Dungeons and Dragons - Who knew?
Posted on June 26, 2007
Filed Under Games and other stuff, In all seriousness, Insurance |
Apparently word got out that I was once a Dungeons & Dragons 'Subject Matter Expert.' This never would have occurred to me, but I did play the game for many years when I was younger. As a D&D SME I was asked to make videos to teach a new generation of bored kids how to become addicted to role-plating games.
I agreed to do the videos, but there is an element of guilt to this project. Role playing games like D&D have spawned the massively popular MMORPG genre of games, and both the electronic and 'old fashioned' role-playing games are said to be addictive. There has even been debate as to whether online game addiction should be classified as a medical condition, and coverable under health insurance, Medicare, etc. Take a look into Resolution 421; the link takes you to the .doc file on the AMA web site.
The Economist published an article a while back about the results of game addiction in South Korea (sadly, I can not locate the story in their archive - post it in comments if you know the date or title). One report was that a man expired after several days of non-stop online games and caffeine. The story also mentioned that school-aged kids suffered symptoms of withdrawal when a power outage prevented them from being entertained for two days.
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welcome
You have entered 'start your head on fire,' housed at www.robertbeverly.com. 'start your head on fire' is the blog of Robert Beverly. It is not a very serious blog. Mr. Beverly writes most of the news items, but you will also see us (Debbie and Secretia) posting from time to time to clarify things. We are his "blog secretaries."
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who?
Rather than publish a biography or ask Mr. Beverly to record his memoirs (which would be dull), we thought we would post a summary for anyone who was wondering. He said we should do something like this because that's what other people's blogs have on them. Mr. Beverly goes by Rab, which is a common name for Scotsmen and their dogs. We call him Mr. Beverly in person because we're trying to talk him into a raise, but you can really call him Rab. Rab drinks gallons of coffee daily and makes jokes that we usually don't understand. We laugh politely because he writes the paychecks for Debbie and I (he hired us both as blog secretaries back in October 2006... we didn't even know what a blog was before this). Mr Beverly goes to the gym a lot, which is why he doesn't have time to type in his blog entries, and he does all kinds of weird exercises like Kung Fu and Yoga (NEVER ask him about this unless you want to hear all about martial arts). He enjoys literary analysis and esoteric reading and games like "Go" (the ancient Japanese strategy game) and chess, not to mention those weird "role playing" and "strategy" games he designs himself, all of which account for why we do not to start conversations with him. (Secretia here... what the hell was wrong with Yahtzee, I ask you?!) We like talking about peekapoos and the best grocery store sales, but we don't get to talk about that here.
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Oh dear God. I was filming until 11 PM last evening. It will be nice to see the clips up on the Internet, but it was very hot with all those movie lights in “The Loft.”
For those who do not know, “The Loft” is a building with a 24′ x 24′ recreation area as the entire second floor. If you have had the joy of watching “Bad Kung Fu: Lama vs. Wu” by Spitting Lama Productions, you will recognize The Loft. Take a look at the scene where the Lama master is assassinated by Master Wu. In my D&D video, I sat exactly on the spot of the assassination, where Johnny Lama cried over the body of his master. I kept looking over my shoulder for a blowgun-wielding assassin to peek through the window.
By the way, once those clips are published on expertvillage.com, the black thing above my head is the neck of a buffalo. He is a trophy from Zimbabwe in 1996. The meat is tough compared to grocery store beef, but the flavor is excellent.