Really fucking cool.

But it’s hard to do. Hard to do in a way that leaves people satisfied and wanting more as opposed to unsatisfied and being fed up with your rampant jerkery. So, I ask: who did it right? Who did it poorly? Games, movies, books, comics, whatever. Think about those stories that never fully put it all together and demanded that you, the audience, do some legwork (while still maintaining the essential story and experience). Here’s a fascinating sidebar, though, and it maybe leads to a much bigger question –

Some (a lot?) of this stuff in Portal is by accident. As I understand it, Jonathan Coulton in crafting “Still Alive” had some leeway there and wasn’t forced to adhere to some canon-that-never-really-existed. Further, one of the big story twists in Portal 2 (which I won’t name in the post due to ANTI-SPOILER REDACTION SYSTEMS) was, again, a total accident due to a casting choice.

I’ve seen this happen in roleplaying games at the table — you craft a very brief throwaway character and pop them in for a session and suddenly the players either really like that character and/or they believe that throwaway character has far greater significance than intended. Audience desire and design changes the needs of the game. That’s harder to do in more linear narratives, but therein perhaps lies one of the genuine benefits of transmedia (a benefit all-too-rarely sought).

Noodle it.

And let’s chat this shiznit up.

P.S. We totally own a plush companion cube.

P.P. S. I would stab a dude in the gills for this plush Portal turret.

Yesterday, producer Ted Hope (who is also the producer, along with Anne Carey, on our upcoming feature film, HiM), was gracious enough to let me come and stomp around his sandbox with a short post called, “Where Storytelling And Gaming Collide.” There, I said the following:

Traditional storytelling seeks to tell the story of the author, the director, the creator.

But storytelling in games is about empowering the player to experience and tell her own narrative.

I believe this more and more. I believe that games — from the smallest “casual” game to the hardest of the purportedly “hardcore” — are powerful and compelling to us as players because from the experience of playing games we gain narrative, and from that narrative we gain… well, all kinds of things, really. We gain perspective. We gain entertainment. We can be enlightened, amused, disturbed, challenged. And this is true of games even without a traditional narrative. It’s true of a game of checkers, or chess: the two opponents sitting over a board, learning about one another, traversing the peaks and valleys of competition, exploring strategy. You come out of a game of chess, you have a story — and often the way we see and retell it (in our own heads or to others) bears the elements of escalation, climax, and resolution.

(I play a killer round of Angry Birds or Words With Friends, I’ll tell my wife. It’s probably an awful story in terms of what I’m telling her, but in my head? It’s the shit.)

Anyway. Go read that post, if you please, but here, also, consider the question: how can you allow a game to tell a meaningful story? To me, the key word there is “allow.” Emergent gameplay is ultimately about emergent storytelling, and maybe that’s how we need to frame it: games do not need to tell a straightforward narrative as much as they need to leave room for emergent play and emergent narrative.

Emergent narrative.

I like that.

How’s it sit with you? Swish it around your mouth. Bulge your cheeks, get it in between your teeth. Is it minty fresh? Or is it sewery spew? If you dig on it, what can help a game offer greater opportunity for emergent narrative? I could make a case that Minecraft is hella good at this “emergent narrative” thing I just made up two minutes ago, and that I didn’t actually make up at all — turns out wiser minds than mine (which is to say, most) already conceived of it and use it for games like The Sims or Deus Ex, though I’d argue the idea suits games that go beyond the expected roster.

It also occurs to me that sometimes, when I talk about games, I don’t even know if I make any damn sense. But it’s fun, innit? I mean, sure, my extremities have gone numb, and my shirt is missing.

Ultimately, what I’m saying is –

Aren’t the stories born from gameplay just as important — if not more important — than the stories the games purport to tell in the first place? Isn’t that what playtime is all about?

How can game designers and game writers facilitate this?

(Remember, if you’re in NYC, to swing by DIY Days. There I’ll be talking about the collision of gameplay and storytelling with game designer Greg Trefry. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself, of course. More information can be found here: DIY Days.)

In tonight’s episode of Community, I am reliably informed (by their commercials — and my prophetic dreams) that the gang will be playing a little D&D.

That’s fun. But it makes me a little itchy.

It makes me itchy because I haven’t rolled the bones — meaning, I have not gamed — in quite a long time. Too long. In fact, it’s been at least eight or nine months.

By and large, it’s difficult for adult life to accommodate any kind of regular gaming. This isn’t unusual, mind — I can’t tell you how many dudes in their mid-30s who say, with a faint ember still in their eye (and the clatter of a 20-sider echoing in their brain chamber), “Oh, man! I used to game.”

And I know it’s not going to get a damn sight easier once the Tiny Monkey comes into our life, heaving everything upside-down. Frankly, I’m probably going to have to hide my dice just because they’re a choking hazard.

Kids, man. Kids. They try to eat everything. I almost choked to death on a penny when I was a tot. I can only imagine how many d10s my nascent heir will be able to jam down his windpipe.

On the one hand, I miss it. On the other hand, part of me thinks: man, I’ve got things to do. Like, I want to play video games more often, but when I do, I tend to find myself wanting to do other stuff. Sometimes, I even have these absurd moments where I think, “I’d rather be doing the dishes because the dishes need doing.” Is this adulthood? It feels like a brain parasite. Get me a coat hanger and some anti-fungal paste.

Stat!

Anyway.

This brings me to you, trusty game-heads.

First, I ask you: what are you playing these days? Anything really. I’m mostly asking about pen-and-paper stuff, but hey, unload your game-flavored goodness upon my head. Board games, video games, whatever.

Second, I beseech you: anybody found a way to play without actually sitting across the table from folks? Anybody game over Skype? Is there an iPad solution of which I’m not yet aware? Help a brother out.

Two more tiny things:

I think I might do a free PDF writing up some of my “irregular creatures” as statted-up World of Darkness monsters. Because, hey, why the fuck not? Could be fun. Shits and giggles. You know. For the kids.

Also, why the hell aren’t you watching Community again? Sheesh.

Did you hear the news? There’s a new flu bug going around.

It’s probably nothing to worry about.

Or is it?

People aren’t feeling well. Coughing, sneezing, stuffy noses, low-grade fevers.

They want to sleep. During the day, at least.

At night, the sickness changes form.

Those in its thrall might be seen sleep-walking. Or sleep-eating. Some hoard objects. Others wander the streets unaware. And this is only the beginning.

Rumor: Is it true that the flu only affects adults? What is it that makes an adult, anyway?

Park City is the nexus of the outbreak, but it’s happening everywhere.

And it’s only the second day.

You have 120 hours to become part of the story.

Tweet with the hashtag #pandemic11. Whether from your own account or another of your creation.

Follow the stories of our characters — characters like Anna, like Billy, like Bree. Or like the others. Look for the Twitter accounts with the yellow backgrounds and black numbers.

Tell your tale. Whether it’s one tweet or 100, maybe what you tell the world can save it from the spreading sickness. Or maybe it’ll be a record left behind by the next generation.

If they’re still alive. And if they’re still sane.

What do you see? Are you sick? Are your parents sick? Follow the story. Then tell your own.

Don’t forget to check the Hope Is Missing YouTube channel.

Or the Facebook page (check out the faces of the 50).

And if you’re on the ground at Park City: head to Mission Control at Sundance: New Frontier to see how you can make a difference. Maybe you even want to request a scare…

During the day, I explore. At night, I dig.

And in all hours, I build.

I build a boat so that I can cross the ocean without having to hop and splash through the waters like a drunken moose. I build a miles-long underground tunnel connecting my spawn point and my rat’s warren canyon. Upon my spawn point I build a glass house so that I may watch the sun set and the moon rise. At the top of my glass house I build an air bridge traveling to the peak of the nearest mountain.

And it is near to this peak that I find my first dungeon.

It’s already pre-carved out of the side of the hill. I descend into the deep, placing torches along the way so I can find my way back. Down there in the dark I hear the first rheumy growls: zombies.

Sure enough, there they are: a trio of the blockheaded assholes, playing a game of clumsy grab-ass. Ah. But a waterfall and stream separate us. It’s easy for me to wade into the water, hack at them with my diamond-edged sword, and cut them into little puffs of pixillated smoke.

But somehow, more of them show.

They’re coming from somewhere back there. In the dark. Spawning endlessly.

I cross the water. I quick throw torches on the wall just as a zombie tries to paw my face with his rotten box-hands. Then another, then another. I back to the wall, I cut ‘em down with my blade, and then I see more of this room: mossy stone, two chests, and a burning cage in the center with a little zombie effigy doll in the center, endlessly spinning.

I kill the zombies.

I flood the room with torchlight.

I end the spawning.

I open the chests and claim my booty: gold and iron and arrows.

I am the hero, triumphant.

The Hero, Descendant (Or, “The Hero Shits His Pants Multiple Times And Falls Down Into The Deep Dark Where He Must Contend With Lava And Evil”)

I continue to dig, build, and explore.

Fact is, I want to find another dungeon. The dungeon made me feel like an intrepid hero-architect, a builder of great things but also a slayer of demons, a gatherer of treasure.

I find my second cavern opening not far from the first: just a quarter-day’s walk. I see the deep dark grotto. I gather torches. And I wade into the mouth of shadow.

This one goes deep. Much deeper than the last. Every step is a step down, a step around a corner, a step around a stream of falling water or past tunnel mouths where I hear spiders hissing or the rattle of a skeleton archer’s bones. I’m getting worried.

But I’m also getting pretty fucking geeked.

I travel for a long time — sometimes falling a few blocks without certainty of how I’ll get out (I can always build steps, I tell myself), until finally I reach the bottom.

I know it’s the bottom because, ye gods, it’s full of lava.

In the center of this canyon tumbles a massive column of lava, a lavafall coming from way, way up there. Up there in shadow. Up there where monsters roam.

It’s easy to see that this is a special place. The walls are lined with precious kit: gold and diamonds and redstone and so much iron, so much coal. I even see some lapis lazuli and some obsidian.

I hear water. I fling up torches. I step into the heavy current.

And — b-d-d-d-ing.

The sound of a bowstring drawn and loosed. A skeleton archer’s arrow pierces my heart. Then another. Then another. I die there in the water, my inventory exploded around me.

I respawn upon my glass house, I hurry to my stash of goods in the house, I snatch up a blade. I’m going back. Fuck that archer. Fuck him up his bony ass with his own damn femur.

Once again I descend into the void — this time, with only an iron blade. I follow the trail of light. I fall again into darkness. I wander aimlessly on the shores of scorching lava.

Finally, I see it: all my shit laid bare, floating there in the water like flotsam (or jetsam, whatever). This time it’s no skeleton archer but rather a creeper. But he can’t get to me on this ledge. He’s easy to dispatch. A swipey-swipe of the blade and he’s down, the dumb geek. Another jumps in: hack-slash, nighty-night.

I jump into the water.

I grab all my shit. My compass, my watch, my diamond sword.

And then a zombie appears out of nowhere and bashes my block-head in with one of his block-fists.

Fuckity-fuck.

Okay. Fine. My stuff’s still down there. I’ll just go back again. Except this time, I think, I’ll run back to my other stash and grab another sword, because I can’t go down there unarmed. This takes me a little time, but I manage. And — you know the story: again I stumble blindly into the booty hole.

Uhh. Rephrase that at your leisure.

This time, it’s different. I go down. I wander the trails. I follow the torches. I jog along lava.

No monsters this time.

And also: no stuff.

My shit is all gone. My compass, my watch, my diamond sword.

Little do I know: loose materials degrade to nothing after five minutes. Poof. Gone. It’s not here because I took too long fetching a sword. And ironically, the canyon has no more monsters for me to fight.

Frustrated, I still recognize that this is a bountiful canyon. I can easily make up what I lost just by spending some time down here, cutting away the precious metals and mystical materials.

So, I do that. I begin to mine.

I mine until my pockets are bulging with goodness. So many diamonds. So much iron. I’m filled to the tits with redstone dust and lapis lazuli. And the gold! I’m rich! I’m a king! Eeeee! Thing is, this place is even bigger than I thought. It goes on, and on, and on. I keep wandering. I keep digging.

I see a little more iron, so I cross a little stream to get it.

The stream has a current. I am pulled not two squares to my right, and I slip under a ledge because the water is deeper than anticipated.

And then I tumble into a pit of lava.

I struggle in the well, burning alive. Cooking. Hissing. Screaming.

I perish.

All my items explode out of my body. And then they hit the lava.

When they do, they go Sssss! and are gone. Burned up into the void.

I am once more a pauper. No longer the hero-architect, I am just a burned-up chump, a scarred buckethead fumbling around the dark, pawing at my junk with my impossible, fingerless hands.

And so it is that I think I must back away from Minecraft for a time. I achieved a lot in a short time, but I jumped for the brass ring…

…and fell into a hole filled with fire and death.

I retreat, beaten.

This, then, is Minecraft.

Imagine a game where you build with LEGO.

You have 13 minutes to do so.

Sure, you can waste those 13 minutes building spaceships or funny statues.

But you’d damn well better spend that time building a shelter. Because at the end of those 13 minutes?

Night comes.

And when night comes, so do the monsters.

And if you haven’t built yourself a place to hide? You’re dead.

Welcome to LEGO: Survival Horror edition.

My First Day Cycle

The game dropped my ass onto a sandy beach at morning. Not far away I saw them: great and mighty hills — hills comprising voxels of dirt, grass, and stone — rising up out of the fog.

I figured, hey, let’s explore. I wandered up into those hills. I chopped down a tree for shits and giggles. And by “chopped,” I mean, “punched with my blocky orange dildo hand until the tree yielded its sweet sweet tree meat to my violence.” The tree, mysteriously, hovered there even when its base was destroyed. (Destroy its canopy and you may find yourself with a sapling in hand.)

Then I wandered some more. I witnessed voxel sheep and boxy chickens. Clunky cows be-bopped around. In the distance, out in the ocean, big Cthulhu-beard squid jerked and twitched.

I wandered across chasms.

I found a lake, and half of that lake was ice.

I almost drowned, but then learned how to swim.

Somewhere, I thought, “Hey, I’m going to dig. Just to see.” So, with a hunk of wood in my hand, I began bashing the earth. My first mistake? The first several blocks, I bashed beneath my feet. Clarification: directly beneath my feet. I dropped down into a pit of my own making but thought, “I can get back out of here easily given how simple it is to bash earth into its component bits and bytes.”

So, I kept digging. This time, at an angle.

Eventually, my tunnel grew dark. No light shone down here.

I started trying to make my way back up, but I noticed something:

The sun had gone down.

Uh-oh.

I began furiously punching and kicking the ground, making steps to get back out, but it was futile: I couldn’t really see anything. I didn’t know if I was even going up.

Then, I heard it: a phlegmy growl.

Little did I know, someone was down here with me. Suddenly, my screen filled with some awful face, and then a zombie murdered me and sucked marrow from my bones.

Well, I don’t know that those are the exact details. Mostly, I died in the dark, a zombie atop me.

Second Day Cycle

I respawned back on my beach. I thought, okay, I need to build a shelter this time.

So, instead of digging down, I dug laterally — boring into the side of the hill like a worm toward the apple’s heart. I bashed a tunnel, then a small room. When night came, I sealed myself into it.

And it was very dark.

Behind me, something growled.

Next thing I know, some monster was molesting my dead flesh.

Third Day Cycle

Fuck. Fuck. I figured, okay, I have to learn to survive here, or this just isn’t going to work. I watched the “first night tutorial” found on the Minecraft site. And by watching that, I learned a truckload of information that would help me not get mouth-raped by skeletons, spiders, zombies, and creepers. I needed a pick-ax. And a workbench. And a sword. And a shovel. And, above all else, I needed some motherfucking torches.

Thing is, to get torches, you need coal.

And on this hill, I found no coal.

I ran around as the big voxel sun slowly slid like a pad of butter toward the horizon’s end, struggling to find some way to make some goddamn light.

I did not find any coal.

Feel free to predict what happened. It probably involves words like “rectal violation,” “monster,” and “used my sweetbreads as pillows.” Goddamnit. Fuck you, coal. Fuck you big.

Fourth Day Cycle

Once more, I spawned on the beach, increasingly convinced that this was some kind of 8-bit nightmare Groundhog Day rehash: this beach was becoming my accursed birthplace into this unsettling world.

I decided, fuck those hills right there, because those hills offer me only death.

I crossed a small oceanic strait and found myself amongst other hills. There, pressed up against the cliff-face, lurked a vein of coal next to a vein of iron. Huzzah! A cheer! But no time for celebration: only time for getting coal so I do not die horribly in the night. I quick did some crafting, ensuring that I got a pick-ax (the pick-ax is necessary to get coal), and I carved myself a uterine pocket of earth. As night fell, I sealed myself into what I prayed would not be my tomb.

Then, I watched night through my window. This is a long process. Night is seven minutes, and there I stood like an asshole, just watching the blinky stars creep across the sky.

I… heard things. Out there. And above me. The hissing of beasts. The rattling of bones. The growls of zombies. Occasionally, I heard a chicken die. Poor goddamn chicken.

But eventually, as it is with all bad things, night passed. The sun arose. Morning arrived.

I kicked open my earthen door, stepped out into the light.

Where I was promptly assaulted by a fucking giant spider.

What the hell, I thought? It’s sun-up! Spiders can survive the sun? Seriously? Oh, goddamnit, they can, can’t they? Shit shit shit. I took my sword out, though, and I whupped up on that blocky fuckface arachnid until all that was left was a tapeworm-esque pile of thread. Which I quickly absorbed into my inventory.

Ha. Hahaha! Hahahaha! I survived the night!

I did a little dance.

Then I went in search of more coal. I turned the corner, and came face to face with this blockhead asshole who promptly blew himself up.

He took half the cliff-face with him.

Oh, and me.

Death welcomed me anew.

Fifth Day Cycle

The beach belched me back up onto its sun-baked sands. Once again I crossed the strait, knowing that yes, I would find my little grotto, but that all my equipment was lost.

Except, it wasn’t.

I rounded the bend and there, along the cliff-face and in the water were my blessed items: the ax, the blade, the building materials I had been carrying. I quickly swept them all up. I kissed my sword, which is not a euphemism for masturbation or self-performed blow-jobbery.

To celebrate, I murdered some cows. Which lead to the discovery that cows yield leather.

Chickens yield eggs.

I also found, mysteriously, bones and arrows. (No, not bows and arrows. Bones.) I guess some skeleton archers had a raucous party or something and… uhhh, exploded? Who the fuck knows? And really, who cares? Because now I have their bodies. Ho ho ho.

Once more, night came.

I hid. I dug more. I waited. Night came. Night went. Morning arose, and so did I, resurrected from my tomb. I heard the hissing of a spider, and I fucked that fucker up with my pixel-blade.

I was triumphant.

Thereafter

During the day, I explore. At night, I dig.

I’ve since dug myself a small labyrinth connected to my little hut. I found an underground stream. I found a cavern, too, but I sealed that back up, because I suspect that giving the sinister malefactors and undead interlopers a back-door entry into my zone of safety and comfort is bad news bears.

I carved myself a path all the way from the opening to the other side of the island. So now I have two exits and entryways if I need them. All of them lined with torches.

I don’t know what happens now. I keep building. I keep crafting.

And somehow, I stay alive.

Later in the week I might mumble about the things I think make Minecraft… well, not great, but certainly interesting. I mean, I did all of the above in an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half. Not a serious time commitment, but it felt epic. So, I have thoughts in that direction, but I need to play a little more and put them together. Anyone else play? Anyone do anything with multiplayer yet? I’ve only noodled with the one-man-world and found it surprisingly unsettling. I grow fascinated.

(Want a great fan-made trailer to sell you on Minecraft? I’ve embedded it below.)

Go ahead, check it out.

I mean, you have to watch it over the head of some bald dude, but still:

This is not the first announcement of the World of Darkness MMO (though some nattering naysayers on the ever-charming “Internet Forums” are pretending like that’s what this is — “Dude, duh, we already knew about the MMO, no big, psshh, whatever. *poop noise*”), but I think it is the first confirmation anybody has had that the game is set more in the mode and world of Masquerade rather than Requiem. Plus, it’s the first graphical trailer we’ve had, is it not? Right? Pretty cool stuff.

I’ll add that on one hand, I’m disappointed to see Requiem not serve as the base. Requiem is the better roleplaying game (in my not-so-humble opinion), but on the other hand, the thing about Masquerade is that it’s the  more vibrant setting — at the game table, that kind of sucks, because the setting and the preordained characters and metaplot always overwhelmed those of the players. But in an MMO? I’m sold on the notion that Masquerade will provide a far greater “hard-coded” story and setting backdrop. Plus, hey, I cut my gaming teeth on Masquerade, so I’m excited to see that come back and become a playground of nostalgia. In a perfect world, I’ll play a little Masquerade online, then go play Requiem at the game table. I’ll have a game-related orgasm (re: “jizzplosion”) and will probably pass out.

For the record, I did some very early writing work on the MMO, writing work that is, by now, probably long forgotten. Will I do more? I dunno, ask the fine minds at CCP/WW. (Consider this, however, my digital elbow in the ribs: they should totally hire me to do more writing for them on the digital front because, y’know, I’m awesome. Not at writing, no. But at sexy dances. I am powerful seductive when I shake my snake hips. That’s right! I said it. “Snake hips.”)

Also for the record, someone at White Wolf should’ve totally zippered me up in a suitcase and snuck me into the Grande Masquerade. I’m hurt that nobody thought to compress me into some luggage.

(On a serious note, I will offer that it was a little sad that they had some “special art guests,” but didn’t really have any “special writer guests,” though. Artists rule, writers drool, one supposes.)

Anyway! Yeah. So, whaddya think all ye gamer-heads and RPG monkeys? This an awesome development? Or is this just sand in your waistband? Would you rather see Requiem over Masquerade on your screen / at your game table? What other monster types belong in the “playable MMO character” category — or should it forever remain the domain of the bloodsucking vampire scum? (I am perhaps a heretic in that I’d like to see Hunter: The Vigil cast into the realm of Vampire: The Masquerade. I actually think Vigil has a little more in common there if you let it — it offers a far greater global and conspiratorial feel than the other games. Then again, I also think Masquerade would be improved by busting out the Camarilla/Sabbat duality and invoking something more like the covenants in Requiem — that is the perfect marriage for me, all the metaplot juice of Masquerade with some of the setting conventions and social structures found in Requiem. Boom. Done. Yes. I should really try to get out of this parenthetical, shouldn’t I? I feel like I’m trapped here. For all of eternity. This is my dirge. This is my requiem. The Parenthetical Macabre.)

(Also for the record: I know next to nothing about the development of this game. Be advised, outside of some very early writing, I’m in the dark on the game and am following updates along with y’all.)