Kubros Worf

I built the door prize Paul Totman gave me on Brain Freeze night! A fearsome warrior indeed, destined for my desk at work. 

Casualties of Perception

Many years ago, either Paul or Vern or Jeff told me I should go see Brian De Palma's Casualties of War.

"You have to see this," one of them said, "The guy Michael J. Fox plays is just like you."

Well, I finally got around to seeing the movie; just finished, in fact. And while I don't believe I could possibly display the courage Fox's character shows in the film, I'm nonetheless deeply moved by the comparison. I wish I really were that guy.

All that aside, it's a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, but ultimately moral film. I needed it this week.

Super 8 D&D

I ran across this video on Boing Boing tonight. Boing Boing contributor Ethan Gilsdorf used a Super 8 movie camera to shoot a couple of minutes of he and his friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. "1981!" I thought. "Wow, that's old school. That's got to be at least five or six years before I started playing D&D..."

Then I did the math. When we came to Alberta in 1979, I was finishing grade 4, starting grade 5. In 1980, I would have been in grade 6. In 1981, I would have been in grade 7...and that's about when I started playing D&D with Vern, Paul, Jeff and Ray. My psyche just took 1d4 worth of stun damage. 

Rocket Cycle

I believe this is the only photo ever taken of the three-speed bicycle I owned for several years in the early-to-mid 80s. This bicycle is infamous for two moments seared into my memory.

One summer day, I met with my friends Paul, Jeff and Vern to cycle around my Leduc neighbourhood. Racing through back alleys was a common enough pastime in those days, careening around blind corners without helmets or padding of any kind. Many knees were skinned, many shins filled with tiny bits of gravel, many skulls bruised. On this particular occasion, Paul, Vern and I wound up far ahead of Jeff and we loitered at the end of an alley waiting for him to catch up.When Jeff came ripping around the corner, I shoved my bicycle forward a couple of feet, directly into his path. Jeff doesn't believe me to this day when I make this claim, but I really meant to pull back in time so he wouldn't hit my bike.

Sadly, my reactions weren't fast enough. Jeff's front wheel slammed into my front wheel. And then the world slowed down. My bicycle spun 90 degrees to the left with me still straddling the seat, giving me a perfect view of Jeff's shocked features as he careened over his handlebars. My jaw dropped as I read the betrayal creeping its way across Jeff's face; he screamed "Whyyyyyyy?" as he flew through the air. Jeff corkscrewed in midair almost gracefully, but landed flat on his back on the hard-packed dirt of the alley. A cloud of dust was kicked up by the tremendous impact, and Jeff's body left an impression in the dirt road, just like a Looney Tunes character.

After we finished laughing, we hastened to make sure Jeff was okay. Fortunately Jeff's body has evolved to absorb tremendous amounts of punishment over the years; his pride was more wounded than anything.

I got my just desserts a couple of years later, showing off for my brother Sean and our next door neighbour Keith, who were outside on the front lawns of our houses. I pedalled to top speed, intending to slam on the rear brakes in the driveway and skid to a stop. But when I angled into the driveway I squeezed the front brake rather than the rear and was flung over the handlebars as the front wheel locked up. I'd begun to scream "Rocketman!" as I approached the driveway; it turned into "RocketmAAAHHHHHHH" as I slammed into the earth, the left half of my body hitting soft grass, the right half hard sidewalk.

The impact left me with a nice set of bruises and it destroyed the bike. The front wheel was bent into a V, the brake lines ripped off the handlebars, the frame twisted. Considering the damage to the bike, I counted my lucky stars that I wound up just a little sore.

I miss that bike.

The Dice of Doom

Last night, during a frenzied session of Dungeons & Dragons, Jeff was locked in battle with a hyena. His character, an elf ranger, has sufficient skill to fight with a sword in each hand; thus, rather than rolling one 20-sided die to attack, Jeff rolls two.

Rolling a twenty on the die means your character has scored a "critical hit" on his or her opponent, dealing your weapon's maximum possible damage. Rolling a twenty is rare enough - a five percent chance on any given roll of the die - but as seen above, Jeff managed to roll double twenties, dealing out 57 points of damage in one attack and essentially carving the hyena into gory giblets.

As we all ooohed and aaahed in amazement, the question of odds came up - how likely was such a roll? I missed much of Mike's explanation in all the clamor, but it boiled down to something like this:

"It's not really that unlikely...should probably happen once every, oh, [some number of] sessions or so...um, so yeah, probably once every ten years."

It was certainly the most improbably roll I've seen since one memorable event in high school. Vern Ryan was serving as DM while Jeff, Paul and I were on the run from assassins or some similar doom. Things looked pretty bad - our party had messed up pretty profoundly, and our deaths were pretty much inevitable. We were out of options, so in desperation I called upon my character's deity.

"Fine," Vern said, rolling his eyes. "If you roll a one on percentile dice, the goddess will hear your plea and save you."

A one percent chance of salvation! Palms sweating, I rolled - and the dice came up 01. Saved! Vern was appalled, but the rest of us laughed our heads off. Geek drama!