[Travel] Shopping for Geeks in Johannesburg – Part 1

With the excitement over the FIFA World Cup 2010 growing, I thought it appropriate to start a series of posts/guides for the geek/gamer traveling soccer (that’s what we call it) fan. Today, I’d like to begin with Outer Limits, located in Melville, Johannesburg.

The Outer Limits staff - friendly and photogenic

I don’t think I’d be wrong in stating that the Outer Limits chain happens to be one of the more influential forces in the South African gaming scene, be it on the convention scene or the organising force behind various types of games/tournaments. The Melville branch, I believe, happens to be their flagship (you’ll also find them in Cape Town and Pretoria).

The staff at the Melville branch are friendly, talkative and knowledgable of their stock (don’t you hate it when the staff don’t know anything?), though I think all of them hate Cape Town (just on principle).

The store stocks the usual assortment of figurines, statues, war gaming gear, trading card games, board games, geeky apparel, role playing games,  books, manga, comics and graphic novels. Of course, my biggest interest lies in their role playing stock. Whenever I peruse their bookshelves, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a true reflection of the role playing scene. Outer Limits has a large supply of older books, but very little of the newer stuff (though you can order anything, should you require it). Maybe it’s just a supply chain issue, or maybe South Africa’s filled with grognards.

Stuff!

I really like the play area at Outer Limits – it’s on the veranda, almost spilling onto the roadside. The walls in this area are covered in fantasy-themed murals and offers players a wonderful view of all the fast food joints across the road (I think that this promotes faster play in tournaments with time-constraints). Sorry, I didn’t manage to get any pics of the murals (maybe next time), as I visited the store during the middle of a card tournament and I think the flash of my camera made them a bit skitterish.

Overall, I think that Outer Limits, Johannesburg, is one of the more important stops on the South African geek store circuit. Plus, when in Melville, be sure to get a pizza at the Ant!

- Jerall

P.S. Yes, I know that the post title sounds like some sort of human (geek) trafficking report. Sorry for the disappointment.

[Durban] State of the Game

Some of you may know that I was planning on running another game day on the 5th of December. Unfortunately, things have changed slightly. Right now, I am (can’t think of suitable English phrase) vriendlik verplig to stay on my current Johannesburg project till April. That means, all the errands I planned to run in January can’t wait that long. So, I’ll have to spend my last Saturday in Durban making sure my life doesn’t fall apart in January (sad face).

Do not worry though. I still intend to run game days in the new year, so stay tuned for more information. Also, if you want to run something, let me know and I’ll help you out as best I can.

- jatori

Gaming specials

Sometimes the intra-tubes offer up something that needs to be shared. Behold! I bring you… CAKE!

Delicious cake! You must eat it!

[Random Chatter] Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever played an RPG?

There’s one thing that any true, hardcore gamer can admit to: being able to sit down anywhere, at any time, and roll some dice.  I’ve played in some interesting places in my time, including beachfronts and shopping malls. But, the strangest place I’ve ever gamed in has to be an experimental university farm, surrounded by mutant fish (perfect for that Cthulhu mythos inspired horror game) and mooing bovine (suspected to be of the Diablo II hell variety).

So, where’s the strangest place you’ve ever rolled some dice?

- jatori

New Pratchett – Unseen Academicals

Why doesn’t anybody tell me these things? How did this slip through my elaborate network of informants and ne’erdowells? (I’m looking at you pb and j…)

http://www.harpercollins.com/features/pratchettbooks/description.aspx?isbn=9780061161704

A new Pratchett book is out – and I want the world to know about it. I’m getting it first thing in the morning. Or at the earliest convenience of the local bookstore.

 

[RPG Blog Carnival] What goes around, comes around

The carnival this month is about morality.  Given that this is a bit tricky to write about, I’ll be using the questions posed in the post about this months topic, with a final thought at the end.

What are your limits as a player?

My characters tend to be chaotic and as such they add to their code as they go along. Betrayal can be ok, sometimes, if the price is right. I’d happily kill anyone deemed evil, but if something doesn’t feel right about the situation it won’t happen. I’ve found though, that if there’s a paladin in the group I tend to go overboard with the wanton destruction.

How evil can you be?

Pretty darn evil, I don’t have this nic just for the fun of it. Although I’m not the organised take over the world kind of evil, it’s all about the destruction, peeving off the biggest person I can find and kicking ass.

Do you just like to play by alignment or do you like a more realistic moral system?

I prefer a more realistic system, alignment tends to be restrictive because we all have different views on what stands for what.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done as a player?

I suppose it would be the death of  umm 15 peasants because they were in my way.

How much difference is there between your real life morals and your in-game morals?

There is an entire universe between my real life morals and my in-game morals. In game I let loose and don’t really care about the consequences, in real life it’s all about the consequences. Although  both in-game and out karma tends to be a factor.

If a God mandates Kolbolds are evil and must be destroyed, could your character kill a Kolbold pup in cold blood?

I’d probably try to keep it and raise it. Baby animals are my weakness.

———-

When we game we tend to look at morality in terms of alignment choices or your level of humanity, but do this arbitrary choices really reflect the characters moral code, or even your own? Probably not, but it does help to have something to fall back on when your character needs to make those really tough calls: kill the baby or go against orders? My experience has tended to go along karmic lines…when ever my rangers acted against nature, they would die at the ‘hands of nature’. If calling it karma doesn’t work for you how about cause and effect? Clearly everything you do has a consequence/ripple effect on everything else. I figure that, that’s how morality works…we have the code to shape our actions.

[Confession Friday] Back to the 90s – Gamebooks

I only got a chance to experience true pen and paper role playing in late 2001 / early 2002. I remember that first game quite well: it was a Dungeons ampersand Dragons 3rd edition game and I played a half-elf cleric, named Kaleb, of Fharlanghn (that’s where my still-ongoing love of the travel domain started). I met the GM on the day before the game (to get the backstory right, roll my character etc.) and, during the process, he commented on how I seemed to know a lot about the system (and role playing as a whole) for a complete newb. Thinking back on that moment, I realised that, though I didn’t do any ‘real’ (and I use real surrounded by a ‘ and a ‘) role playing during the 90s, I got involved with numerous hobbies and activities that, shall I say, prepped me for pen and paper RPGs. I hope to use these Confession Friday articles (meme started by PB and the Stargazer) to examine some of the activities and how they primed me for RPing.

My extended family is extremely large and I had the (mis)fortune to be the middle child of the whole clan. OK, not really, but I didn’t often get a chance to hang with the cousins closest to my age. So, family gatherings had me either hanging with cousins either 5+ years younger or 5+ years older than I. It was thanks to one older cousin, in particular, that I discovered such things as comics, 8-bit Nintendo games, Magic: the Gathering and… gamebooks. Remember those? They were kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but also included elements of dice-based randomness. They fell somewhere between CYOA and true role playing games. I bought a tonne of them and spent hours reading and rereading my and my cousin’s collections. I was originally going to entitle this post: “I singlehandedly provided Steve Jackson with enough revenue to develop Munchkin“, but then, while doing some fact checking,  I discovered that there were actually two Steven Jacksons involved in gamebooks (imagine that!). Turns out, I bought more non-SJ Games Steve gamebooks than SJ Games Steve gamebooks. So that explains the unimaginative post title.

The Blood Sword series was (and is) my favourite gamebook series of all time (and it probably had the biggest influence on my developing geekling personality). This series, unlike all the others I tried, allowed for co-operative multiplayer games. I remember sneaking my cousin’s books to school and getting a group of friends together during breaks. We’d take turns reading aloud from the books and ended up playing through the entire series. As I type this, PB is shoulder surfing and calling me a nerd. Well, at least I’m not married to a nerd.

- jatori

Confession Friday: PB

Stargazer had this up, I thought it was pretty awesome and having convinced the gang we need to do it, welcome to Confession Friday.

It all started one bright and not so distant tuesday, it was the day jatori and I started going out. Yes, lame, but seriously this is my story :p I did what any girl does when she starts going out with someone, investigate the hobbies. So after a few sunday afternoons of watching the gang hacking and slashing, came the q of  “Why don’t you play?” Co-incidentally they needed a ranged person, and thus began my fascination with Rangers, or was it cos Orlando Bloom was soo hot? * I rolled up my kick-ass elf, with the help of let’s see: jatori, foo, zen, l,e and g. Admittedly she wasn’t that cool the first session, but then my rolling got better and after a couple of frags I was hooked.

At this point I was a bright eyed 19 year old, and all I knew about gaming was The Sims. Sad, but true. So this new world opening up to me was pretty awesome. Rpging was my gateway into MtG, anime, Civilisation and more Sims The fantasy environment wasn’t all that unfamiliar, after all I am a bit of a book nerd and I’ve read Prattchet When I started playing my family and non gaming friends couldn’t understand it, at all, in fact they still don’t and it was all attributed to this strange boy introducing me to strange people and things. When I picked up MtG it was bad, I had to hide my beautiful, shiny Magic cards from my mother, actually she still doesn’t know about them. Yes, my mother is one of those hyper religious types, who think that the hobby is all bad.

Anyways back to the rpging. For the first year of playing I did the typical noob thing, playing the same race and class, pretty much the same character all the time. But then I saw that Healers could have unicorns and the experimentation began. I still played an elf,  only she was a Healer this time, but she couldn’t kick ass, so she had a sister who was a Ranger/Healer who came looking for her and joined the group.  Come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever played a human in DnD; elves, halflings sure, but humans no way.  But I digress…the experimentation phase, ok so the unicorn thing isn’t really over, it’s just I could never manage to build a character that could have one and kick-ass in a fight, and boy do I love killing things.  I just remembered I had a pegasus once, she was awesome, until foo squished her

There is more to the tale, but this is turning into a long post. If you want to know more, drop a comment and we’ll see what happens.

-pb

*Yip I started playing the year the LOTR movies were all the craze.

Colour me a fangirl

I really enjoy watching The Guild. We pretty much watched the first season in one sitting, not that it’s hard to do, but you get my point. So it doesn’t surprise me that “Do you wanna date my avatar” is now stuck in my head, or that I’ve bombarded friends with the link and finally got them to watch the show. If you haven’t seen it…. watch it now

-pb

[Travel] Johannesburg vs Durban

And so it happened. I mentioned, in my original post regarding the revival of Durban’s gaming scene, that I tend to travel a lot. Obviously, a lot of travel may restrict my involvement in Durban-based activities. Starting next week, I’ll be working in Johannesburg for the next few months, only spending one or two weekends per month in Durban. I’ve even already started telling friends and family that I’ll be staying in Sandton and occassionally holidaying in my Durban weekend home – sounding very pretentious, even though I’m still a wee little worker bee. For my international readers, this places me somewhere just below carrying a chihuahua in a Louis Vitton puppy purse. Yes, I know who LV is. Gag.

This doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on Durban! When I’m not in town, I will still actively support and advertise events (online) as best I can. And, when I am in Durban, I’ll see that I manage to run a game or two. Plus, not all be gloom and doom: I see this as opportunity to properly explore the gaming scene of Joburg and Gauteng – an opportunity previously not afforded to me, despite my semi-regular trips to the region. So, prepare for store reviews and related articles regarding Joburg in the near future. Don’t worry, the place isn’t that bad a place to visit as a tourist… provided that you didn’t skimp on perception-based skills/abilities during character generation; didn’t take naivety as a character flaw; and have mastered your own personal brand of Fu.

Just to further prove that I’m not giving up on Durban: my third game day is scheduled for Saturday the 15th of August. Game still to be determined. Suggestions welcomed.

- jatori