I know this is not gaming related, but I have had a tradition here of asking you for vacation advice and you’ve always come through. Since this is THE BIG ONE, help me ObiBearwani, you’re my only (trusted) hope!

The Big One. This is it. The Once in a Lifetime, buckle your seatbelts, do that one crazy vacation trip thing that makes no financial sense whatsoever but will provide a cherished memory for the children that will last a lifetime, rah rah rah.

We are heading to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in mid-March for a special spring break vacation, coinciding with Alex’s birthday. He has no idea yet, which makes for interesting conversations around the house.

Sound good? Sound fun? Just don’t start thinking about the material items that kind of money can buy, think instead of supporting the economy and building memories.

Just keep spending, just keep spending, what do we do, we spend, spend. I mean swim, swim.

Anyway, we have a bit of decision making to do, the kind that a careful planner can stress about for days and lose sleep over.

We have booked the whole trip already. Soup to nuts, all-in meal plans, multiple parks planned, the whole enchilada. Mmm, enchiladas.

Bacon enchiladas? Hmm. Must investigate.

For our stay, we had booked one of the new Royal Garden Rooms at the Port Orleans Riverside, where they have been doing extensive renovations - a pretty looking themed resort based on the movie The Princess and the Frog, what Disney considers a ’moderate’ level resort with multiple pools, nice eating options, and the plus of a freshly renovated room with 2 queen beds and really neat theming.

Any gamer can appreciate making selections based on level. The difficulty level of this resort is moderate. In MMO terms, you get more guild perks, but you don’t get a mount unless you upgrade.

Situation: The Port Orleans Riverside Royal Rooms were set to open the middle of February, so we thought we were being safe in giving it a month to get the damn thing done remodeling. Guess what, last week it was discovered that construction is three weeks behind (at best) and will now not be available until after we arrive. Maybe.

Through Cassie’s research and forum activities (read in there – crazy stalking) on some Disney boards, she learned of this big ass delay just last week, and she’s  been following the process of how they are handling it. Reading the forums devoted to sharing information about Disney trips, forums essentially devoted to stalking every move Disney makes at their resorts, seems to pay off.

It seems that people who had a royal room at the Port Orleans Riverside booked, who now won’t be able to have that room for their trip, are getting bumped to a ‘deluxe’ resort instead of the ‘moderate’ for no additional cost!

There’s some question as to whether we’ll get the offer because the new rooms are projected to open a day or two after we get there, so there’s some potential that they could offer us a different room at POR and then move us.  But general consensus/gossip is that all who are affected in any way are getting the upgrade option.  Some are getting a choice from a few available, others have been getting to basically choose their dream deluxe resort from all of them.  Contemporary and Grand Floridian are typically not being included – although a couple people reported they were able to select the GF, so it seems to flex a bit depending on which representative calls.

Do you get the Fairy Godmother or the Wicked Witch that day? Only the call center knows.

We want to be ready with a decision if they call and Cassie has been obsessively looking at all the options for days now, and she wants some advice.

Here’s where we’re at:

The majority are choosing and/or being offered the Polynesian first.  It looks like a really nice option and has the monorail available (which Alex would probably be super thrilled with riding in), being able to watch Wishes and the Electric Water Parade from the beach, great tropical feel, nice quick service food option for breakfast.  Downsides are the volcano slide is going to be waaaay too scary for Alex based on a video Cassie watched (he’s getting braver with longer slides at Wisconsin Dells, but nothing enclosed all the way at the top and really dark like the volcano one) and there’s no hot tub (which is also one of Alex’s favorite parts of any swimming excursion).

Wilderness is probably out because we have the Great Wolf Lodge that we frequently visit in Wisconsin Dells and the theming feels a bit too similar, so it’s not as exciting to us (although the lobby is beautiful).

Grand Floridian looks beautiful, but is a little too “fancy” for our tastes especially with Alex.  Seems more like an adult type of theming.

Beach Club/Yacht Club also looks very nice and we like the option to walk or boat to Epcot and Hollywood Studios.  But not sure how much time we’ll really have for swimming or what the weather will be like in early/mid March either.  Plus again, it’s a fancy waterpark which we have lots of at Wisconsin Dells and the slide looks too scary for Alex at this one too.

So that would leave:

The Polynesian (see thoughts above)

Animal Kingdom Lodge, which looks really cool, but we probably would not get the upgrade to a Savannah room, instead would have a standard view (parking lot, buildings, etc). While everyone affected by POR situation is getting upgraded to deluxe, the category you get there is limited to the type of royal room you booked.  We booked garden view as it was the only one available at the time, but there were also water view and river view options added afterwards and those people get the Savannah view, Lagoon View, Theme Park view, etc at the Deluxe level.  We like the look of the pool and, of course, the animals at the AKL.  Downside is that it’s more out of the way, especially since we only plan to do one day at AKL and our room wouldn’t have a nice view unless we get super lucky at check-in.

Boardwalk Inn – The pool area at this one looks really fun and like something Alex would enjoy (the crazy clown slide, animals around the pool, etc).  Downsides are really not much for quick service options for breakfasts/fast meals and a bit more adult feel to the resort from the pictures we’ve seen.

So, what are your thoughts/experiences from those that have been to any/all of these?  Cassie is going insane and has viewed hundreds of pages of comments/opinions/fact sheets/videos/etc (and keeps trying to make me look too, which cuts into my WoW time!), so please help us (and quickly since the call could come any moment).

Any advice on specifics on what you liked or disliked from the point of view of a trip with an 8 year old, not very adventurous boy would be HUGELY appreciated! Considering this is about three years savings for this trip so Alex gets his one chance at having a Disney World dream come true, I’d like to make it our best possible for him.

Thank you all very much!

 

Edit based on comments – We should have included this in our original post.  We definitely will have a car the entire time we are there (it is already completely paid for and we are going off property several times so that’s a done deal at this point).  We know for hours of research how wonderful the Disney transportation is, but regardless, we will have a car and may choose to use it at times especially for our non-Disney days which are already planned.  We will likely not use it for our Disney days, but don’t want to choose a hotel based simply on transportation concerns because we will have the choice of Disney options or our car.

Final edit and update: We did get the phone call from Disney that we were expecting, and were offered a different resort to choose from since ours was still going to be under construction. We have confirmed with Disney that we will be staying at the Polynesian at a nice garden room, and I have to tell you that we are really looking forward to it. With all that you folks have said, I think that this is going to be the best possible vacation we could hope for, and I do appreciate everything you’ve done to help guide us to that. Thank you, very much.

Welcome to another All Hallows Eve season. I hope you’ve been enjoying it!

World of Warcraft has expanded on what is one of my favorite in-game celebrations, and brought us not one but TWO new pets to pursue, in addition to the little pumpka-dude.

This, of course, comes about 3 days after I finally reached 150 in-game pets on my Druid. Those last two pets seem kinda… well, superfluous now. Ah, well. Getting a start on the inevitable 200 pet achieve, right? Bright side, bright side.

The new kitty pet is cute, but the Creepy Crate… just, omigod.

The Creepy Crate… easts critters. It is the critter chomping crate.

Awesome, right?

I mean, I know that this certainly does reinforce the notion that those Blizzard artists, boy, they sure are serious about wanting WoW to have fewer silly things, huh? Sure does put that argument to rest. /sarcasm.

You might think that the new Creepy Crate was all win, no downside at all, but I’m here to tell you the new pet threw the BBB household into a bit of turmoil.

Our son Alex is eight, and he has the attention span of a ferret on hot chocolate. He gets enthusiasms, stays on something for a few days, then wanders off to something else for a while.

Credit where it is due, he has beaten both Mario Galaxy and Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii (thanks to an incredible reader that sent me a copy of MG2, for which I still remain exceedingly grateful). He plays games, specializing in Mario. He loves Bullet Bills, he knows the names, he has the moves.

He also, yes, has his own World of Warcraft account, but after the first paid month we let it lapse. He simply didn’t use it much. A few days here, a few days there.

With great joy, therefore, we set him up with a free WoW account soon after they were available.

Limited to level 20 on a free account? No problem! All Alex wants to do is log onto a level 5 dwarf shaman, equip a fishing pole and run around fishing. And exploring Ironforge and Stormwind, taking the tram back and forth. We can group with him, and I can take him on Dragon rides around the world. It’s all good.

Oh yeah, there is one other thing.

Alex loves killing critters.

Bunnies. Frogs. Deer. Sheep. Whatever.

I’ve told the tale of Alex the Wabbitslayer before, but he cemented his place in the critter gitter hall of fame when he proudly showed me his secret cow level in Stormwind, where there are usually 5 cows all in a clump out in a farmers field. Cows that are just itching to be whipped to death with a fishing pole, apparently.

This disturbs Cassie, who has this policy of never, ever, ever allowing a critter to come to harm through her actions.

I say, it’s better than having him setting real critters on fire in the backyard… and don’t think I ain’t watching fer the signs.

Alex saw me on my Druid last night, saw me complete the quest chain for the Creepy Crate, and then watched in stunned amazement as I went down into the Ironforge Tram and let the crate feed on rats for a while.

Oh yeah, that did it. He wanted one. Badly. A critter-eating crate pet? Oh, heck yes.

So, the BBB household faced its first true test of the season; can a level 5 free account get a Creepy Crate?

No. No, a level 5 cannot get the first quest of the chain. We tried.

Thus begins our little drama. Sadness. Crushed spirits. Dissappointment, bringing a sudden lack of interest in continuing last night.

You see, he was really excited, he got his hopes up. Once he had those hopes up and went to try and do it on his own character, and found out he could not, that he was denied, he really felt bad.

So, as I talked to him afterwards, Cassie took up the challenge. She began researching what it would take.

A little research revealed that it was possible for a level 10 character to get the quest, and to actually complete it and get a Creepy Crate.

Okay, first goal. Level his character to 10. 

This became a surprise pain. No heirlooms, no problem, right? Of course not. We’re master-class WoW professionals.

But also, no money. No money to train, no money for gear upgrades, not even from vendors. No money by playing the Auction House, you can’t use the AH on a free account. No money for flight paths.

No money from friends or trades, you can’t even USE the mailbox on a free account. And nobody can trade with you. Not money, not items.

So, you quest, you get quest rewards, you loot cash from mobs you kill and from the quest turn-ins.

I got his little Dwarf to level 8 last night, and called it. Wasn’t hard, was just a grind.

Cassie picked it up again this morning and pushed the rest of the way to 10. Go go Cassie levelbot!

After training, and buying a vendor axe for the off-hand, Alex had a level 10 Dwarf Shaman with… 6 silver and some copper.

But he could get the quest! Hurrah!

This evening, after dinner, we revealed to Alex what we had done, and told him that we would work together to do the quest chain, and at the end he would have a Creepy Crate for his very own.

Ah, the excitement! The delight! His little face lit up with pure joy.

It will be one of those moments that I carry with me and hold tight, cherished as a warm, cheerful glow for when I’m old(er), and gray(er), and he has begun legal proceedings to declare me senile and put me in a home so I’m not a bother.

Doing the quest chain together was a lot of fun, we had to run everywhere on foot, because, well he is level 10, and I’d done it on my Druid already, and I don’t have any others that have passenger vans. Err, who can carry a friend around.

As Indy might say, “We’re on foot from here!”

We ran around, we did everything together, when we had to follow the trail of purple spiders I took a step back and let Alex the mighty spider-sniffer lead us along the trail. He likes being the leader, even when he has no bloody idea where we’re going. It’s enough that someone is following him for a change.

Everything went great, right up to the point where we had to get 5 Blood Nettles, 5 Arcane Powder and 5 Crystal Vials.

Guess what? Vials are cheap and Blood Nettles are free, but the Arcane Powder were going to cost him 9 silver 50 copper. EACH. Times 5? Do the math.

Little dude had 4 silver. Screwed, we were.

Ah, shit.

Think, think…. there had to be some way to cheat like a bastard. It’s a video game, there is ALWAYS a way to cheat in a video game. We choose not to cheat in video games, we never said we couldn’t figure out how.

Ah hah!

I’m already grouped with Alex, so we know that works.

What is the goal?

Earn money in sufficient quantity to buy his quest items, minimum 50 silver, in the quickest and easiest fashion possible.

It took 5 levels to get 12 silver, so that is flat out.

But… high level mobs drop higher-value money per kill… plus vendor trash drops. And weapon drops at level 60 are frequently worth a gold all by themselves.

Time to test.

I get on my Druid, we group up, I put it on Group Loot: Free For All, pop Dragonform and fly him out to Burning Steppes, where there are swarms of mobs.

A fast kitty whompas through the crowds, and there are a ton of dead bodies littering the barren wastes.

Can he loot my kills?

Why yes he can!

Five minutes later, he had a few gold in cash plus some sweet vendor trash, and away we went back to Stormwind, and carried on brilliantly, thank you.

Yes, he did complete the quest, and yes, I anticipated the point where the level 84 bad guys pop out when you intercept the meeting. Except I think his bad guy was level-appropriate for him. It went so fast I didn’t get a good check on it, but we both turned in our quests, and I swear two mobs popped out, and mine was 84 and lasted a few good hits, but I think his target was level 10 like him and died in an eyeblink. Something I need to check on an alt.

We went and endured the long chat scenes, waiting patiently to turn our quest in so he could get his Crate AND have the moral high ground by giving it to the Archaeology student… even if I knew the student would be all greedy anyway.

Then I watched as three people ran in, one after the other, and made sure to spam the buttons on their long quest turn-ins so Alex had to wait five minutes, with other people cutting in front of him, and never getting his turn because he just wasn’t fast enough to get that millisecond response time in on the click to turn in.

After three of those, it was time to say “Screw this for a game of soldiers” and go all the way back to Ansom, who may have been greedy, but at least he was short-winded and gave Alex a chance to finish his damn chain.

For the rest of the evening, I enjoyed watching Alex travel around Stormwind, giggling and snorting as the Crate ate… well, everything.

Including, yes, cows. And bunnies. And damn near every other thing he could find.

An evening well spent.

When I think, “I could have been raiding”… it sure does put things into perspective.

In related news, we have two Wii guitars, a drum set, and Band Hero, Lego Rock Band and Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. Cassie has the Wii version of Metallica and Guitar Hero 5 on the way.

We could play WoW, but it can’t always be Creepy Crates and consumed cows. But it CAN always be “Daddy played bass, momma played fiddle, and little Alex was joining right in there”, whenever we’d like.

Lately, having only an hour or so to do something before an early bedtime, WoW just seems like a lot of time investment with very little family fun and excitement in return. But a good song is only 4 minutes… 5 tops.

That there is good entertainment value for my gamer doller, right there. Git ‘er done!

But for tonight… tonight, there was Creepy Crate.

May you enjoy yours at least half as much as we enjoyed ours.

So, our wonderful adventure started off great, with the Amtrak train being 2 hours late to the station to pick us up in Saint Paul, MN. Oh joy.

It was a fairly long day, but we are now gratefully entrenched in our hotel.

We ventured forth afoot into the ‘wilds’ of the city, looking for grub. Thanks to the decision of MoarGoar on Twitter, we dined at Portillos, where Cassie dined on chilidog and I enjoyed the italian beef with mozzarella and sweet peppers. Very good.

Along the walk, Cassie pointed something out to me that just seemed perfect.

Effen Vodka, the drink of Effen Effers the world over. She pointed this out, and I instantly thought of Alas. If ever there was someone that could use an Effen drink after this last year, it’s Alas.

So, a nice end to the night?

Not just yet.

When we got back to our suite, I swiped through the channels while Cassie did some web work. An unfamiliar channel lineup, no Bravo (damn, we’ll miss Top Chef!), no DVR, we didn’t bring Firefly to watch on DVD, shit!

I stumbled across the History Channel, and what should I see but a show JUST starting up called Top Shot.

Umm, WTF?

Top Shot… the Top Chef style competition for marksmanship.

Are you shitting me? Manny, why in the hell did you never tell me about this? OMG!

Damnit, this is a show I could have competed on, and I didn’t even know it’s out there? ARRGGGHHHH!!!!

I watched last nights episode with extreme enjoyment. It was all old style weapons, weapons I have many hours of practice in; tomahawks and blowguns.

As I watched the show, though, I realized that watching this has almost ruined Top Chef for me.

I’ve always loved Top Chef, the judges, the contests, the whole experience.

As I watched the first few minutes of Top Shot, though, my first gut reaction as a trained and experienced marksman was, “What the hell kind of bullshit is it where you can be kicked off the competition because the rest of your team wanted you gone, instead of for not being the best? If you go home, it should be because someone else was better, not because you didn’t kiss enough ass!”

Umm… oh yeah. Like on Top Chef. I never really felt how unjust it was in my gut when it was chefs; I’m not now nor have I ever been a professional chef. Put it in terms I know damn well, shooting competitions, and guess what? Suddenly I’m all outraged and shit.

How funny.

Anyway, turns out that over the course of the episode, you learn that who goes home isn’t just a popularity contest. Two people get nominated by their team to go up for elimination, sure, but then it gets resolved by a shootoff of some kind between the two… with the winner of the elimination challenge getting a $2000 prize on top of staying in the game. So it’s winner take all, just the way it should be.

“Sure, bitches, put my ass up there. I’ll win the elimination and bring home the cash too. Go for it.”

Lol. Hey, I don’t take all that raider stuff seriously, not because I’m not a competitive person, but because raiding in a video game isn’t exactly a challenge I can make myself get real worked up about.

But shooting? Real world marksmanship? Well, now. That’s an entirely different kettle of fish, my friends. NOW we’re talking serious business. Bring it!

I really enjoyed the mix of marksmanship challenges, variation in weapon forms, and the format of elimination in tonight’s show. If this same quality keeps up, I just may have a brand new favorite show to watch.

Funny the things you find when away from home, isn’t it? And yet I could have been watching it all along, if SOMEONE had mentioned it!

Oh yeah… and we’re going to the zoo tomorrow. Cheers!

So, I’ve got a new phone, and I swear I’m gonna shut up about it. This ain’t about the phone.

BUT… the phone is a gateway to new experiences right now.

It’s got a YouTube App on it, and that led me to do something I normally never do… browse YouTube just to see what’s out there.

It just felt different, seeing those little videos on a phone! Aww, so cute!

So, of all the videos on YouTube, posted from all the available bits in all the world, what do you think random chance brought me to see? What do you think I was finally introduced to, that everyone else in the known universe probably already saw?

If you said “Two girls one cup”, go stand in the corner and wait for the Blair Witch to come get you. Hush.

No, instead I saw a video starring one of my favorite actors of all time, a man I can actually gush about for an hour or more, dancing the night away.

I saw Christopher Walken dancing to Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice“.

I’m trying to think what I was doing the year that came out, 2000, because this one slipped right by me. I think that was the second year I was truck driving, so I was probably in a rig crossing into Idaho.

Edit: Cassie happened to remind me that I suck at math when my head is full of ache, as it is right now with this cold. I got out of the Marines in ’94, I spent ’95 and ’96 truck driving.

Or, as Cassie put it… if we’re about to have our 10th wedding anniversary in March, and I spent the 2 years before that as her fiance, and the two years before that getting settled into the Twin Cities, how, exactly, could I have been truck driving in 2000?

So, actually, I was just clueless in 2000, not truck driving. I now return you to my previous post, still in progress.

Not a lot of TV in the cab of a truck in the old days.

Christopher Walken. That son of a bitch can dance, yo.

Oh right, you knew that. Like, eleven years ago. Because it won awards from MTV out the wazoo and has become such a massive cultural hit it’s been spoofed multiple places… that I also didn’t see. :)

Christopher Walken.

When I saw that Fatboy Slim video, I didn’t just see that one performance.

No, I saw shades of every great performance Christopher Walken has been in, that I’ve ever seen.

It brought back in a rush all of those incredible man-crush movie moments in my life, watching Christopher Walken just act his ass off.

The former POW returning a watch to a young man in Pulp Fiction. The mobster interrogating Dennis Hopper in True Romance. Hickey the old west gangster in Last Man Standing (and again with the Bruce Willis), the badass mofo in Suicide Kings, The Deer Hunter, good lord The Deer Hunter.

And of course the performance that stands above them all, Christopher Walken as the Angel Gabriel in the Prophecy. Hey, you don’t think that was his best, sue me.

The Fatboy Slim video reminded me, all in a rush, that Christopher Walken is, for me, one of the true movie legends of my generation. He is an actor whose work defined the way I thought of movies for decades. When I’d think of what was possible in movies, in storytelling on the screen, in the power and majesty and depth and brilliance that could leap from the screen into my brain, Christopher Walken was one of the few actors that led the way for me.

The defining Christopher Walken movie, for me, will always be Brainstorm. That movie, and the possibilities it posed, the imagination it held dear, the bravery in tackling such an impossible topic and trying like hell to present it visually on screen… that set the tone of all movies for me. It didn’t have to be about dropping some quick film to make a fast buck, it could be about something more. That was the standard to strive for.  Brainstorm, and Walken, showed me that movies could take a chance and really try and explore something massive.

The earlier generations had their own heroes, I know. John Wayne, Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, so many great actors that I’m sure would bring back a rush of nostalgia to my elders. Those that ain’t in the ground yet, because I’m already getting pretty eld here.

My generation had all of the action stars with their ripped muscles and machine guns and explosions. It’s so easy to see that, and discard the entire decade as crap. Entertaining crap, but crap nevertheless.

But we also had Christopher Walken, and that means something to me.

I’m getting older now, and it’s getting easier for me to be able to look back and see where the high points were while I was growing up, what the major inspirations were that opened my mind to wider horizons, and helped me learn to appreciate how kick ass movies and fiction could be. The movies, books, and people that helped me learn how to really dream big.

It makes me wonder, who do the folks growing up these days see as their inspirations, their grand lions and tigresses of the imagination? Who sets your brain on fire and drives you to write, or draw, or create stories and images, or, yes, parodies while you drive towards your own future?

Who out there is peeling your brain open like a crazed man with a rusty can opener?

Do you have a Christopher Walken of your own? Do you have a true original, a legend that can be so many things, but never predictable?

I really hope so. I do.

This isn’t a storytime, but it is rambling about fun old role playing game sessions, so, what’s the difference?

I heard something on the radio this morning that reminded me about a really fun role playing campaign I ran back in the day, and I wanted to share.

One thing I miss is having gaming friends to hang around with and swap stories of “This one game, man, you should have been there, it was awesome, here’s what happened…”

There are basically three layers of flavor to role playing gaming.

There is the fun of creating the characters, settings and stories, and imagining the fun you’re going to have.

Then there are the actual game sessions, where you try and not only survive but thrive despite whatever tricksy scheme your evil bastard of a GM has planned.

And then there is the telling of tales about how awesome those game sessions were. “You remember that one time Ryan’s dwarf was supposed to be Mannys’ wizards’ bodyguard, leading the way into danger to protect his young charge, and when the magic flying dagger whipped across the room at Ryan, he announced “I duck”? Boy, the expression on Manny’s face was just priceless as he took a dagger right to the chest, wasn’t it?”

I don’t gots no group here to BS with… so I guess that means you’re stuck with it. Sorry.

This story doesn’t really have a point, except to prove I’m a mean GM and I’ll go to really stupid lengths for a joke. But then, you knew that already.

Back in the grand old days when I was in the US Marine Corps, no matter what duty station I found myself, I quickly gathered together a group of like-minded gaming deviants.

I put together my first such group when I was stationed in grand old Twenty-Nine Palms, California, for electronics school. 

The groups weekend activities were based around a set schedule, including two of the key desert activities.

You see, in the High Desert, there were basically two key activities; drinking and exercise. We simply added a third; gaming.

Our gaming group on the weekends had a marvelous tradition we followed for the entire year we were in electronics school together. We would work out, running or rock climbing or playing racquetball and lifting weights. Then we’d hit the beer garden, and grill steaks and lobster tails slathered with honey butter, wrapped in foil. When the butter started steaming out of the foil, tails were done. We’d eat the steaks, lobster, and drink beer (Fosters or Keystone Light) and down some Fuzzy Navels over ice until it was time for Doctor Demento to come on the High Desert radio station. Yes, that’s right, the ONE High Desert radio station. Then we’d listen to the Doctor, followed by gaming until daylight. That would be daylight of the second day, of course.

It was a rough life.

For gaming rules, we liked to swap around systems just like everyone back then did, but one that stood out was Palladium. If you put together all the hinky character creation rulebooks, like Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas and Super Spies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and whatever, you could end up with, and I did, a humanoid white begal tiger martial artist with super speed and super strength and natural claws. Just to see what you could whip up. This was before Rifts came out, or at least before much in the Rifts product line came out.

With such wide open wackiness, the campaigns tended towards outrageousness.

Well, the name of the campaign was “Black Ops and Ninja Trollops”. The players all made characters that were to be part of this super high powered secret government-sanctioned agency out to protect the country from things that usually only appeared on the pages of the National Enquirer. The bad guys AND the good guys wanted to operate under the radar, but things tended to escalate rapidly. Usually involving high explosive and rocket launcher duels in downtown Miami. There is a lot GOOD to be said about rocket launcher duels when riding jetskis, or when on skies towed by a speedboat.

Every time the heroes returned to base, located in South Florida, I made sure that it was wildly different, and not a little frightening, especially any time they had to visit the dreaded “R&D”. I ran R&D as some nightmare of frightening mad science, with a lethality-for-humor rating straight out of Paranoia. Every mission, there was some reason they just HAD to visit R&D, for experimental weapons testing, or a new detecting gadget to find the MacGuffin, or, and this was critical, a new vehicle.

You see, I started a running gag where, every mission, no matter what they did or how they tried, their vehicle would get blown up.

These characters are super-secret super spies with super awesome gadgets. AND they’re played by Marines who love electronics. AND Palladium had extensive rules for designing awesome super cars and weapons systems.

You put those things together, and the players spent more time trying to design a vehicle that could blend into the Miami lifestyle AND be imprevious to me blowing them up than they did trying to beat the bad guys.

They tried spending all their money on super armor and weapons, they tried security systems, they tried driving stripped down crap AMC Gremlin hatchbacks (on the assumption that the characters were already suffering enough, so I’d let the cars survive… umm, wrong) they tried taking buses, they tried avoidance of collateral damage (having the agency send NPCs to ferry them to the drop off by helo, on the assumption I wouldn’t kill the vehicle if it was filled with innocents… ummm, wrong), they tried all sorts of things.

This went on for quite some time. It was really fun, having this running theme as a sub note to the campaign. Well, fun for ME, anyway.

Then, they went for psychological warfare.

One of my favorite movies, then and now, is Vanishing Point.

The main theme of the movie is one man having had enough with everything, all the rules and the petty bullshit, and pretty much taking off on a 100% pointless road trip across the country, hell bent for leather and letting nothing stop him, and in the process pissing off every law enforcement agency in the country. He has no destination that means anything except to him. He’s the driver, Kowalski with a K, and he’s gonna make it to his destination on time, and screw the world. He’s screwed up his career, his life, his love, his racing… he’s done. He’s gonna get this one thing right or die trying.

The car he drives in the film is an iconic white 1970 Dodge Challenger, one of the last of the pony cars.

The guys sat down, and out of game designed a rebuilt 1970 Dodge Challenger, white in color, graphing it out and everything. Reinforced kevlar woven body panels, bulletproof glass, concealed rocket and machine gun ports, all carefully and painstakingly drawn out and detailed with exploded diagrams.

They sprung this on me, as something that their characters in the game had spent 6 months designing and building, and their finished paperwork was beautiful. They really poured their hearts into this thing.

They were pretty confident that this time, they had me. They figured there was simply NO WAY that I would have the balls to destroy my favorite iconic muscle car of all time.

I had to applaud their ingenuity, and their keen insight into applied psychological warfare as it pertains to role playing game GMs.

Their very next mission, they took the car.

Accordingly, their very fnext mission with the car, I placed them in the position of having to choose, themselves, whether to use their car to intercept a missile fired at the main highway that links the Florida Keys, or let the missile hit, RIGHT when there was a busload of nuns destined to be at point zero.

That’s right, I pulled out the busload of nuns bit.

They had to think about that one out of game for quite some time, and it wasn’t a unanimous vote by any means.

They drove their car to the point of impact, blasted the afterburners, rocketed the concrete barrier between elevated highway and open water, and blasted off the highway out over open water, bailing out just before the missile struck the airborne car, blowing it into itty, bitty pieces.

I am a bastard.

But, effort of that magnitude has to be rewarded.

I have a reputation, in my games, that the harder I make the players suffer, the greater the eventual reward. If they are really, really miserable and suffering, they actually get happy, trying to imaginewhat wonderful thing I could possibly be planning to reward them with.

This is a truly cruel act of training on my part. The worse my players suffer… the happier they get. This is wrong, but I can’t stop the process.

I also go the other way. My players tend to learn quickly that the better things are going, the easier things are for them in the game, the worse it’s gonna get. Players get to expecting that the cute little bunny rabbit is actually a death bunny with vorpal fangs, and blow it away on spec. Which, considering the effects of Monty Python on your average gaming group, is probably a smart move.

So, I made THEM make the choice to sacrifice their own car. That’s even worse than blowing it up myself.

BUT… when they called back to base to wail that they had no ride, R&D showed up personally at the scene of destruction to take over clean up… AND promised to rebuild their original ride.

That’s right… R&D. Taking over cleanup. And promising to rebuild the ride. Something that had never been done in game before. R&D never came out of their caves at base. Ever.

The horror that crawled over the players’ faces was astounding. I felt such pride at having crushed them to such a thorough extent.

The players fell all over themselves to get assurances that R&D would rebuild the car, but would add nothing new. Nothing! No death rays, no wings and rocket packs, no teleportation, nothing. They were having none of my games. They knew exactly what they wanted, and they forced the head of R&D to promise that they would rebuild the white challenger to the state it was before it blew up. 

I swore, both in game and out, that R&D would not isntall some kind of gimmicky gadget that would destroy the car again. I promised.

Then, slowly, you could see the hope begin to creep in. They’d suffered, hadn’t they? They’d earned a car, right? A car? Something the characters could get some token feeling of Miami Vice-ness out of? Maybe just this one time?

For the next few weeks of game sessions, the players had some really crappy loaners, up to and including the Goodyear Blimp, issued to them for their missions. And every mission, they checked in at R&D to see how reconstruction was coming along.

I never let them see the car being worked on, but they could see the doors to “Lab 3″, and they could see crews rushing parts in through the doors, and sparks blasting out of the doors as they opened fro welders hard at work, and generally always got the impression that some serious shit was going on to rebuild their white challenger.

They got status updates on the percentage of rebuild completion. They got told that, due to the nature of the explosion being over water, finding all of the pieces was very difficult, and the biggest delay was making sure, as new parts were fabricated from scratch, that they matched the originals without deviation to six sigma levels.

They were being very diligent to remain strictly with the original design.

Finally, I could hold off no longer. The players had been very patient, but enough is enough. It was time for the unveiling.

The head of R&D proudly led them to Lab 3, where they were permitted to enter and view their white challenger for the first time…

The reconstructed space shuttle Challenger.

I am proud to say, even after all these years, that I have never crushed a man’s spirit quite as thoroughly as I crushed ‘El Destructo’ on that day.

Some people cried. Some laughed insanely. One lost it and sprayed Fosters all over my damn room.

El Destructo just kept repeating, in stunned shock, over and over to himself, “I told him a white challenger, and he gave me a white challenger. Why didn’t I say Dodge? Why oh why didn’t I say Dodge? I said white challenger, and he gave me a white challenger…”

It took a LOT of beer to get them through that crisis, but in the end, well…

I blew that one up too.

I still, to this day, cannot think of gaming in 29 Palms without remembering that proud moment, the unveiling of the white challenger. It was my Mona Lisa, my prime creation, my grand belief in mindscrewing the gamer brought to full, vibrant, luxurious life.

It was my triumph. 

There shall never be a finer gaming moment for me, and when I am old and grey, rocking on a porch at the nursing home looking back at all of the insanity that has been my life, I know that this, this one shining moment, will be one of the ones I treasure the most.