by Andrea Smith | Dec 2, 2016 | Essays
I was into video games before it was cool. In 1994, I was six years old, and my favourite pastime was watching my babysitter, a teenage boy named Mark, play games on our home PC. It was a huge, white, clunky thing that ran Windows 3.1 and was mostly purchased so my dad could play Solitaire. Before I could do long division, I was better at navigating DOS than most adults, and my favourite command was C:\>run ALONE.exe. (more…)
by Andrea Smith | May 13, 2016 | Essays, Opinion, Tabletop Games
I tend to get a little overzealous when I have an idea. Deciding to build a tiered vegetable garden, I went out and bought dozens of seed packets without having actually built anything yet. I wanted to start a gaming channel on YouTube, so I bought a recording program without considering the effort it takes to talk to yourself for a half hour straight. So, when I decided to start playing Dungeons & Dragons, my first step was dropping $200 on supplies despite the facts that I 1) didn’t have a group and 2) knew nothing about the game.
Armed with expensive hardcover books and a set of pretty purple dice, I set about to find people to play with. My first two attempts were both web-based, and neither panned out due to scheduling issues. With one, I got as far as making my character—a pansexual half-elf sorcerer with a habit of picking pockets and seducing enemies. The other group never even made it to the character creation stage. It was clear I needed to find an in-person group.
The problem? I live in a small town. The population is about 2,500 people. Finding a group of people around my age who were interested in tabletop roleplay wasn’t going to be easy.
Except that it totally was. (more…)
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