1. The story of Dwarfy McDwarf

Dwarfy McDwarf was a self-centered dwarf from the Crags in search of adventure. Dwarfy wandered into the Highlands where he bravely dared Narrow and Icy Paths. Dwarfy slayed Harpies and Hippogrifs galore, gaining tremendous Strength in the process. Dwarfy's exploits in the Highlands earned him several Followers, all of whom quickly succumbed to the deadly dragon's breath of the Dragon King.

Dwarfy headed to the Dungeon to test his mettle. Dwarfy found an abundance of gold, weapons, armor, and trinkets in the Dungeon. Nothing in the Dungeon could survive Dwarfy's unmatched Strength. After a brief detour to avoid the Dungeon Torturer, Dwarfy easily beat the Lord of the Dungeon in single combat.

Determined to find a real challenge, Dwarfy marched undaunted to the lair of the Dragon King, pausing only long enough to engage the services of a Tavern Maid. In the end, the Dragon King presented little challenge for Dwarfy, and Dwarfy assumed the Crown of Command and lived happily ever after. The End.

2. The story of the Necromancer

The evil Necromancer left the Graveyard and soon found a powerful Skull Wand. He sought out the Village Mystic in search of more power. The Mystic unexpectedly turned the evil Necromancer good, forcing the Necromancer to relinquish control of the Skull Wand.

The good Necromancer wandered the region in search of a method to restore his evilness. The Necromancer was eventually joined by an unlikely Follower, Red Riding Hood, whose "help" would ultimately prove a bane. The Necromancer returned frequently to the Village Mystic, who eventually relented and turned the good Necromancer evil again.

By this time, a very Crafty Assassin had found the abandoned Skull Wand and made off with it. The evil Necromancer vowed to track down and overpower the Assassin to recover his precious Skull Wand, but he knew that he would have to improve his Strength and/or Craft before confronting the Assassin.

The evil Necromancer visited the Dungeon in search of Strength and Craft, but was soon chased out empty-handed by a powerful Battlehulk hunting Red Riding Hood.

The evil Necromancer searched the Outer Region in search of Strength and Craft, but was soon chased out empty-handed by a powerful Fire Giant hunting Red Riding Hood.

The evil Necromancer roamed the Highlands in search of Strength and Craft, and here he collected countless objects, survived two Avalanches, earned the loyalty of several followers, and effortlessly defeated the Eagle King. Despite all these adventures, the evil Necromancer was unable to ever gain any Strength or hone his Craft or find any sign of the Skull Wand ever again. The End.

...

I played my first two games of Talisman this past weekend. You can probably tell which of the two games I enjoyed more.

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My mother received a Striiv Smart Pedometer as a birthday present this year. For those who don't know, a Striiv is essentially a gigapet that leverages all the tricks of an annoyingly addictive Facebook game in order to motivate people into moving around more. It's a video game that you play by walking around.

For months, Mom has been pacing around the house, walking up and down the stairs, and trotting out to the mailbox and back. This earns "energy" that she can use to run the buildings her little Farmville knock-off. All that exercising and she still won't go with me when I go for my daily dog walk. I suspect that this is because she can't hold a leash and stare at teh screen of her Striiv at the same time.

I've been playing video games for nearly 40 years from the comfort of my own couch, and I just don't see the fun in walking as a gaming experience. If any little electronic devices are going to fool me into exercising, we'd better be killing aliens or stealing cars. If my eyes are going to be glued to a screen, my butt is going to be glued to a chair.

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Several times a year, I help a comic-shop owning friend of mine open and sort shipments of Magic cards. For those of you who don't know, Magic is the social activity of choice for youths who aren't athletic enough for sports, smart enough for chess, or socially aware enough for girls.

Naturally, most of the people who work in this sweatshop operation are Magic players interested in getting a first look at the new cards. Rare is the migrant employee who, like me, focuses on the job and not the cards. Rarer still is the employee on Social Security benefits. In fact, there's only one.

Pat Todd is the tortoise of the Magic-sorting game. He has two speeds: slow and slower. I suspect that part of his efficiency problem is that he has to squint at all the cards.

That said, I'll take working with Pat Todd over the average Magic player any day. While Pat Todd doesn't move fast enough to work up a sweat, at least he understands the value of hygiene.

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I love game shows, especially the classics. This genre was "reality" television before Jersey had a shore. Obviously, Jeopardy! is my favorite, but I also like Password, Match Game, and Family Feud with Richard Dawson not Ray Combs, Louis Anderson, Richard Karn, or Steve Harvey. (John O'Hurley is okay.) One show I cannot stand is Wheel of Fortune.

Wheel of Fortune comes on immediately before Jeopardy!. Since I don't care to watch Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, or TMZ because I have the un-American attitude that celebrities are people too, this means that I get my share of watching poor Pat Sajak being subjected to a series of idiotic stutterings from contestants who have already over-taxed their brains by thinking of an adjective to describe their family during the brief interview segment. Sajak is a Real American Hero considering the amount of stupidity he has to wade through.

True example of why Wheel sucks: For the first week of May, the show is "Going Green" by moving its production from Los Angeles to Portland. (How trucking tons of energy-sucking equipment hundreds of miles up the Pacific coast encourages environmental conservation is a thought-exercise left for the viewer, apparently.) The first show of the week features three contestants who are, respectively, a recreational fire-eater, a Bigfoot enthusiast, and a girl who enjoys inhaling nail-polish remover fumes every night. During an early puzzle, the Bigfoot enthusiast spun the wheel and landed on a trip, but lost the opportunity when the letter "D" she asked for was not on the board. The paint-thinner sniffer then spun the wheel and landed on the "Jackpot," but lost the opportunity when the letter she excitedly shouted wasn't on the board, either. That letter? "D". This is not what I call entertainment.

Both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune actively test potential contestants to see if they qualify for an appearance. I suspect that Wheel auditions only Jeopardy! losers. It seems that the ability to think is actively discouraged for Wheel contestants.

Wheel has a strictly "once-in-a-lifetime" appearance rule, preventing contestants who are actually good at the show from having a second chance at playing. On the surface, this is a good rule because, believe it or not, watching people spin a wheel once, ask for a "T", then shout a common phrase to win the puzzle is every bit as boring television as watching every contestant ask for the same letter. The side effect of this policy of eliminating the competent players is that you end up with a contestant pool filled with people whose hobbies include swallowing fire, chasing Bigfoot through the woods, and hufffing acetone; exactly the same cross-section of America that loves Wheel of Fortune.

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Three or four times a year, I'm employed to open and sort packs of Magic: the Gatheringâ„¢ cards. Usually, as I stare at the typical variety of Dragon Whelps, Defiant Elves, and Goblin Balloon Brigades, I think to myself, "who would want to play with these cards?" Now I wonder no more!

Introducing the most awesome card ever: basement cat.

I was completely unaware that Wizards of the Coast bought the rights to publish Pet Sematary-themed cards, but it was a great idea: when it comes to Magic, dead isn't just sometimes better! I've always said that the best cat is an undead cat, and now I can play with my very own. Thanks, WotC!

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Move over chocolate and peanut butter, you've got company. I was supposed to be updating the website this weekend, but instead I spent all day playing Dungeons and Dragons the way it was meant to be played: as a pinball machine.

Bally/Midway released this TSRâ„¢ Dungeons & Dragonsâ„¢ cabinet 25 years ago, and I can attest that it is still all awesome. I haven't had this much fun playing pinball since high school. Though to be honest, I haven't played that much pinball since high school.

If you think role-playing games and pinball machines make an unlikely combination, consider the technological odd couple presented by pinball machines and the internet: specific details about this cabinet, its innards, and its marketing materials can be found online at the Internet Pinball Machine Database. Thank you, internet.

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Call me a misogynist if you will: I walked out of a GameStop video game store today because of the three employees working, 2 of them were females. I don't mind equal rights for the fairer sex. If those girls want to work in a shitty customer service job, that's fine by me. But they should stick to the jobs in their domain like cosmetics counters, flight attendance, or hooking. Leave the manly work of selling video games to the men who play them, ladies.

I am aware that the Entertainment Software Association claims that 40 percent of American video gamers are women. But are we really going to believe the trade association for the video game industry? They also say that the average gamer is 34 years old and has been playing video games for 12 years. I'm 34 years old and have been playing video games since I was 7! So that proves that their data is faulty. Besides, compared to the US government's claims that women account for greater than half of all Americans, 40% doesn't look like such a big number, does it?

Girls, you can keep your browser-based Bejeweled and Farmville and any other game that you can play with your 3-inch long press-on nails. And if you must have a PS3 to play your adorable Little Big Planet between trips to the mall, I'll not hold a grudge. Those aren't really games, anyway. Meanwhile, if you can stop talking on the phone long enough to remember to stay out of my GameStop, I'll promise to stay out of someplace you like to go. Like, say, hair salons. Or kitchens. Deal?

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Not too long ago, I stayed awake until practically daybreak running calculations on the statistics of Risk dice rolls. And because I'm such a great person, I'll share what I learned with you: Always roll as many dice as you can.

Rolling 3 attack dice versus 2 defense dice, the most dice that can be rolled in one attack, the defender will win at least one of the attacker's pieces nearly 73% of the time. (The defender will win both rolls almost 37% of the time to the attacker's 27%.)

In fact, the defender will win at least 1 piece at least 42% of the time, no matter how dice are rolled. The defender will win all of the pieces outright at least 32% of the time. That's almost a full 10% over the attacker in both cases.

If the attacker is worried about attacking and losing any pieces, his opponent must be able to defend with only one die. The attacker has at best a 27% chance of total victory if his opponent is defending with two dice, no matter how many dice the attacker employs. (If the attacker rolls 2 or more dice against his opponent's single die, he'll still win less than 58% of the time.)

So I'd recommend putting at least 2 armies on every territory you control, then play a game of slow and steady expansion, relying on defense rolls and card redemption.

Now, don't you feel smarter? I just feel tired.

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While doing some work in front of the television, I watched Match Game 75 on the Game Show Network. A little old lady played for two rounds wherein she gave some of the worst answers ever. Originally, I had planned to just list them here. Instead, I've embedded them in the following game simulation. The contestant got zero correct in the episode. See if you can't do better. (My apologies to Joyce Bulifant. I gave her the answers that the idiot contestant gave to make the game more playable. In this episode, for a change, Joyce gave reasonable answers.)

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Have you ever played the Milton Bradley board game Aggravation? Fundamentally, it's the same "race around a track game" as Parcheesi, Sorry! or Trouble, but without any of the fun associated with those other games. (Granted, Trouble's fun stems entirely from it's addictive Pop-O-Matic Bubble and television jingle. The bubble itself would always bounce the dice without actually turning them over, but chanting "Trouble, Trouble" somehow made it entertaining.) I had once sworn never to play Aggravation again, but I had forgotten why. Well, I played it and I remembered.

Fortunately, the game doesn't quite live up to its name, producing very little actual aggravation. Really, the game fails to summon any emotion at all. After playing it again for the first time in over a decade, my brother and I agreed that it is the least exciting board game ever. The only thing aggravating about it was that it was still in our game closet after all of these years. So I threw it away. Now, thanks to me, there is one less Aggravation in the world.

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