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Diary of an AOL User

One of my favorites from long ago.

July 18 I just tried to connect to America Online. I’ve heard it’s the best online service I can get. They even included a free disk! I’d better hold onto it in case they don’t ever send me another. I can’t connect. I don’t know what is wrong.

July 19 Some guy at the tech support center says my computer needs a modem. I don’t see why. He’s trying to cheat me. How dumb does he think I am?
July 22 I bought the modem. I couldn’t figure out where it goes. It wouldn’t fit in the monitor or the printer. I’m confused.
July 23 I finally got the modem in and hooked up. That nine year old next door did it for me. But it still doesn’t work. I can’t get online.
July 25 That kid next door hooked up to America Online for me. He’s so smart. I told the kid he was a prodigy. But he says that’s just another service. What a modest kid. He’s so smart and he does these services for people. Anyway he’s smarter then the jerks who sold me the modem. They didn’t even tell me about communications software. Bet they didn’t know. And why do they put two telephone jack holes in the back of a modem when you only need one? And why do they have one labeled phone when you are not suppose to hook it to the phone jack on the wall? I thought the dial tone sounded funny! Boy, are modem makers dumb! But the kid figured it out by the sound.
July 26 What’s the internet? I thought I was on America Online. Not this internet thing. I’m confused.
July 27 The kid showed me how to use this America Online stuff. I told him he must be a genius.
July 28 I tried to use chat today. I tried to talk into my computer but nothing happened. Maybe I need to buy a microphone?
July 29 I found this thing called usenet. I got out of it because I’m connected to America Online, not usenet.
July 30 These people in this usenet thing keep using capital letters. How do they do that? I never figured out how to type capital letters. Maybe they have a different type of keyboard?
JULY 31 I CALLED THE COMPUTERS MAKER TO COMPLAIN ABOUT NOT HAVING A CAPITOL LETTER KEY. THE TECH SUPPORT GUY SAID IT WAS THIS CAPS LOCK KEY. WHY DIDN’T THEY SPELL IT OUT? I TOLD HIM I GOT A CHEAP KEYBOARD AND WANTED A BETTER ONE. AND ONE OF MY SHIFT KEYS ISN’T THE SAME SIZE AS THE OTHER. HE SAID THAT’S A STANDARD. I TOLD HIM I DIDN’T WANT A STANDARD KEYBOARD, I WANT ANOTHER BRAND. I MUST HAVE HAD AN IMPORTANT COMPLAINT, BECAUSE I HEARD HIM TELL THE OTHER SUPPORT GUYS TO LISTEN IN ON OUR CONVERSATION.

AUGUST 1 – I FOUND THIS THING CALLED THE USENET ORACLE. IT SAYS THAT IT CAN ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS I ASK IT. I SENT IT 44 SEPARATE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE INTERNET. I HOPE IT RESPONDS SOON.
AUGUST 2 – I FOUND A GROUP CALLED REC.HUMOR. I DECIDED TO POST THIS JOKE ABOUT THE CHICKEN THAT CROSSED THE ROAD. TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE! HA! HA! I WASN’T SURE I POSTED IT RIGHT SO I POSTED IT 56 MORE TIMES.
AUGUST 3 – I KEEP HEARING ABOUT THE WORLD WIDE WEB. I DON’T NOW SPIDERS GREW THAT LARGE.
AUGUST 4 – THE ORACLE RESPONDED TO MY QUESTIONS TODAY. JEEZ IT WAS RUDE. I WAS SO ANGRY THAT I POSTED AN ANGRY MESSAGE ABOUT IT TO REC.HUMOR.ORACLE. I WASN’T SURE IF I POSTED RIGHT SO I POSTED IT 22 MORE TIMES.
AUGUST 5 – SOMEONE TOLD ME TO READ THE FAQ. JEEZ THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO USE PROFANITY.
AUGUST 6 – SOMEONE ELSE TOLD ME TO STOP SHOUTING IN ALL MY MESSAGES.  WHAT A STUPID JERK. IM NOT SHOUTING! IM NOT EVEN TALKING! JUST TYPING!  HOW CAN THEY LET THESE RUDE JERKS GO ON THE INTERNET?
August 7 – Why have a Caps Lock key if you’re not suppose to use it?  Its probably an extra feature that costs more money.
August 8 – I just read this post called make money fast. I’m so exited. I’m going to make lots of money. I followed his instructions and posted it to every newsgroup I could find.
August 9 – I just made my signature file. Its only 6 pages long. I will have to work on it some more.
August 10 – I just looked at a group called alt.aol.sucks. I read a few posts and I really believe that aol should be wiped off the face of the earth. I wonder what an aol is.
August 11 – I was asking where to find some information about something. Some guy told me to check out ftp.netcom.com. I’ve looked and looked but I can’t find that group.
August 12 – I sent a post to every usenet group on the Internet asking where the ftp.netcom.com is. hopefully someone will help. I cant ask the kid next door. His parents said that when he comes back from my house he’s laughing so hard he can’t eat or sleep or do his homework. So they wont let him come over anymore. I do have a great sense of humor. I don’t know why the rec.humor group didn’t like my chicken joke. Maybe they only like dirty stuff. Some people sent me posts about my 56 posts of the joke and they used bad words.
August 13 – I sent another post to every usenet group on the Internet asking where the ftp.netcom.com is. I had forgot yesterday to include my new signature file which is only 8 pages long. I know everyone will
want to read my favorite poem so I included it. I’m also going to add that short story I like.
August 14 – Some guy suspended my account because of what I was doing.  I told him I don’t have an account at his bank. He’s so dumb.

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You might be watching too much anime if…

Submitted from http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Dojo/4563/toomuchanime.htm

  • you can speak intelligently in Japanese about spirits, demons, war, death, tournaments, magic, and profoundly soppy love affairs, but the prospect of buying a movie ticket leaves you tongue-tied.
  • “hai,” “baka,” and “hentai” come to your lips so easily that sometimes you have difficulty remembering what the English words are.
  • none of your friends study Japanese, but thanks to you, they all have 50-word vocabularies.
  • and if they used them in front of their moms, they’d get their mouths washed out with soap.
  • you go native, to the point of buying Japanese rice in 20-pound bags and clearing all of the furniture out of your living room so you can sit on the floor.
  • it’s 3 am, and you and your best friend are on the brink of a fistfight over whether Ranma-chan or Ranma-kun is cuter.
  • you have a Ranma outfit.
  • and so does your significant other.
  • you’re keeping an eye on your little sister for signs of slacking off during school, making eyes at the school’s only bishonen, and disappearing suspiciously often for “slumber parties,” because if she becomes a magic girl, you want in on the action.
  • your friends stage an intervention.
  • but only because they want your tapes.
  • some poor ex-mugger still hears the words “LEKKA SHINEN!” in his nightmares.
  • you never bothered getting your new apartment hooked up to cable, and even Babylon 5 is a take-it-or-leave-it thing but anyone who gets in the way of your mission to get the next Slayers volume is dead.
  • only, if you’d written the last sentence, you would have worded it, “Anyone who gets in my way is Nakago.”
  • you’ve contemplated growing your hair long so that you can put it up in dumplings.
  • and you’re a guy.
  • you feel like less of a woman because you can’t put away 5,000 calories in one sitting.
  • you’re despondent because your chances to become an anime heroine are completely shot–you can cook.
  • you refer to 21 as “over the hill,” and get more depressed the closer that day comes; you’re not ready to join the forces of evil, dammit!
  • it’s not a bad hair day, it’s a Zelgadis hair day.
  • your parents draw you aside and ask you whether you’re a Satanist, since all of those symbols you practice drawing in your notebooks look awfully suspicious to them.
  • your kids think that cartoons are supposed to have writing at the bottom.
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You might be an Animaniacs fan if…

  • you’ve tried to outdo Yakko’s singing of the dictionary by singing the Encylopedia. (Lynxan)
  • you’ve suspected that your successful friend might be a chicken. (Lynxan)
  • you yell “potty emergency” every time you need to go. ( Deena )
  • you can sing the words to Wakko’s “America”…
  • …or Yahoo’s “World”…
  • when telling your friends something, you always start with “Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
  • whenever in the hospital, you have the urge to say, “Helllooooooo Nurse!”

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You might be a gamer if…


Rent Games for $8.99!

    Pound of Dice 

    Pound of Dice on Amazon
  • You don’t think of a Russian bazooka when someone says “RPG”.
  • You use game stats to describe things in a movie. (Well, Han just blew his Fast-Talk roll)
  • You use game stats to describe things in real life.
  • You laugh yourself silly when you hear the word “Gazebo”.
  • The game master smiles, and you know it’s too late.
  • Your blood pressure rises when the subject of “Dark Dungeons” comes up.
  • You know the difference between a glaive-guisarm and a voulge.
  • You know the singular form of the word “dice”.
  • You aced the die-rolling section of your statistics exam.
  • You can figure the odds (in your head) of getting a certain result when rolling variable sized dice pools.
  • You know that all dice are not square shaped.
  • You own a 30 or a 100 sided die.
  • You own a seven sided die.
  • losing your dice bag would be a serious financial blow.
  • you could paper you bathroom in character sheets.
  • you could paper your bathroom in different versions of just ONE character.
  • you are unable to walk past the latest TSR supplement without leafing through it, even though you know it’s going to be bad.
  • you have more entertaining “No-shit,-there-I-was-in-a-game” stories than you do anecdotes about your family.
  • you talk about your characters as if they are real people.
  • you alternate between referring to your characters in the first and the third person.
  • and none of your friends gets confused.
  • you’ve ever spent a significant fraction of your life modifying game rules that you didn’t like… and, as soon as the system worked to your satisfaction, discarded it.
  • when someone says “The blue books,” you don’t automatically picture the kind that they give you during a college final exam.
  • you worship idols of Gary Gygax in your basement.
  • you burn Gary Gygax in effigy in your back yard.
  • you will not buy comic books with the Dragon Strike ™ logo on the back.
  • you’ve ever seen the old AD&D tv series.
  • you’re still reading this list.
  • you hang out with people you actively dislike because they give good role– play.
  • you’ve ever gotten into a screaming match over something that happened in a game… (You are so dead! I am not dead!)
  • you’ve ever neglected to buy the new edition of your favourite game because you already have three.
  • you have more than one photocopied bootleg of a gaming text.
  • you keep old characters around just in case someone might run that system again. (Never mind that its TS: SI)
  • You knew what I meant when I said TS:SI.
  • you have a PhD in manipulating point systems to the best effect, even though you failed high school geometry.
  • you can consume your body weight in junk food in one gaming session.
  • you consider Altoids, Salt-&-Vinegar chips, and blue Teeni Hugs a balanced diet. (or even an acceptable combination.)
  • you have been known to drive to far away places where you paid enormous amounts of money for the privelege of sleeping on floors, eating crap, buying little pewter statues of Gandalf, and meeting dozens of psychopathic members of the alternate (or similar) sex who will follow you around for months, merely for the pleasure of playing with gamers you don’t know.
  • and then signed up en masse with all of you friends to play in games with game masters who you’ve known since high school.
  • you own your own weight in gaming books.
  • the owners of local hobby stores take your checks without ID because they know where you live.
  • you can do AD&D money conversions in your head.
  • you could wallpaper you bedroom in Dragon Mirths ™.
  • you consider the demise of “What’s New With Phil & Dixie” a blow to great literature.
  • you consider the resurrection of “What’s New With Phis & Dixie” the redeeming feature of Magic: The Gathering.
  • you consider the 20th century a state of mind.
  • you have a random NPC generator, written in BASIC, designed to run on the Trash-80 or the Commodore 64.
  • you’ve ever designed your own character sheets.
  • you can be more that three NPCs at the same time without generating more than reasonable confusion in your players.
  • you have ever played a Dwarven character who did not have “axe” or “beard” ANYWHERE in his or her name.
  • you know how to sex dwarves. (chromosome typing– required a blood sample. I’M not getting it…)
  • you’ve ever tried to explain gaming to a school counselor, parent, or other PW/OC (Person With/Out Clue).
  • you’ve suceeded.
  • you’ve played Talisman more than once.
  • you’ve finished a game of Talisman.
  • more than once.
  • you’re STILL reading this list.

  • you can quote extensively from the Wandering Damage Tables.
  • you’ve mistaken a d12 or a double d10 for a d20 while playing AD&D and had a THAC0 low enough to hit the 8HD monster, anyway…
  • you understood that.
  • you carry AD&D insurance.
  • your AC is so low that even you can’t hit yourself.
  • an 87 point Balrog is no big thrill anymore.
  • you bring your dicebag even to diceless roleplaying events.
  • you’ve ever discovered, after gaming with your significant other, that you like their character better than you do them.
  • you have friends or acquaintances who regularly refer to you as “Og.” (Or something similar.)
  • you’ve ceased responding to your birth name.
  • you spend more money on dice than on food.
  • you sometimes forget what century this is.
  • your first response to any frustrating situation is, “I bash it with my axe.”
  • you know a lot of gaming jokes that used to be funny once.
  • your friend(s) who does not game feels very left out of all of your conversations.
  • you have more gaming books than the local hobby store.
  • you’ve discovered that spare dice make good beanbag filler.
  • you knew that that last question was a ringer: who has more dice than they can use?
  • you have a copy of “Dark Dungeons” kicking around somewhere because a: you thought it was funny b: your parents got concerned that you were living in a fantasy realm.
  • you’re sortof dissapointed that you haven’t reached the level where they start teaching you the real spells (as described in the above “Dark Dungeons” pamphlet) yet: You’re sure you must be a high enough level.
  • you’ve been gaming for more than half of your life.
  • you still laugh when someone says “Hey, Dave, I think the barbarian in the corner wants another beer.”
  • the phrase “Collect Call of Cthulhu” brings back fond memories.

  • you can quote the whole “Trolls! Mutants! Trolls! Mutants!” strip from “what’s New With Phil & Dixie.”
  • you knew a female gamer once.
  • you were a female gamer once.
  • you tend to play characters as different from you in race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and what have you as possible, just to confuse your friends.
  • (For New Englanders only) You were able to find stuff at “Flock, Stock, and Barrel.”
  • you’ve been known to have in-depth conversations about the relative merits of Champions, V&V, Marvel, and DC heroes… ignoring the fact that all superhero systems are intrinsically sucky.
  • you like one of the above systems enough that you yelped when I called them all, “sucky.”
  • you’ve thought of four or five additions to this list.
  • you actually bought TSR’s “Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide” when it first came out.
  • you’ve ever tried to discover the strengths and weaknesses of a haemophiliac werewolf.
  • someone is attempting to explain the floorplan of a building to you and you immediately start thinking in terms of 10X10 squares.
  • or 6’x6′ hexes.
  • your first though upon walking into a friend’s domicile is to reflect on where you’d put the machine-gun nest.
  • you and your friends have spent a screening of “The Crow” assigning vampire clans to the various characters.
  • you actually wear that little ankh that comes in the Vampire Live-Action box…in everyday life.
  • you’ve ever gotten wierd looks from other customers at places like Denny’s or IHOP because of the nature of your conversations.
  • a friend of yours screws something up and you respond with, “looks like you failed your _________ roll.”
  • you’ve actually paid to have custom fangs made.
  • you wear these fangs in everyday life (not to mention Renaissance festivals).
  • you’ve ever argued against a combat rule based on your experience in the SCA/Military/Police, etc.
  • you have a dozen things in mind for when you come across a magic lamp.
  • when you talk about the “good old days” you mean when games cost $12 and came with their own dice.
     

  • If you played a different game every night, you’d need a fifty-day week to use your RPG collection to its full extent.
  • The six-siders in your dice bag have been worn down to the point that they look like 20-siders.
  • your car and/or home is falling apart, you’re wearing the same clothes you wore in the 1980’s, and you miss meals regularly, but you’ve got the money in the bank for the next year’s worth of <insert favorite game company>’s products.
  • If your computer broke down, your biggest worry is how you’d print out your character sheets.
  • you can cite the differences between “official” Star Trek, and FASA Star Trek, and Star Fleet Battles.
  • your character has more close friends than you do.
  • you have more Star Frontiers modules than you have close friends.
  • you could write a biography of your character easier than you could write your own autobiography.
  • you think that such a biography WOULD BE an autobiography.
  • you can’t find your favorite shirt, but you know where all the dice that came with your first D&D set are.
  • you remember when games gave you tips on “inking” dice with crayon.
  • you can give no fewer than six different speeches on “what is roleplaying?”, verbatim, from the introductions to different games.
  • you’ve bought a game even though you didn’t like the genre or the rules, so that you could fix the rules and convert them to a different genre.
  • you’ve looked into how much it would cost to build a castle
  • there is virtually no game that you can’t name the genre, company, or country of origin for (Hunter Planet, anyone?).
  • your most important criteria for a mate is that they’re a gamer, too.
  • you’re a hetero male and you’ve considered changing orientation just to find a mate to meet that criterion (that’s a word, right?).
  • you’ve ever written a speech for your character to make just in case he should find himself in such a situation.
  • you remember when all games referred to characters as “he”.
  • * Your idea of a fun Friday night consists of getting the gang together and playing for eight or more hours.
  • * The only reason you want a lake cabin is so you and the gang can go up there and play non-stop all weekend without any distractions.
  • * You finally get to the point where you look at everything on the shelves and say “*I* can do a better job than these bozos!”
  • * You actually get a chance to do just that.
  • * …and you succeed!
  • * Everything you see, hear, or taste translates into some form of stats for a game. (“Wow! That move was cool…that means he’s got Swing Sword +20 and Look Cool In Armor +15.”)

  • * You write a parody of the RPG industry, and it’s also a game.
  • * …and one of the companies you slam picks it up for its “Mature” imprint and distributes it gleefully.
  • * You go into business as a consultant on the RPG industry.
  • * …and you actually are *hired*! (Neener-neener!)
  • * You branch out from RPGs into the stuff that game was derived from so you make better sense of the bloody thing. (Gamers-turned-Otaku, Gamers-turned-occultists, Gamers-turned-goths, Gamers-turned-military personel, Gamers-turned-martial artists, etc.)
  • * …and you *still* don’t stop playing! (Loyal man! I like you!)
  • * You remember when there was none of this “no exclusively (fe)male viewpoint” bullshit.
  • * …or when there was none of this “no cussing” crap either.
  • * You make up songs like “Livin in the Kaer” and “Fun Fun Fun (Till the Horror took her Free Will Away)”
  • * You’ve written character histories that are longer than most novels…
  • * …For Paranoia Characters.
  • * You Watch war documentaries with GURPS Vehicles so you can tell how much damage the 4-inch Naval Gun using an APX shell does.
  • * You spend five hours converting Modern Aircraft, when you run a fantasy campaign.
  • * You can quote the exact chance of a 1st-level Mage defeating an Umber hulk from memory, though a Voydanoi takes a little work.
  • * You break your leg, but insist on using a ‘Recovery Test’ before calling the ambulance.
  • * You have a list of what all the potions taste like.
  • * Your resume descrivbes you as a ‘5th-Level Civil Engineer’
  • * Drac’s Raving at you.
  • * You’ve figured out that the Average AD&D Great Wyrm Red Dragon has 7 cubic feet of treasure.
  • * You Demand Experience points after winning a fistfight.
  • * You have a nickname that makes no sense because one of your characters had it.
  • * You Buy Dragon Magazine “For the Articles.”
  • * You Worship TSR.
  • * You Detest T$R.
  • * You’ve ever constructed yourself as a character.
  • * You’ve got more tables than all the restaurants in town.
  • * You know how to use dice as weapons.
  • * You use phrases like ‘Save vs. Graduation or go insane for 1d4 days.’
  • * You know how many hit points every member of your family has.
  • * You know that you can fit 20 d4’s together to make a large d20 because you’ve actually tried it.
  • * You are not cleared for this information.
  • * You’re up until 5:30 in the morning posting to rec.games.frp.misc.

  • -Your subscription copy of Dragon shows up in the mail one month, and you realize it’s the hundredth consecutive issue you’ve bought. (In my case, it was 187).
  • -You own consecutive issues farther back than that.
  • -You’ve read every issue from 55 on up.
  • -You’re still looking for the rest.
  • -You’ve almost hit this point with Polyhedron.
  • -You remember when White Dwarf was an AD&D magazine.
  • -You bought a copy of the French-language edition of Dragon, even though you can’t read French, because it had Second Edition rules for the Anti-Paladin class, and even though you don’t like the class, you know that having that issue will really annoy the Anti-Paladin fans in your gaming club.
  • Game dealers at Gencon recognize you and know your name, even though it’s your first time at Gencon.
  • you remember GenCon in tents.
  • * You collect things shaped liked dice or with dice in them (drink stirrers, pens with dice-in-water in the end, brass dice sets, dice bookends…)
  • * You still have a set of dice-shaped cushions made as a gesture of understanding by your mom
  • * When you finally settle down with a loved one and build a home, you insist on designing a Gaming Room into the house
  • * And getting the stamped concrete patio/pergola/driveway done in hexagons
  • * You own “Intoduction to Traveller”
  • * Or the Traveller Supplement “Forms and Charts”
  • * You know which number Supplement that last one was
  • * You know which Sci-Fi novel series was the inspiration for Traveller’s Imperium
  • * You don’t just have maps of places that don’t exist – you’ve had at least one of them made into a Globe
  • * You collect building plans (viewed from above) to use as Site Maps for games
  • * You have examples of weapons from your games in the house – “so the players can’t argue about how heavy/long/clumsy/etc they are…”
  • * (For the [mostly] male gamers) You meet couples through your spouse/partner and form only a casual acquaintance with the half of the pair of the same gender as yourself – until one day, after months/years of having known them, one of you drops some gaming reference like “looks like a kobold” or “don’t mind me – I’ve got a 12-point hide” (the more obscure the better) – and suddenly you’re best of mates, and they seem to have value as a person now
  • * While you have a number of friends, only Gamers reach the status of Mates
  • * You buy CDs of specific music (or sounds) just to use as background atmosphere for gaming
  • * You’ve ever found yourself associating with people who you’d otherwise avoid in public – because they were Gamers
  • * You have a place where the paraphernalia of your gaming youth is displayed for the curious as a sort of shrine to “the good old days”
  • * You have three or more dice-boxes (one in use, the others retired, holding seldom-used (or antique, faithful) dice, or doing duty on the Gaming Shrine [above])
  • * You can remember where at least three Gaming shops USED to be located in your town/city, before they moved, were demolished or disappeared
  • * You whoop with joy on rolling a 20 for hit location with a Gauss Rifle on your first hit on an opponent
  • * You know which game that must be in
  • * You know the TWO meanings of the term “AC20”
  • * You keep custom clipboards (or similar contrivances) in the house for your gaming pals to keep their character sheets on when they come over
  • * Your memories of the best times your character(s) had when living their game-lives are sweeter and more worth retelling than the best times you had in your actual youth (partially because you were too busy gaming – and writing rules expansions you hardly used – to get out and have a life)
  • * You’ve ever written to a game designer personally
  • * They replied!
  • * You’ve phoned a game designer to chat about a game of theirs and where it’s going
  • * It’s a game they haven’t even released yet
  • * From your computer, where you are now, you can look around and see most or all of your gaming gear
  • * You own a pin-on badge that says “Incoming Fire Has The Right Of Way”
  • * You still have the original three-booklet set of Traveller
  • * AND the box it came in
  • * OR the booklet-form of D&D (before the hardbound version hit the streets)
  • * You feel that Gaming has played a part in your developing a personal philosophy
  • * Your life-philosophy manifests as your taking Gaming seriously while taking most of the rest of life light-heartedly – the complete opposite to the way most of society seems to work
  • * Your spouse/partner agrees with the rest of society and wishes you would take life as seriously as you do Gaming
  • * You have a feeling that God is a big Gamemaster, we’re all just Characters, and Life, viewed from the outside, is a Game after all
  • You’ve submitted to this list.
  • And got your submission accepted!
  • You get $30.00 in a surprise windfall, and don’t drink it, but instead spend it on that supplement that you noted was at the local store.
  • If you purposely stashed the supplement behind/near/out of its normal place so that nobody else buys it out from under you.
  • You’ve moved the above back to your special hiding spot after store personnel reshelve it.
  • You’ve thought about designing a game, and actually wrote more than 20 or so pages.
  • and self-published it!
  • All of oyur friends say, “You should start a game company.”
  • You do, and they end up working for you, until they leave to start their own.
  • You find yourself teaching new players the ropes so often, you now have a down-pat speech, readily translatable to any game system for newcomers.
  • You have no non-gamer friends, or you limit contact with such people.
  • When describing a game scenario with your pals, you get real excited, waving your arms, drawing a crowd. Phrases like, “Man, we %^&*$%^ wasted ’em! Took out the tank with an RPG, then L-T was rocking out on the ’60…” everything goes fine, as the crowd draws near, wanting to hear more, until you say, “Then I took a round, BLAM! 45 H.P.” And the crowd leaves, saying, “Oh, it was ONLY A GAME.”
  • You get mad, BECAUSE YOU WERE THERE, DAMMIT!
  • You don’t think anything is wrong with the previous statement.
  • You use issues of Guns & Ammo for the tech specs on your latest weapon supplement you’re adding to your game.
  • You know the BattleTech Hit location charts from memory, so that you don’t need to use ’em anymore.
  • In fact, you know ’em so well, THE GROUP doesn’t use ’em any more, THEY USE YOU.
  • When someone asks you, “Level Three fall, what’s the piloting skill mod?”, you know what they mean.
  • You, reading this, know what it means.
  • You not only know what it means, but can yell out what page it is on.
  • And you’re correct!
  • And you get mad when somebody checks up on you, to see if it was the right page!
  • When you search the internet nightly for cool gaming software for your PC.
  • and you found this list by doing that! (Like I did.)
  • and you add to this list, to keep the spirit of gaming alive! (Like I did!)
  • You’ve learned more about space, and science fiction from playing traveller, rather than watching COSMOS by Carl Sagan, like everybody else.
  • You’re in the military, and the best tactics you’ve got came from your pre-military gaming days (or they improve daily, in continuing nightly sessions at the barracks/ship/base/etc.)
  • You know more military tactics and strategy than most officers at your military post.
  • …Than ALL of the officers at your local military post.
  • …COMBINED!
  • You know more than three definitions of the acronym RPG.
  • You were around when SPI was.
  • You KNOW what SPI was.
  • You still have some of their games around.
  • You know what AH stands for, and have copies of any of the following: U-BOAT, MIDWAY, GETTYSBURG.
  • … and they’re less than 10 years older than you are.
  • You were around when the only games out were CHAINMAIL, METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA, GAMMA WORLD 1st ed., and TRAVELLER.
  • and you bought ’em, cause they were “What the cool grown-up college kids were playing.”
  • And you still have ’em.
  • IN THE ORIGINAL BOXES!
  • You remained loyal thorough the right-wing religious anti-gaming crusade.
  • You know what to say (delicately, without sloppy missionary fervor) when someone says, “Oh, you don’t play that “Dungeoens & Dragons thing, DO YOU?!?!?!?!
  • You know the real tragic truth about Dallas Egbert.
  • …and you learned it by reading the book on it, “The Dungeon Master.” (Required reading, IMHO, for all DM’s, and players, BTW.)
  • You’d rather game that visit your boy/girlfriend.
  • …That’s how you met them.
  • And then got married. (It didn’t work for me. Your mileage may differ.)
  • And got divorced, OVER GAMES! (Like me. She was fantasy, I was Sci Fi/Military.)
  • You see a car crash, or accident on T.V., and scream, “Oooh, CRIT!”
  • You’ve said, “Roll initiative” more times than you’ve sung your countries’ national anthem.
  • You tried gaming outside, for that “Natural, Woodland Atmosphere.” Ahhh.
  • Until you found out the hard way about the ^&#%^&* WIND, when it blew all of your maps/character sheets away.
  • …and you felt that they were so irreplaceable, you chased after them, tripped on a root, fell, and split open your knee.
  • … while your friends were yelling stuff like, “Cleric, bind wounds! Cure Light! Etc.”
  • and you thought it was so funny you peed all over yourself laughing.
  • You’re STILL reading this list!
  • You’re REALLY thinking of adding to this list, now.
  • You’ve actually played a halfling, but kept telling everybody you were a “Hobbit.”
  • You read the issue of Phil & Dixie, about, “Hey, the phone is circular-metal-banding!”
  • and you thought it was funny.
  • And you know what I’m writing about.
  • and you’re remembering it now, and how funny it was.
  • You realize that this list is a common bond, among all gamers, of all races, in all countries, and that the Internet is just amazing, and that now, games will only get even better.
  • And you’re looking forward to that. (poignant, emotional sniff.)
  • . . You think that that the D&D progression is Basic, Expert, Advanced.
  • after your GM sort of explains what thet monster looks like you know your exact roll needed to hit and how much damage it can take
  • you know how to roll the dice to get any number you want
  • you don’t need any gaming books because you have every detail memorized
  • but you always keep two copies handy just in case
  • you keep up with your character’s kingdom’s politics more carefully than your own country’s
  • you scream in pain whenever your character takes damage
  • you know all the exact somatic and verbal components of you wizard’s spells
  • you keep a copy of your character in your wallet
  • your GM thinks you live in his house
  • your GM thinks your married to him
  • your characer has killed more than one Tarrasque
  • you get your friends and your character’s friends mixed up
  • after a fistfight you search whoever you knocked out
  • you’ve ever played your defiler in the Tank Girl R.P.G.
  • you’ve ever played the Tank Girl R.P.G.
  • you were highly offended by that last comment
  • you’ve played The Wizard’s Challenge more than once
  • you created a random die generator in DOS using BASIC commands
  • any of your characters has ever broken a staff of power or a staff of the magi for a retributive strike
  • and lived
  • you changed your name so that your initials read R.P.G.
  • you ever started a character as evil
  • you missed the O.J. Simpson trial because you were on this really long adventure
  • one of your wizards has ever roasted another person’s characer with a fireball, then commented, “Hey, he was a dwarf. He didn’t need that extra constitution point anyway
  • you’ve ever had a character named Rath or Delsenora
  • you’ve ever played as the player and the GM because noone was around to play with
  • you own the Japaneese version of any of the Final Fantasy series
  • you read the entire Encyclopedia Magica set
  • you know what a claymore is and what it looks like
  • your characer has created more spells than TSR
  • you have the BATTLESYSTEM rules memorized
  • you have the BATTLESYSTEM rules
  • you have the SPELLJAMMER rules memorized
  • you have the SPELLJAMMER rules
  • you have the Players Option rules memorized
  • you have had more than one paladin character
  • you wonder why I didn’t just write: you have the Players Options rules
  • you understand the Rift alignment rules and actually use them
  • you’ve named EVERY one of your dice.
  • you remember all their names.
  • you realized that there ain’t that many names in the world.
  • when people talk about AC Adaptors, you misinterpret the meaning.
  • It need to budget your money in gaming sessions.
  • The constant squinting and reading during gaming sessions has made you permanantely nearsighted.
  • You’ve ever spent more time in a single gaming session than a Jerry Lewis Marathon.
  • You do this regularly.
  • You’ve ever taught your children to read using your game books.
  • Your collection of gaming books are worth more to you than your car.
  • Your House
  • Your Firstborn child
  • Your learned about sex during your gaming sessions.
  • You see every monster or person in every movie you see and think of it in game terms.
  • You’ve screamed at the TV “Hey, He can’t do that, he didn’t have the right material components.
  • You’ve ever had your character create bateries for the Laser pistol in the Robe of Useless Items
  • You’ve played Raistlin
  • You’ve played Raistlin and kicked Takhisis’ butt
  • You’ve played mages far more powerful than Raistlin (the pussy)
  • You don’t give a shit about Raistlin, Tanis was far more interesting.
  • You know what the hell I’m talking about
  • You’ve ever bought really old and crap games simply for their historic value as collector’s items
  • You’ve written for an gaming fanzine
  • You’ve published a gaming fanzine
  • not on the internet
  • and it lasted more than one issue
  • and it made money
  • You’re getting more and more worried the further you go down this list, because it’s getting closer and closer to reality
  • or you weren’t worried before, but after reading the above, you are now
  • Cheers, Steve Darlington, Brisbane, Australia.
  • you watched the film The Fifth Element and knew the answer to the final puzzle stright away.
  • so did all the guys you went to see it with
  • you can remember the uproar over “Mazes and Monsters”.
  • you were upset when “Wormy” disappeared, even if you didn’t understand what the hell it was about.
  • you get annoyed in action movies because “my character certainly wouldn’t have done that!”
  • you were torn between a desire to preserve your Dragon magazines and rip off their covers for wall art.
  • You have worked out what Runequest cult Xena belongs to
  • You saw Starship Troopers and wondered why they didn’t use FGMP’s and Battle Dress
  • You know what a FGMP is
  • You refer to the “Law Level” of your city
  • You go to the domestic airport to get a flight and tell ppl “I am going to the C class starport”
  • You played the mini solo adventures to T&T..like Goblin Lake
  • You thought the pictures in S1 enhanced the experience of the module…even the sliding into the burning pit one
  • You now wear glasses cause you read the original C&C rules
  • You understand what Arduin was about…and used it
  • You used a copy of the character sheet that came with Space Opera
  • You have realised that you are getting older cause your V&V character is now not as effective in physical stats
  • You call your ATM card a cred chip
  • When you go onto the freeway you refer to it as entering jump
  • You go to the Burning Man cause you heard that Greg Stafford went there
  • You worry about mining operations in Antarctica, not because of the environmental damage but that they could awaken the Elder Things
  • If you’re still taking additions to the list, here’s mine: …you find yourself mixing plotlines and characters from two or more settings (this actually happened to me…I was reading a Cyberpunk sourcebook and thought, geez, Israel has some really good guns, too bad they’re co-opted as part of the Setite-Nephandi coalition… before I realized that that was from White Wolf)
  • you’ve ever written out the IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, and Spd of your real-life friends, and yourself.
  • you’ve ever assigned skills and proficiency levels to your friends and yourself.
  • you’ve spent weeks practicing at the gun range just so you too could have Weapon Proficiency: Automatic Pistol.
  • you stalk the streets at night, hoping to steal someone’s PPE.
  • one of your characters has died of old age.
  • you can quote from the Recollections of Erin Tarn.
  • you’re afraid the Coalition will steal your dog and send him to Lone Star.
  • you joined the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), but nobody will fight you because you insist that their SDC weapons have no effect on your armor.
  • you divorced your wife/husband because the two of you have different alignments.
  • you wrote a book containing all the spells your characters have created.
  • said book has been published.
  • none of the pimps in your city approach you because you keep asking them if they have any energy rifles for sale.
  • you’ve offered said pimps your SAMAS power armor in exchange for a “favor”.
  • you find yourself on this page.
  • you find yourself laughing at this page.
  • if you can quote characters from the fictional pieces that litter the varios books.
  • if you know who coolwillie and jerj are.
  • you’ve ever scared the shit out of a monk because you asked if he had a Wizard Scroll of Easy Wenching
  • you’ve ever attacked a neighbor’s lawn gnomes because they resembled those bastard dwarves that betrayed you in your last campaign
  • you bring a sleeping bag, twigs, flint, tinder, and Dale’s Wonder Sword Polish! to every game just for the ‘authenticity’
  • you’ve ever written a fully comprehensive item, weapon, and clothing guide with complete cross-referencing by size, weight, and color, including an easily understood random roll listing
  • and never used it, because you made the list from memory
  • you believe the sole purpose of learning algebra is to figure out easier ways to calculate HP while taking into account armour weight, dexterity, constitution, and the gravitational pull on the shield, all at the same time
  • You understood that.
  • You’ve ever screamed, “DEAR GOD NO! DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!” and ducked behind a lamp because someone didn’t do a Detect Traps check.
  • Your excuse for failing a test is your Int. roll sucked
  • Your friends stare at everything you give them—whether it be food, paper, or moldy grapes you found in the bottom of your refrigerator—because they know you are prone to putting clues to future puzzles on the oddest things
  • You’ve ever found yourself sitting on the floor in a dark room, surrounded by people you don’t know, playing a game you’ve never heard of, with a character you made three minutes before hand, and yet you can still quote the character names, stats, and weaponry of everyone in the room
  • Your campaigns are a mix of five different games with rules, weapons, and races from all of them
  • and your player’s don’t notice
  • you insist of making Charisma checks before flirting with someone
  • Your parameters for respecting someone are their Charisma and the Armour Class
  • You have no clue what your best friend’s real name because you met him/her in a game
  • You refer to your teachers as ‘Sir’ and ‘Milady’
  • You never answer a question on a test without attempting to summon the Mirmir
  • You knew what that was
  • You’ve ever created your own faction … You’ve ever openly advocated your faction
  • You’ve ever gotten into an argument with your character because you want a Grapple and she wants a Particle Beam Blaster
  • and lost
  • You’ve ever created an entire bible for a faction
  • and discarded it because it was too limiting
  • You’ve ever attacked a complete stranger because your faction regarded theirs as “threatening”
  • You’ve ever gone through an entire day speaking in gibberish because your Babble spell didn’t get canceled before the game ended
  • Planescape. ‘Nuff said.
  • When your character dies, you hold a full-service funeral and morn for at least two weeks before creating another.
  • Your pets only respond to you when you act in character.
  • Nachoes become fine cuisine.
  • You actually create languages for games just so you can get the feeling of talking to real elves.
  • Your excuse for everything wrong in your life is that your GM hates you.
  • You feel guilty if you have more than one character at a time.
  • Your character gets more mail than you do.
  • You don’t realize that the dragon you fought is not an excuse for being late.
  • Your internal clock is set to the game time.
  • Your best threat is that you will send your character to cast “Beffudle” on someone and them use “Binding” to hold him over a Pit of Orcs.
  • You cut yourself everytime your character gets injured. (Actually, that’s boredering on dimensia)
  • You’ve memorized where all of the towns and castles are in your campaign, but can’t even tell someone where Canada is.
  • You panic because you only have 10 bags of Cheetos left.
  • Every time you meet someone, you almost introduce yourself as your character.
  • You are dating one of the NPC’s in your campaign.
  • and see nothing wrong with it.
  • You pray to your GM.
  • You can actually say that you have more game books than the game store.
  • You have more meaningful arguements in a game than in real life. (Mostly because no one will talk to you in real life.)
  • You wonder what I ment when I said “Real life”.
  • You actually do all the things on this list, just to be considered a real gamer.
  • You actually care wether your AC is -8 or -7.
  • You’ve actually had an AC that low.
  • You make a new character, and in four days he is level 10.
  • You make death threats at your friends’ characters when they piss you off.
  • You buy a ring in real life that is 3 sizes too big, because rings are supposed to fit everyone, no matter what, right?
  • You bother to worry about how much weight your character carries and use the encumberance rules.
  • You refer to Driver’s Ed as “training in piloting automobiles.
  • you’ve ever looked at a particularly threatening background around a teacher/professor (dark clouds, purple lightning, the end boss from Doom II, etc.) and assumed they were in actuality a lesser Demon of Slaanesh.
  • you’ve found sufficient evidence to prove that one of your teachers/professors is actually a lesser Demon of Slaanesh.
  • you’ve looked at a younger girl/guy and wished to God your 32nd-level warrior mage was around to cast that Age spell….mmm boy! Wait, that’s disgusting.
  • you disagreed with me on that last point.
  • when you and a fellow PC’s character get into a fight, you go to the closet and break out the ornamental broadswords.
  • you’ve ever toured Scotland and England in hopes that you would be able to open a dimensional Rift.
  • during said visit, you scared the crap out of the Archbishop of Canterbury by asking him to open said rift.
  • you pissed on your father’s grave because he used to call you “fairy boy” for playing Dungeons & Dragons.
  • you opened a gateway to the Eye of Terror on your father’s grave because he used to call you “fairy boy” for playing Dungeons & Dragons.
  • you play Warhammer 40K….with 1:1 scale.
  • you entered a Trekkie convention and shouted “screw the Klingon language! I know Elven!”
  • Trekkies look down their noses at you.
  • you stayed up on Christmas eve, waiting for Santa with a NG-57 Northern Gun Heavy-duty Ion Blaster…little did you realize that the jolly elf was a full conversion Borg…
  • you’re so far gone as to offer thousands of credits for “pre-Rifts” paper money.
  • you’ve been shot because of this offer.
  • You know that in the basic rule book of Rifts, every 10th, 3rd, and 14th word will spell out complete conversion rules from TSR to Palladium rules.
  • You’re going to get that book now to see it.
  • You found out that I lied and are now about to send me a hate e-mail.
  • You find a combination of letters from a book that do work, and e-mail with it and tell me I’m an idiot. (In which case I will hunt you down and pummel you to death with that book)
  • You don’t care about that because you already know how to do that.
  • The writers of your favorite game call you for advice on their new source book.
  • You can’t seem to escape the feeling that you should be… rolling… something… but what?
  • You base an NPC on your girlfriend as a birthday present.
  • And she loves it.
  • You actually enjoy being the GM. (That would be me.)
  • You hold an intervention to stop your friend from always being a juicer.
  • You have sexually fantasies about the tough chic NPC in your campaign.
  • You carry a pencil, a bag of dice, and your character sheet in case of a spontaneous game session.
  • You tell everyone that your pet is your animal familiar.
  • Your memories of “the good old days” involve cheese balls, and a really long campaign.
  • You’ve been to a hundred bars and taverns in your games, but only one in real life so you could get the ambiance to make the ones in the game seem more real.
  • Your GM has to teach you the hard way not to go around his traps. (That’s why I enloy being GM)
  • You play Strip D&D.
  • You cried when your freind’s character dies, but didn’t even go to your grandmother funeral because it was on the day of your campaign.
  • You tell your friend that spending $4500 to fix up his car was a waste of money, then go home to your $6000 dollars worth of RPG books.
  • You have 3 minutes to evacuate your home, and you save all of your RPG books and dice, leaving a pricless painting, four family heirlooms, and $700,000 worth of precious gems and metals.
  • The pizza guy has been to your house during your gaming sessions so many times, that he greets you all by your characters’ names.
  • You have no money, your bills are three months overdue, and you owe a total of $50000 dollars to various organizations, but your character could buy an entire army and arm them into invincible war machines and rule the world as a novelty and still have enough left over to buy off his enemies for the next 800 years.
  • But your character lives by voluntary simplicity and only owns food and a couple weapons, like you. Except you sold your weapons for more rule books, and cheese balls and pretzles are the closest thing to food you know of.
  • You’ve actually played an RPG online.
  • You greet everyone with “Well met, my friend.”
  • Your charactter actually has a well paying job.
  • But you have never held a steady job for more than a week.
  • You honestly believe you have connections with a powerrful warlord.
  • You have ever played a game with your parents.
  • You were GMing a game with your little brother and he dies, and you were grounded for letting him die.
  • You can easily use up a 10-game card at the local lasergame hall
  • a week
  • Being no. 1 on the list of top ten lasertag/warhammer/magic etc. players just isn’t enough– your name is the ONLY name that should be on that list.
  • You actually compary yourself with some of these symptoms
  • You have more dragon necklaces than underwear
  • The only *real* reason you ever got into computers whas that someone told you that you could make text-adventures in BASIC– and that’s the only kind of adventures you can play since your friends abandonned you when you became to weird a long time ago
  • If told a mythical creature, you automatically name it’s features, races, homelands and where the myth came up-not to mention which cultures it appeared in. (The Golem, anyone?)
  • When Magic the Gathering appeared, you created your own custom-cardgame RPG (? la DS, if some1 remember) using a standard card deck, and insisted that you should always be allowed to play the joker!
  • You mix up your own memories with your character’s (“yeah, it’s just like when I… No, wait that was my second-latest D&D magician”)
  • You can’t wait until you’ve read all this so that you can add your own comments
  • You’ve actually spent ridiculous sums on a second-hand mouse-mat just because there was a cool dragon on it (like me ():-)
  • You work as a medium– not using Anything like Tarot or I Ching, but you’ve learned every system from all of your fav. games.
  • You conisistently inform people that it’s not “Carpe Diem”(sieze the day) but “Carpe D.M.” (sieze the Dungeon Master.)
  • Or “Carp a D.M.” (Hit the Dungeon Master with a fish.)
  • Or “Car: Pay D.M.” (you ride with him, you chip in for gas.)
  • You grow up, get married, have kids … then homeschool said kids so you’ll have someone to play with during the week.
  • And you reason to get the kids reading early: so they can make characters that you know nothing about & be more fun to play with.
  • Your nightmares run in slow motion…not because of terror, but because there’s arguments about what the NPC villains and monsters can do.
  • After years of playing dwarf characters, you find yourself naming the tools of your trade after favorite IC axes.
  • You forget what your parents named your first character. (if you’re scratching your head over this one, it’s your real name)
  • You’re STILL reading this list!
  • You know you’re a gamer when you can’t remember your kid’s name, but call him by his character’s name instead.
  • You really know you’re a gamer when your kid thinks that /is/ his name.
  • you don’t go out with your friends on a saturday night, because your character has an important date.
  • you find yourself jealous of your character’s significant other.
  • you’re LOOKING for someone like your character’s significant other.
  • if you write up “You might be a gamer if … ” stuff, even after the list has gotten this long.
  • you don’t just have more than your weight in gaming books, but a desk and two bookcases dedicated to your gaming. (dunno about you, but I have desk, two bookcases, one whole computer with gig hd & 56K modem, and 20 square feet of floor space dedicated!)
  • you compulsively mail or ship things to people (sometimes at great explense) because whatever it is reminds you of their character.
  • you buy a the new brand of toilet paper (or anything else for that matter) because it has the same name as the insane character of your’s that’d get a kick out of it.
  • you can not only prove that your teachers/profs are lesser Demons of Slaanesh, but have seen them performing their unholy rites.
  • the last time you tried to make your character do something that wasn’t “in character” they (the character) argued with you …
  • and won.
  • you see “Semper Satyr” and you immediately think “Always Horny.”
  • someone mentions pixies and you immediately start swearing and wonder what they’re going to foul up.
  • you’re sure that the class bully you knew in first grade was really an Orc.
  • you’ve ever eaten “bad dice” in a fit of frustration.
  • you get picked up by the police, and spend all evening trying saying “but I’m LAWFUL-Evil, really!”
  • your excuse to the boss ever goes “But I HAVE to leave work early, I left my partyin the dragon’s den! No, really!”
  • when you see a praying mantis and mistake it for a tryklene (SP?) and kill it … oops.
  • you know what the thing I was that I’m not sure about the spelling of.
  • you get kicked out of a camp site for running around at midnight tryng to bite the rangers. (Boys and Girls, please do NOT try this at home!)
  • or because you were howling at the moon.
  • or if you’ve ever said “But officer, I had to punch him, I blew my rage roll!”
  • or “But your honor I had to take the eagle feather, I need it for my fetish dagger.”
  • or “I don’t usually run around naked officer, but the rite to cleanse the unholy Wyrm from the faerie-glen requires it!”
  • but I’m a Kender, you can’t fire me! I’m supposed to blow up the company network!
  • someone says of a friend, “He gives good monster.” And you know what it means.
  • and the meaning thereof makes you sign up for that person’s next campaign.
  • someone ever said of YOU “You give good monster.”
  • the description “urban fetish weapon” means anything to you (HEY! Get away from my staff, errr pipe, um my thing with the dangly stuff decorating it, yeah you, paws OFF!)
  • You saw “Kindred, the Embraced” and kept yelling they got it all wrong.
  • You know what that show was.
  • AND you want to own it anyway.
  • You watch Antique shows and bitch that they called everything by the wrong names, then wrote the show about it.
  • Then they read you letter on the air and say you were right.
  • You STILL watch Excaliber every time it comes on.
  • You watched the show “Warlock” and thought to yourself.. “What a wimp.”
  • Your mother thinks you flirt with devil becouse you play RPG’s…. As a joke you say your new girls friends middle name is Satana.
  • You wern’t joking, but its her first.
  • You tell the cashier, “No i dont eat children”, before he even has a chance to ask.
  • The cops watching your gaming store come in for the free coffee.
  • and join in the game.
  • Then customers ask, if they create Cop characters, can they have free coffee too?
  • Your car broke down so you gamed while waiting for the tow truck.
  • You hoped the tow truck would be late so you could finish this combat.
  • You tired to get your mom to play so she could understand it.
  • And she played a cleric think it was a secretary.
  • it worked.
  • took up a sport so your LARP character would be better in combat.
  • you yell out “Critcal slay!” when Mustafa says “Now Austin Powers, prepare to die!”
  • you know what that meant.
  • you ask someone to join the Camarilla, they wonder why you’re in a cult that worships caramel, and you manage to hook them anyway.
  • your local gas station cashier has an order waiting for you behind the counter every friday night.
  • You refer to pizza as the Holy food, and Hungry Howies as the Blessed Servant of said God.
  • you cant sleep at night because the Bard Character wouldnt let you sleep until they were done writing their doggeral.
  • you or your partner call the other by their character’s name in your sleep.
  • You find yourself slipping into your character’s frame of mind.. and cant get rid of that annoying accent.
  • you watch horror movies and think to yourself: “My werewolf is meaner than that!”
  • You watched Merlin, and realzed he was an apprentace accrding to Mage: the Ascension rules.
  • or watched Merlin and could recite what spheres he was using.
  • Or watched “The howling” and knew what “gifts” the werewolves were using by name.
  • you take notes from books for character histories.
  • you think a ‘warehouse’ is a place for lycanthropes.
  • your gaming club bribed the local TV station so they would put on a positive spin VLARP………. Then it was fined for allowing smoking indoors and that tape was the evadence.
  • you’ve ever seen the solid brass d6’s.. and HAD to have them so that they made more noise than everyone elses when you rolled them.
  • or you got the brass d6’s becouse they wouldn’t break when you threw them at concrete walls.
  • you mistake a golf ball for a d100.
  • you discover its a golf ball, and decide to write the numbers in rubadub marker, because its cheaper than buying a real d100.
  • you actually NEEEEEd a d100!
  • you ever begged your mom to buy you more dice for christmas.
  • you got more dice from christmas!
  • you think to yourself upon seeing d100.. why not just use percentile dice?
  • you have dreams from your character’s point of view.
  • you’ve ever had an in-depth debate about the pros and cons of Chaotic alignments.
  • and the pros won.
  • you’ve ever wondered “What would my character do in this situation?”
  • and then acted upon it as your char would.
  • your characters are so well rounded, that you actually *are* MPD.
  • you whole heartedly agreed with that last statement.
  • you read the Karma Sutra so that your character would be good in bed.
  • you prefer writing out character sheets on blank paper because it’s more flexible.
  • you have more than 15 characters, and dont need character sheets because you have all their stats memorized, and dont get them confused.
  • your mother won’t let you throw a sleep-over birthday party because she knows it is going to devolve into a game fest anyway.
  • you write BAD filk songs like “Were oh Were Has my little dog gone, Oh Were oh Were she can be.. with her temper cut short and her fangs cut long.. Oh were oh were Can she be” … and think they’re funny.
  • and your friends think it’s funny too.
  • you can sing “The Lycanthropic Blues.”
  • thou dost knoweth of that which I speak.
  • you spent more time naming your new character, than you did you newborn baby.
  • Attention span departs, wandering mindlessly away in a daze. keep up the good work!
  • After reading ALL this page you save it on your comp, then bookmark it and plan to visit every day for new updates.
  • If your adds get published you send the URL to all your friends.
  • Actually you sent the URL already.
  • When you bought “Baldur’s Gate” for your PC you had to read the small D&D adventure enclosed BEFORE installing the game…
  • … which you didn’t play before you expanded that adventure into a campaign.
  • In Chat Rooms on the Net you roleplay the character your nick comes from (you have an RPG-based nick, do you?).
  • You know the family tree of your character up to 20 generations but can’t recall your parent’s birthdays.
  • Your bookshelf fell at least once due to the amount of RPG and fantasy/sci-fi books stored there.
  • The owners of your hobby store give you unlimited credit if you happen to buy something and see you forget your wallet at home.
  • You wonder how much would it cost to get every AD&D module published…
  • … and then prepare a plan to get the money.
  • You don’t have to wonder how much it would cost – you know it.
  • Actually you have every AD&D book even published…
  • … altough now the bank owns your house.
  • On your comp you have dicing programs for games you didn’t play…
  • … but you’ll buy them tomorrow.
  • You run “Toon!”… drunk… and insisted your players get drunk too in order to play it properly. That’s All Folks!
  • you’ve actually reached the point of playing lycanthropes with neither “fang,” “blood” nor “claw” in their name.
  • you sympathize with mummies.
  • you’ve ever commited character suicide as the only way to get out of a REALLY long campaign.
  • you’ve ever been heard to say “Ego? ME? Just because I have an Xxxxx???”
  • your main reason to get a driver’s license is so you won’t miss as many games for lack of a ride.
  • your motto for con action is “Sleep? Moi?”
  • and your friends guess before you can even bring it up.
  • you’ve perfected the art of removing pizza stains from paper.
  • you need more blood in your coffee stream.
  • your nick online isn’t from your favorite character, but from your favorite rgg company. (TSR, Whyte-Wulf, etc)
  • you can keep your coffee cup in one hand…chips on the other and still type.
  • you wake up at 12 mn looking for players.
  • you might be an online gamer if you think /me before you actually do something.
  • you might be a gamer if you say “/me goes to take a piss” on your way to the bathroom.
  • you take said piss in 2 secs.
  • your nieghbor shows you his bowling trophies, and you show him your D20 collection (all 62 colors!)
  • you introduce yourself as “Gandalf, Sorceror of Life” at family reunions.
  • the most exciting thing in your life is a new color dice that you dont have in your collection.
  • you’ve constructed a full-size replica of the Great Wall of China out of your M:tG commons.
  • you think about making an Intellegence Check before taking a test.
  • you say your girl friend has an App. of like 18.
  • your car’s fuzzy dice have more than size sides.
  • you say THAC0 to children in the hopes they’ll run in fear.
  • you say “I am going to set Brujah on your a$$” to people.
  • you have a heated debate about how your paladin could beat the alien in Predator 2
  • you have a heated debate about how your mage could beat the paladin that could beat the alien in predator 2
  • you actually know the name of the predator species (Yautja.)
  • “May Selene Bless you” instead of “God bless.”
  • you’ve ever describe your nieces and nephews as “Gibberlings.”
  • you have ever wondered about the infinitivness of “blah blah blah” ex. whats the name of the inn? “blah blah blah”
  • you’ve ever dreamed of taking an OmniMech out on the highway.
  • you can think of these things from personal experience.
  • you blame your botched roll on your modem, and have to log-off so you can get your “lucky 33.6.”
  • you have to think up more of these so you can continue to dominate the bottom of the list!
  • you hope that your cat has it’s “First Change” soon.
  • you study your cat for any moves you might incorporate into gaming.
  • you’ve ever skipped a day at school/lecture at college so you could ready your campaign for the game next week.
  • you hope that YOU have your first change soon.
  • you’re late for work in the morning due to gaming.
  • you go through puberty and mistake it for your first change.
  • you have yourself tattoed with a kindred symbol.
  • you’ve ever claimed your grandmother is “Nosferatu” … and all your friends agree.
  • you’ve tried “movement of the mind” on the exam papers the teacher has on her desk.
  • the exams papers are blown towards you and you say you have another discipline.
  • you call your laser pen your “light sabre”.
  • you find a seven year old twinkie and thank god that you can spend you lunch money on another pack of Magic: the Gathering cards.
  • you call a steak-knife your “Klaive.”
  • your family photo album as pictures of Sturm, Tika, Raistlin, Tanis and crew.
  • all the “My document” files on your computer are stats of your characters.
  • you’ve legally changed your last name to Majere, or Forestwalker, etc.
  • you refer to the moon as Lunatari.
  • you think you can spend extra WP for extended orgasm.
  • ((poor gamer if)) you use a lunch baggy for a makeshift dice bag.
  • you if you think receiving “Gifts” for Christmas means you need to contact the spirit realm.
  • ((poor gamer if)) your character sheets are written on the back of late notices from the power company.
  • you have a breakdown when you fav WW book is lost.
  • ((Satanic gamer if)) you sacrifice character sheets.
  • ((poor gamer if)) you hit Shoney’s after play and think it’s a 5 Star restaurant.
  • you call your boss a “God PC.”
  • you’ve got nothing better to with your life than try and make these things up.
  • your daily consumption of sugar equals that of the entire contury of Peru.
  • you know more people on IRC and at gaming cons than you know IRL.
  • you try to remember the sizes of the planets by relating them from D4 to D100.
  • Your child can say dragon, but can’t identify a horse.
  • You do a web-search for every Internet Game (IRc, PBeM, etc.) and you already belong to them all.
  • Your characters have less psychosis than you do.
  • You bought those 4″x4″ AD&D books and the 5mm dice so you can carry EVERYTHING for your game in a hip sack…
    … and all your friends admire your ingenuity.
  • All of the fantasies of you beating the crap of the someone involve matrix-style martial arts, Rambo-style guns or a Conan-style sword.
  • You write 3 supplements a month…
    … all for different game companies…
    … built on your extensive knowledge of weapons and martial arts…
    … gained from watching action movies…
    … and you are surprised when you are turned down.
  • Gary Gygax calls you for rules-verification.
  • You took Geology, sociology, psychology, Kendo, Archery and horseback riding in college, so you could build a realistic game world.
  • You talk down to everyone on the internet because they haven’t been published in a gaming magazine.
  • Can you say job-stress hack-and-slasher?
  • You call 1-976 numbers and ask the girls to speak elvish.
  • Your only aspirations is to own a hack-master +12.
  • All the cannon-fodder NPC’s are named after people who have ticked you off at work.
  • Your player make tribute to you on game-days.
  • You proudly wear your dice bag on your belt like a coin-pouch.
  • You ride a NYC subway mumbling: elf, orc, troll, orc, orc, dwarf, orc, human, halfling….
  • You ride a LA bus mumbing elf, elf, elf, elf…
  • You keep having dreams where you are your character…
  • and you think it is neat, rather than consulting a professional.
  • You carry a mag-lite to your Star wars RPG games.
  • The ‘goofiest’ guy you know doesn’t dress up as his character on game days.
  • YOU ARE STILL READING THIS LIST! OH GOD! MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!
  • You can still think of something we missed here.
  • you’ve ever seen a character lose so many sanity points that he is left wandering, drooling, through the streets of Rome so pathetically that the GM takes pity upon him and introduces a nice Italian couple (into the RPGA tournament) who take him in and give him minestrone soup.
  • you and the rest of the players still tease him about the minestrone, ten Real World[tm] years later, despite the minute fact that the rest of you were *EATEN* by Cthulhu’s bus-sized minion, along with the rest of Rome, and the Vatican for a snack. *burp*
  • all of you continue to tease him even more vigorously when he reminds you that you still lost the tournament, and never did figure out the point of the whole thing.
  • you wonder why any one would bother trying to figure out “the point” of a Cthulhu adventure. :p
  • your character has ever had to retreat buck-naked through the streets on an alien planet thousands of parsecs from Terra because something that looked strikingly similar to an ED-209 chewed your battledress up so badly that none of the servos worked.
  • you wonder which version of that game that battledress came from, and if I’ll send you the stats. (Hint: MegaTraveller)
  • you are considering emailing me for the stats of the ED-209 lookalike that can actually do that to battledress.
  • you’ve ever pestered the GM about getting battledress so much that he finally relented and introduced it into the game ~ only there’s a small problem: the bad guys are wearing it… and you’re still trying to figure out how to get it from them with minimal colateral damage to the armor.
  • you read over 500 messages a day from a single RPG mailing list.
  • you know which mailing list I’m talking about.
  • you babysit the neighbors kids, for free, in order to “gain more converts for the cause” by introducing them to roleplaying.
  • you actually play your campaign inside a game store in the hopes that you’ll attract more buyers to your favorite (failing) game line.
  • you showed your children this site.
  • your children, on reading this list, think that asking for dice for Christmas is a wonderful idea.
  • they actually follow through.
  • you’re really going to give them dice for Christmas!
  • your kids don’t believe anyone could stand on a d4 while barefoot, so you demonstrate.
  • you accidentally sign checks with your favorite character’s names.
  • you are running from some bullies and ask to roll your wits plus stealth to hide.
  • you have so many pizza boxes you’ve made a new partition between the livingroom and the diningroom with them.
  • you get angry when someone takes “your spot” at the bottom of the list, and YOU MUST HAVE IT BACK!
  • you have a hard time staying politely interested in folks you’ve been introduced to, after discovering they don’t rp.
  • you’ve ever been in a conversation involving the Kool-Aid man’s stats, hp, and vulnerabilities.
  • in the above mentioned conversation, you wondered if the plastic jug counted as armor.
  • your friends figure out the fast death of Kool-Aid man, dump a bucket of silica-gel crystals (the super-absorbent stuff in the tiny paper packets that are boxed up with things like computer parts and new shoes) down his top and dry him to nothingness.
  • you have a very real hope of recieving the “Cuddly Cthulhu” plush doll for Christmas.
  • you haven’t got any of your holiday gift shopping done, but the big thought on your mind is learning to play L5R.
  • someone who reads this list will immediately know who posted this because they’ve been nagged incessantly to teach you L5R.
  • you own 7th Sea cards.
  • you’ve actually played 7th Sea or L5R …
  • more than once.
  • the words “ferret pooka with a bad sugar-habit” give you nightmares.
  • you’ve ever looked at a maentwrog and thought it be cuter if it fluffed it’s pelt.
  • you’ve ever sat up late at your computer, laughing like a maniac, thinking up additions for this list.
  • your friends find the speed with which you shift mental gears between one character and the next eerie …
  • and you don’t see why they’re concerned.
  • you’ve ever researched the amount of sleep deprivation it takes for one to be labeled “legally insane” so that you could stay up for days ahead of time to play your insane character in a properly insane manner.
  • Special thanks to all the gang down at the Asylum of course, and to some newer friends at the Orb and Thistledown Hall. see ya around folks,
    ^wHisPer`
  • your idea of a fun visit from the prospective future son-in-law includes a quickly thought up campaign so the two of you can teach everyone else how to play!
  • you’ve ever decided that an uncharacteristic character, like a Nordic dwarf or a Drow with a sense of humor, is the ONLY way to play.
  • even after the list has grown to the point it is currently at, you STILL contribute!
  • mostly just because you want YOUR SPOT at the bottom of the list back! (Hey Joe, I got it back :?)
  • you think rpg’s should be an elective offered in every school.
  • you use the used-book store for “obscure source.”
  • you’ve ever inflicted your party with “Hephalumps and woozles.”
  • and lived to tell about it.
  • you’ve ever used the world’s most hated purple dinosaur as the target or monster of choice when you wanted to play-test a new way to run a melee.
  • (for the older gamers) same thing: but with smurfs, snorks or gummi bears (cartoon, not candy.)
  • your new job in the computer industry feels surreally like a high-tech campaign you were on once.
  • you can pin down the stats for anyone and everyone at said new job, alignment, behavior patterns and maximum lifespan if they had to do “something hard like talk a Great Red Dragon out of it’s treasure” too.
  • you’ve made a habit of growling at your coworkers because you find it’s the most effective way to defend your lunch, just like the Caern Elder said it would be!
  • you make new friends with other “gamer geeks” at work when they walk past and see that you have the List up on the computer you use.
  • you stay much longer than you actually have to because new friend is reading the list and you have to tell about the “personal” contributions.
  • anyone has ever felt the need to remind you “hey, no throwing livestock … if you wouldn’t do it in real life, don’t do it at the Prince’s party.”
  • you’ve ever memorized the real life costs, licenses and difficulties involved in making or obtaining explosives so that you could use the information to foil the in-character plans of another player to blow something sky high.
  • you have have 6 gigs of cartoon-porn of imaginary critters just to prove “how demons (dragons, unicorns, orcs, etc) ‘do it’.”
  • you think so like a drow(orc/vampire/elf/werewolf/etc) that your friends are convinced you’re really NOT human.
  • same as above, but your parents want to know where their REAL kid is, and who swapped you at birth.
  • you shelled out the bucks for Radiological Monitoring classes so that you’d know the REAL scoop on radiation sickness, blast forces and the like for that post-nuclear-apocolypse game you want to write.
  • you built an actual geiger counter out of a plastic toolbox and other stuff, to get that “real” effect for your game.
  • a quick trip into the all-night grocery turns into a spur of the moment larp when you find that the staff mostly gamers.
  • you try to arrange your schedule so that bills can be paid or dropped in the mail on your way to or from games … or in the middle of a game, if it won’t interefere. (“Hey, my vampire’s haven has electricity, and she has to go drop a money-order at the corner drop-box for her bill.”)
  • you dream of having 2 playable decks of every noteworthy ccg available in your car so that, in event of being “stuck” somewhere, there is no need to be bored.
  • dominating the bottom of the list is no longer enough, you MUST HAVE MORE! MORE I TELL YOU! MORE! MUAHahahahahaha!
  • you have gotten rid of a dog for eating dice.
  • you have physically mutilated a die beacuse it was rolling poorly.
    … and it taught the other dice a lesson.
  • you have ever gamed from when it was light until when it was light.
  • you own more than 15 different books containing the basic white wolf rules system.
    … more than 20.
    … more than 25 (it can be done).
  • you ever subscribed to Shadis to get the free games.
    … you were disappointed when you found out they were the obsolete edition.
    … but you resubscribed anyway.
  • you have ever read KoDT.
    … and recognized the people you game with.
  • you spend more time on gaming websites than porn websites.
  • you have ever had a game book completely come unbound.
    … from overuse, not poor binding.
    … but you kept using it.
  • you have ever built a character based on a cool picture.
  • you have ever bought a supplement for a game you don’t own the core rules to.
  • you have ever bought a computer game based on a real RPG.
  • you have ever designed/adapted an RPG to mimic a computer game.
  • you have a folder of characters you have never played, but just made to test the system/to prove a point/because you were bored/etc.
  • you have identified which kith/clan/race/class/archetype/choir/band you and your friends are.
  • you have ever pissed off one of your non-gaming friends because you are always busy all weekend long, every weekend.
  • you have ever dumped one game for a better gaming opportunity.
  • you have ever worked on game stuff at work.
  • … and been caught at it.
    … and continued doing it.
  • you know the story of the gazebo.
  • … or the Head of Vecna.
  • … you know the people it happened to.
  • … you are one of the people it happened to.
  • you have ever taken a personality test as your character.
  • you have ever had a binder specifically for one character.
  • you have ever gone to every site on a gaming webring.
    … and bookmarked every site for changes.
  • you have ever made different versions of the same character in different games.
  • you are willing to have functioning parts of your body surgically removed to replace them with cybernetics.
  • your character gets sex more often that you do.
  • you fear a little girl or and old lady, standing in a circle of stones with a pleasant smile on their face, more than you would a Glitter Boy. (On a Low Tech world)
  • know WHY you should fear the little old lady or little girl more than the Glitter Boy.
  • you realize that the little old lady or little girl are in command of more demons than you can count, and are ALWAYS to be feared above all else.
  • you check Ebay daily for new auctions on old OOP gaming books that will cost you hundreds of dollars, but you don’t have them so you bid anyway even if you don’t use that system anymore.
  • you got your parents hooked on gaming just so you could spend more time with them and NOT miss any campaigns.
  • you named one of your pets after one of your character’s familiars.
  • you spent more than 1 hour arguing over the symantics of the game on a character you imported from a different gaming system.
  • more than 3 hours …
  • an entire gaming session ….
  • it carried over to the NEXT gaming session …
  • you have to use at least 3 different game system books to update your character sheet.
  • you know all the people that work at the 7-11 by the GM’s house because you stop in there so much for munchies before gaming sessions.
  • you convinced one or more of the people that work at the 7-11 to come by for a game.
  • they became a regular …
  • they quit 7-11 because it interfered with gaming night …
  • when health concerns require thyroid surgery, afterward you spend a month tracking down local gamers you know to show them the scar and ask, “Dudes, would this not be the BITCHINEST scar for a LARP?”
  • the size, placement and angle of the scar are SO perfect, that you decline all offers of vitamin-e oil and whatnot to rub in to make it go away.
  • you can’t understand, why would anyone WANT it to go away?
  • you jokingly inform your friends that you wanted bolts too, but they were extra.
  • well, not really, it’s more like the surgeon wasn’t too sure he wanted anything else to do with you after you asked.
  • any conversations about ex girlfriends/boyfriends with your friends eventually gets around conversations about your characters’ former lovers.
  • and hasn’t *EVERYONE* had at least one character pair off with a Bastet by now? (hint: World of Darkness cat-shifters)
  • everyone in the above mentioned conversation actually stopped and thought about the implications when you left them with one word …. “catnip.”
  • YOU stop and think about the implications of catnip.
  • you try to come up with additions to the list, and can’t think up but 9 or 10 that are really new.
  • you’re mad that you can’t think up more than ten ways to prove you’re a gamer. (Thank go to Niamh for these two, now we know how you quantify things.)
  • your big claim to list-fame is not the number of contributions you’ve made, but the ones that have really happened to you … of your own or others’.
  • you leave some possible contributions OUT of your list-email because: a) TOO wild, they’d never believe it. or: b) worse, it’s very believable, and too many people know exactly where to find you and extract revenge if you so much as breath a peep suggesting that “xxxx xxXxx XxXxXx xxxX!” ever happened.
  • from above, “b” makes you rethink prior contributions and start pondering practical defences for your domicile.
  • from above, the words “Practical defences for your domicile” clicks somewhere deep in your brain and you work feverishly half the night on what could be the craziest and most fun rpg ever, that could be easily played by anyone with a 5th grade reading level, and would only require one book, no matter how many people were to join the game.
  • then you come to your senses and burn all your notes and papers, lest any mentally unstable persons not realize: it’s just a game!
  • * You’ve ever spent more than 15 minutes composing new song titles such as “Only the Oni” or “Oni You”
    You know where that comes from
    You can think of at least five more without trying
  • * You’re a female gamer who thinks that if there are less than 5 guys to every girl it’s a terrible ratio.
  • * You’re a female gamer who’s never dated any guy who wasn’t a gamer.
  • You know you’re a gamer if you joined the Army and. . .
  • You’ve been accused of doing it just as a way of doing some up-close game research.
  • You’ve spent an entire day bullshitting with the new guy because you found out he’s a closet gamer.
  • And you talk him out of the closet.
  • And you remember it so well you use one of his stories as the basis of your tactics in one of his games.
  • You drop DM500 (about US$250) on games in front of about 12 kids and then say “I remember being that age and saving for two weeks to buy a mini and hating the adults that came in and spent a couple hundred dollars on game stuff.”
  • You’ve ever talked the Regimental Engineer into buying a couple hundred GHQ HMMWVs to use in sand tables (this wasn’t me, but I know the guy who did it).
  • Your sergeants know where to find you at all times because there’s only so many places to game.
  • And this is on deployment.
  • Your unit mail clerk is sick of you asking about the box of gaming materials you’ve got on order.
  • You ordered the games from your old hometown gaming store and he shipped it to you with your old discount, before you even sent the check.
  • Because he knows you’re always good for it.
  • And you addressed the envelope you sent the check in from memory.
  • You’re the only person in Kosovo who downloads a spreadsheet to design starships instead of pornography.
  • You find a new gamer by reading a supplement in public, and get annoyed because he’s an officer.
  • You’re on an e-mail list and someone mentions a military vehicle and you slap them down because you’ve driven that particular model and it’s not that great.
  • You acquire manuals mostly to write house rules for wargames.
  • You wrote a 6 page house rule section for a game who’s rule book has less than 50 pages, and it’s all based on a particular series of Field Manuals.
  • You don’t care if people wake you up at 0500 for an “emergency”, but get incensed if something cuts into gaming time.
  • You have to remind someone more than twice that addressing someone by rank at the game table is not necessary. Unless it’s the character’s rank.
  • You have friends who know each other better by their character’s rank and callsign than their real names and ranks.
  • You’ve ever spent more than DM50 on train tickets to get to a game.
  • You’ve ever painted a miniature with the markings of the vehicle you used to drive.
  • You have more spray paint in the flammables locker than the rest of the company put together.
  • And more hidden in your room where health and welfare inspections won’t find it.
  • You’ve ever had to explain light blue paint on your thumbnails during an inspection.
  • You have a room inspection and the people conducting it spend more time looking at your minis because they were foolish enough to ask why you have a dozen pistol cases under your bed.
  • The guys in your company ask your gaming buddies to look for you because “you’ll see him before we find him.”
  • Your character’s equipment list starts looking a lot like what you take to the field.
  • You describe a particularly well-written wargame as “a lot like going to work.”
  • If you’ve ever packed for a summer-long trip, and dropped down to six sets of clothes to make room for supplements and modules you’ve never even read, “just in case…”
  • …only to discover to your dismay that you’ve left the one useful supplement back home.
  • …and gone out to purchase a second copy of the same damn book.
  • …and you intend to keep it.
  • If you’ve ever had an experience that leads you to conclude that you’re a gamer, and the first thing you think is, “I need to add this to The List.” (See above.)
  • If you’ve ever lost a friend to arguing over who’s character gets to keep the “Ring of Protection +2”
  • …*after* the campaign’s over.
  • If you’ve played under only three or four different rule systems, but you *still* know the strengths, weaknesses, nuances, and loopholes of every system ever published. (That’s you, Kinny)
  • If you’ve ever forgotten the name of an unimportant NPC from a one-shot adventure three years ago, and cared.
  • ou have BirthRight just so that you can continue your character from AD&D and truly rule your own kingdom with set rules and charts.
  • if you blew off buying Birthright because your character has had his own kingdom so long you already have rules and charts … memorized.
  • you get a second shift job to not interfere with your third shift, and weekend games, but have to stay up all night gaming to make the 7 am drug screening, and they tell you you have more than twice the normal ld50 of caffeine in your system.
  • further, you quit the job, cause it still gets in the way.
  • even worse, you go through a temp agency, to go back to work for the company, cause you had some good gamer friends there, who gave you good plans, and strategies for your game, from their games, even though they were on different systems.
  • had another gamer look down his nose for the gaming system you use then cussed him out in a game language, figuring he wouldn’t know what you said anyway
    he didn’t
    he didn’t care, and he starts a fight anyway.
  • squandered your wonderful 6 months of unemployment away as being forced gm cause, “hey man, you ain’t gotta work or nothing, you got the time…”
  • dated your gm in hopes she would be nicer to your character….
  • married your gm in hopes she would be nicer to your character….
  • were told to man the register at the gaming shop you practically live in, and when the owner gets back from the junk food run, he looks at you and says, “wait, you DON’T work here, sorry….”
  • proceeded to work there…
  • and gotten paid in modules, cards, miniatures, and the occasional core system.
  • been thrown out of a house because your character, and your room mates character were not getting along, and continued to show up for the campaign.
  • gotten into a r/t fight, because someone thought you were like that out of character.
  • been to a larp, and actually convinced someone you only came cause you thought it was a cool party, and that no, these fangs are not prosthetic.
  • you actually make it a point to go out and craft everything your character carries, to prove to the gm it can be done.
  • try to convince a weapons expert, that an SMG can be silenced.
  • win that one.
  • constantly attempt “command” spells.
  • used the insult 0 charisma in a fight with someone who had absolutely no idea what it meant…
  • explained that insult to the person, in detail….
  • gotten them to sit in on a game.
  • convinced your family minister to join a game.
  • as a lawful evil character…
  • insisted that your party consume the amount of booze that their characters allegedly did in the tavern while playing…
  • then forced combat on them.
  • been caught shoplifting, and said, “oh, that must have fallen into my pouch by mistake…”
  • done that for the humor of your friends who knew the joke…
  • not understood why security actually called the police…
  • and the cops actually got the joke, cause one of them plays at your game every week.
  • had to buy a new hard drive for your “gaming (as in rpg tabletop only, not pc games, like char sheets, maps, and other semi relevant stuff) system.
  • more than once.
  • have a commodore emulator, to run those old basic programs you wrote for die rolls, character generation, etc… on your super fast gigahert processor, and 64 million color, and gig of ram system, that cost more than your car.
  • spent more on munchies for a gaming session, than all weeks lunches for work.
  • not had to call in late for work because of a game, because your supervisor knew you were gonna be late for it…
  • because he was there.
  • known a female gamer you did not have at least one sexual fantasy about. (oh god, several, and my god, not even the worst night, with all of the booze and drugs in the omni-verse, ughh….)
  • but damn you would do her character in a nano-second.
  • gotten permits, so you could buy a cannon, so you could PROVE, once and for all a theory to your game mates.
  • killed a paladin, because he finally annoyed the living piss out of you.
  • apologized to your wife for killing her paladin.
  • been arrested during a game, because the neighbors heard the noise, and assumed there was a domestic disturbance.
  • smoked more than a half of a carton, in a single gaming experience.
  • lit your gaming table on fire accidentally while rapidly searching for your favorite 20 sider, on the night the power went out.
  • a whole bunch there, and only thought i would have a few, allright, time for the night night….
  • you notice it’s been 6 months since anyone has added to the list, and immediately think “I can come up with something, ANYTHING!”
  • it’s 7am and you’re fighting a cyclops.
  • and when you finally die, you fall asleep on your keyboard.
  • you’ve gamed online (til falling asleep at keyboard) so often that friends no longer comment on the perpetual case of “keyboard hatch-pattern face” you have.
  • you compulsively introduce game-friends to other-game-friends.
  • coworkers you’ve never had a reason to say two words to hear a game-related conversation and wander over, and you suddenly have 50 new friends!
  • you compulsively introduce game-friends to “The List” in hopes of seeing lots more additions to the list!
  • your friends’ LAN/computer-games party tempts you skip the test date you have to try to get the certification you really NEED to get that big promotion at work.
  • you’ve ever surfed geek-personals websites in search of other computer gamers in your area to invite to LAN/computer-game parties.
  • you realized that surfing the geek-personals websites was also how to get your single computer-geek/gamer male friends to meet computer-geek/gamer women, so you’d no longer be the ONLY female in the group!
  • the biggest change in your social life in 20 YEARS involved getting spouse/significant other/sweetheart hooked on gaming so they wouldn’t feel left out when you have friends over.
  • you’re STILL READING THIS LIST! WHY? HAVE I NO LIFE BUT WORK AND GAMING?
  • You wept with joy when the 2nd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide eliminated the alignment restrictions on vorpal swords and swords of sharpness – because you figured it meant that a sword could now be both vorpal and sharpness at the same time!
  • if you have ever played 69 hours without pausing or sleeping longer than it took someone to get something to eat from the next store
  • Heiko “GreatHeischoOne” Aulbach
  • Guilty of gaming according to about 85% of this list?s criterias…
  • I hope you are still adding to the list
  • you decide to print up this page to show all your gaming friends how kool and funny it is and realize that there are a lot of spelling errors in it, and you use the spell checker AFTER you have it printing.
  • worse, you realize that many of the words, you thought should be right.
  • and then you add all the the words that should be in your spellchecker so that you don’t have to press SKIP ONCE , or SKIP ALWAYS every time words like drow, rpg, ccg, halfling, dwarven, elven, gamer, mage, etc. come up.
  • you open a game store because your friends needed somewhere to PLAY!
  • You start it with a collection of your old miniatures (still in original blisters) and some old books.
  • and you actually make money at it.
  • but you still work a job so that you can have the coolest store around.
  • and you still have fun playing all the games.
  • you tell your niece/nephew/younger sibling about your old game adventures like they’re fairy tales.
    …you get drunk and talk to non-gamers about how much you miss old characters.
    …you wonder what your favorite character would do in a current real life situation.
    …you’ve tried to use magick to “summon up” your character, hoping they really existed in some alternate universe.
    …non-gamers know the names of all your characters.
    …you make new notes on characters that you don’t even play anymore.
    …you’ve lied about why you can’t go out with friends so you could stay home and make notes on characters you don’t even play anymore.
    …you write favorite characters into all your stories, because “they’re so cool, everyone has to know about them.”
    …you say things like, “he regenerates like a troll!” to non-gamers.
    …you say things like that and they’ve heard enough from you to get it.
    …you believe character creation is an art-form.
    …you’ve ever gotten in trouble in grade school for talking about your character growing marijuana.
    …your characters smoked marijuana before you did.
    …you spent days drawing maps of a character’s castle/house/etc. even though you were the only person who would see it.
    …you’ve ever hated someone in real life, but your characters were best friends in game.
    …you’ve ever made yourself appear in a game you were GMing and thought it was insanely funny.
    …you know what “flip-flop dead cats” are, and groan when you see the words.
    …you allowed a player to play a “dust bunny warrior”.
    …vorpal swords got so boring.
    …(older gamers) your Dungeons and Dragons character went through the quests to become an immortal, but in the end you decided not to because you still wanted him/her to have “regular” adventures.
    …you’ve ever seriously wondered why your character is the way he/she is.
    …that last statement doesn’t sound stupid.
    …(older gamers) you still think the joke “why do elves have pointed ears?” “because there has to be some point to elves!” Is funny.
    …you got so sick of hearing things like “I touch the door. I touch the wall” that you started making everything touch back.
    …new characters are all somehow related to old characters you loved.
    …you and your friends all had an undead/lycanthrope character for D&D.
    …(old gamers) you have fond memories of solo adventures you rolled up with the old Dungeon Master’s Guide.
    …you role-play out character’s back story before you use him/her, while you’re alone.
    …you do the same with your villains before you GM.
  • * You can say “I have X number of d10s”
  • * You can say “Well actually I have X+2 d10s, but one is a phase of the moon die, so it doesn’t count and one broke”
  • * You know what I mean by “phase of the moon die”
  • * You know why it can’t be used as a d10
  • * You can guess what system it’s from, if not the actual game.
  • * (White Wolf gamer if) X > 45
  • * You like to show people your other d10 that is about to break just so that you can explain how the other one broke because you don’t carry the broken one around for fear of bad luck and/or because it is adorning your dressing table as a nifty knick-knack.
  • * You’ve named your cat for a word you found in a gaming book (bonus points if you named a friend’s cat in a similar manner, more bonus points if you got your cat after your friend and was pissed off that you couldn’t use the same name because it wouldn’t be right.)
  • * You use said cat’s name as your email address and handle
  • * You have never had a problem with someone else having the same user name/handle as you because you use your cat’s name
  • if you add even half of these I’d be impressed and satisfied
  • You can actually edit these for clarity because you know what they all mean
  • You converted a monster class into a playable character class
  • Before they came out with a system to do it
  • You make Ability Checks on everyday actions
  • You have “Zelda Adventures” frequently
  • You search for roving bands of Goblins in the forest behind your house
  • You find some
  • And commence battling with them
  • You hummed the victory tune from the original Might and Magic game afterwards
  • You can hum the victory tune from the original Might and Magic
  • You beat Might and Magic
  • You “discard” things rather than “throwing them away”
  • You find “Your mother was a gully dwarf, and your father smells of elderberries!” funny
  • You find it insulting
  • You often slip IC without noticing
  • You know what that means
  • Your online char has been in more guilds than you can remember
  • You remember every single one
  • Your charrie has created it’s own guild
  • That’s lasted for more than 6 years
  • You’ve ever given up RP completely in a blind rage over a flaw in the cross-forum AA rules only to find yourself RPing agian the next day
  • You’re following me
  • You met ALL your frineds through RP
  • Most of the things you own either have magical properties or are otherwise enchanted
  • You’ve bestowed these items names like “The Coat of Everholding” “Shadowy Carapace Trench Coat” and “Shiela’s Silver Ring of Luck +6”
  • You and your friends name the disciplines and clans of the Vampires in Interview with the Vampire
  • You played text games like Larn, Castle, Wizard, and Temple
  • You knew the cheat codes for them
  • You are an imp
  • Your parents agree (at least that you aren’t human)
  • You avoid making friends with humans because “they smell bad”
  • You know dwarves, ogres, elves, and gnomes and they are your friends.
  • Your character is effectively more intelligent than you are and it shows
  • You spend more time creating and perfecting characters than you do actually using them
  • A horde of dragons have slain your character because you pissed the GM off IRL a month ago.
  • You refer to your car as a chariot or landspeeder
  • The people at IHOP look at you funny because you frequent in full costume
  • You’ve been in a real swordfight
  • You have the scars to prove it
  • Your Paladin character killed a death knight and it’s nightmare mount in one blow apiece
  • The DM forced you to lower your character’s level for the remainder of the campaign because of it
  • You constantly slam Vampire movies that were “done wrong”
  • And correct all thier mistakes
  • You refer to Hawaiian Punch as HP because it’s red like a healing potion, it has the same acronym, and it restores your HP
  • This is not just a coinicence to you
  • You constantly complain about moders and newbies and the threat they pose to the “real RPers”
  • You know how a lightsaber works and could actually construct one to complete your jedi training
  • You already have
  • You know the difference between a glaive, a guisarme, a halberd, a poleax, a bardiche, and a naganita and you know how much damage each does vs. smaller then man sized, man sized and larger than man sized monsters
  • You considered giving sexual favors to the person who relayed this site to you
  • You got tired of reading the “You’re still reading this list” comments, because of course you are.
  • You’ve felt insulted when someone called you a “n00b”
  • Even though you just bought the game
  • Even though you had never played BEFORE you bought the game
  • You went back to tally up EXACTLY how many of the things on this list apply to you
  • and it was more than 100
  • more than 250
  • more than 500
  • more than 850
  • You think of this number as a badge of honor
  • You’re favorite character alignment and type is a Lawful Evil Blackguard, and you can maintain that alignment indefinitely
  • You have active subscriptions to more than 10 online games
  • You have more than 1 account for at least half of those games
  • You don’t think of others as true “gamers” unless they play more than 5 different games
  • You buy games that you know you won’t like just so no one can say “Just try it, you may like it”
  • You have everything you need to play over 15 different games sitting in labeled containers in the closet, just in case someone comes over and wants to play
  • It’s not in the closet, but on a bookshelf in the living room
  • You have legally changed your name to your character’s name, and then changed it back because of the hassle all the “Real World” PC’s gave you for changing it
  • When someone says “MUD”, you don’t think about wet dirt
  • You know what a MUD is
  • You play a MUD
  • You play more than one MUD
  • You’re an admin for a MUD
  • The game room in the house you and your gamer spouse designed is the biggest room.
  • This is separate from the computer gaming room.
  • Your gamer friends don’t think it’s big enough.
  • You include room into your design for the friends who need to crash after a long night of gaming.
  • They actually have a bed to sleep on.
  • Your gaming library has enough copies of each book for every player to use… and a spare just in case.
  • You refer to the ATM as the money alter.
  • You pray to the green-light god so you can get to games on time.
  • you have tried to test your players dedication to the game by scattering every D4 in the house on the front yard. – said players actully break out thier d20s to roll reflex and balance as they make thier way through the field of d4.
  • your nick/screenname/handle was cunningly contrived to be non-game specific (fulongamer)
  • you haven’t checked the milk in your fridge in 3 weeks.
  • you really haven’t noticed the smell yet.
  • you actually use the smell as descriptive text in adventures.
  • you’ve counted how many things on this list matches up with you
  • you check out this whole list to see if they’re missing anything, so that you could add your own idea
  • every time you don’t understand something on this list, you google it or check it from Wikipedia
  • …And if it wasn’t in Wikipedia, you’ll write one
  • you name your newborn baby after random name generator
  • you’re actually gonna do so after reading this!
  • you’re late from your work or school because you were reading this list
  • you rather stayed home and finish reading this list and go to sleep after that than going to work/school
  • you’ve bribed your GM
  • you don’t understand English but still ask someone to translate this list for you
  • you find things that appear twice on this list and mail to have one of them removed
  • you find that because of this your addition was erased, you get angry and write a hate-mail
  • you hire a hacker to trace who noticed the two same additions and send him hate-mail, or even worse, track him down and give him a hate-speech in real life
  • you get angry when you hear that D&D elves are shorter than humans
  • you didn’t believe the previous one and try to find out if it’s true
  • nothing on this list matches up with you, but you get interested what RPGs are and become a gamer
  • every time you make a sin, you write it up on this list for atonement
  • and you really consider this as a sin list
  • …Or a list that has to be performed before you get to the Gamer’s Heaven
  • you hear some people talking about RPGs in bus or train and you smile at them
  • someone smiles at you when you’re talking about RPGs while you’re in a bus or train
  • you see a movie, gather your gaming group and replay the whole movie with your own ideas
  • you compete with your character who gets more sex
  • you tell your non-gamer friend to go work in gaming shop so that you could get discount through him
  • you got bored of standard races and start to play monster races
  • you know the difference between 6d4 and 6k4
  • you’re sad when you notice this list is gonna end at some point
  • you feel sorry for monsters and run a game where players are monsters and try to beat up the adventurers
Posted on

Two (un)romantic poems

The following are entries to a contest by The Washington Post, in which respondents had to write a two-line romantic poem…except that the last line had to be as un-romantic as the first line was romantic.

1. My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife:
Marrying you screwed up my life.

2. I see your face when I am dreaming.
That’s why I always wake up screaming.

3. Kind, intelligent, loving and hot;
This describes everything you are not.

4. Love may be beautiful, love may be bliss,
But I only slept with you because I was pissed.

5. I thought that I could love no other–
that is, until I met your brother.

6. Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you ~
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.

7. I want to feel your sweet embrace
But don’t take that paper bag off your face.

8. I love your smile, your face, and your eyes
Damn, I’m good at telling lies!

9. My love, you take my breath away.
What have you stepped in to smell this way?

10. My feelings for you no words can tell,
Except for maybe “Go to hell.”

11. What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Two parts vodka, one part lime.

Posted on

You might be an accountant if…

  • your idea of trashing your hotel room is refusing to fill out the guest comment card.
  • you refer to your child as Deduction 214 3.
  • you deduct Exlax as “Moving expenses”
  • at the movie Indecent Proposal you did a NPV calculation.
  • you decide to change your name to a symbol and you choose the double underline “==========”
  • you had no idea that GAP was also a clothing store
  • you consider it normal not to see your spouse or children from February to April 15th. (Laura Cole)
  • you’ve ever made a joke about a double-entry bookkeeping method. (Alicat )
  • you know what the acronym MACRS stands for. (Alicat)
  • you have a petty cash box at home and actually refer to it as such (Amy R.).
Posted on

You might be anal-retentive if…

  • you eat the M&Ms in color order.
  • you fold your dirty clothes before putting them in the hamper.
  • From Miranda:
    • you have to have all boxes in the kitchen facing the same way and in order by size.
    • you have all your canned goods organized by type, flavor, and use.
    • and they’re all facing the front.
    • all you books, CDs, and movies have to be alphabetical order.
  • you require no less than 200 threads per inch on your sheets. (Peggy)
  • …and they are tucked so tightly that you really could bounce a quarter on them.
  • you alphabetize your spices. ( Bert )
  • you actually bother trying to convince someone that the 3rd millenium hasn’t begun yet (or that it *has* begun).
  • you organize your closet by color, season, and fabric. ( Jennifer )
  • you flame every person who sent you email because the emails weren’t spelled correctly or gramatically correct.
  • you remove the tires to wash inside the wheel-wells of your vehicle. (Pat)
  • you collect the little postcards in magazine issues…
  • …for recycling.
  • every e-mail reply that you send has been through a grammar checker…
  • …and you correct the original message.
  • you’re on a “calorie-counting” diet and you count the calories in the hot sauce on your “Big Beef Burrito Supreme”
  • you fold up take-out food wrappers and neatly place them in a package before throwing it in the trash.