The XP value of friends...

I've been sitting on that entry title for literally two weeks (and I've been sitting on this blog for months). I was thinking the other day how all of my good friendships (except with my wife and brother in law and one or two rarities) have been gained and strengthened through gaming.

I game socially with people at least once a week, usually several times and if I'm lucky, every day. I played Liar's Dice with the Monday Night crowd and it was amazing fun.

A question I find myself asking is this: what the hell do non gamers do? I guess any interest can be a basis for social interaction but gaming, especially board gaming, requires it. People who knit can talk about knitting I guess, and you can knit near someone else but unless you're quilting together (yes I know sewing and quilting and knitting are all different things) you're not really interacting with the other person in a direct way.

Gaming lays bare personality. I may have different political or religious views than the folks I game with but I know that they are decent, fair, and dedicated people. I wouldn't game with them otherwise and if I'm not gaming with you, we're not close. Games have become a lithmus test of an individuals quality.

Does this make it hard to make friends with people who don't see every gathering as an excuse to break out a board game? Sometimes, but I am multifacted and connect with people fairly easily. I tend to breach the 'game question' with anyone I get close to and attempt to be an ambassador of my hobby.

Breaking out the games has become much more structured since becoming a father of course. But I game twice a week in person if possible and try to get an hour or more in of City of Heroes each evening.

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Looks like you've got critters...

I'd like to talk a little about crawlspaces tonight. You know crawlspaces: that place under most houses that most people ignore while it slowly turns into a pit of dispair. If a man's home is his castle, then the crawlspace is the dungeon. Not the dungeon where you put prisoners and such. I mean dungeons in the Dragons & kind of sense. You know, where weird molds and jellies grow. And undead.

That being said: I really don't mind going in them. Mostly for the strangeness of them. It's dark and kind of secret. It's hard to predict what you're going to find or see when you climb into one. AND it's cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

The first steps into a larger world...

So I've been playing City of Heroes again for the past month or so. Just a little bit here and there, maybe 6 hours a week or so. I hadn't planned to get back into it until Going Rogue comes out in July, but Dave had mentioned wanted to get back into it and that itch suddenly needed to be scratched. So I immediately dumped my Star Trek Online account (much to my relief) and got it reinstalling.

Now, my City of Heroes account was started in October of 2004. The only other game I've habitually gone back to in that kind of time frame is Diablo 2. In that time CoH has improved and changed so much that looking back I can't imagine actually playing the older iterations of it. The thing that keeps bringing me back isn't necessarily the game-play, which is passable and often fun, but not great.

It's the character creation system. I can't think of any other game that has such a robust character creation system. There are a few omissions in it (like Brutish Female Models, think Giganta) but in general I've been able to create any character I can think of in a satisfactory fashion.

The downside is that there are very few people who are playing CoH right now. I only know one person who plays at the moment and the servers seem to be generally empty. I'm hoping that when Going Rogue releases it'll pull in old and new players and beef up the player base. I really hope that some day they'll be able to consolidate down their servers so increase the number of players per server.

Also, Lord of the Rings Online is going Free to Play this fall, which I'm really excited about.