I remember a time when public opinion questioned the playing of the game Dungeons and Dragons. It was and is a role playing game that millions of kids engaged and the fear was that it may be twisting their sense of reality. I’ve never been a role play gamer myself, my forte is cribbage accompanied by some good conversation and refreshment. In fact I’m not a sports gamer either, if I can’t play I’m certainly not going to armchair it. But I’m not now, nor have I ever been your add 2 cups of water a teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil kind of guy.
I was however introduced to an interesting role playing game when I was 19, It was a relationship role playing game that ended in marriage. I wasn’t very good at it, simply because I didn’t have a grip on the rules of that particular edition of the game. In fact the game ended 24 years later rather poorly. If you play this kind of game and find yourself losing over and over it makes sense to stop playing and get on with something more rewarding. You know so there’s no loss of life. If you suck at it, why spoil the game for those that would like to keep playing.
[quote float=”left”]I was however introduced to an interesting role playing game when I was 19, It was a relationship role playing game that ended in marriage. [/quote]When I first sat down to play this game, I was assigned the role of dungeon husband and told that there was no unique powers. Just play it like I’m a guy and if I was astute enough I could attain patriarchal powers that would extend out and influence other players. To start the game I had to run around the board with diminished powers because I had no golden diploma to unlock the vaults to credit. But if I could get around the board fast enough I could accumulate credits. I could then assign some toward the benefit of other players to garner future patriarchal powers and some towards a golden diploma.
Seemed pretty straight forward, except that the other players kept getting into jeopardy circumstances and forfeiting the credits that I was extending. So I wasn’t really accumulating any patriarchal powers of influence and I had to keep using any credits I had saved to get the golden diploma powers. But, ever forward I played. A couple of times I lost my turn and was unable to gain any credits, I was constantly threatened with being ejected from the game if I couldn’t provide more credits to the other players.
There’s definitely some really strange twists to the whole aspect of gaining power and credits, that seemed to make sense but didn’t. Like when you move around the board there are aspects that help make it easier to move quicker and gain more credits. The weird one is seximacy, it’s a combination of interplay where you exchange intimacy and sex. The idea is it gives you well-being powers that are like confidence, and esteem powers, to make it easier. You do this with the gamer that you give credits to too acquire patriarchal powers. But if you’re not careful during seximacy you can actually create another player that requires even more credits. If this happens before you accumulate enough patriarchal powers then you forfeit all your credits to your partner each time they’re acquired. After a while I was just giving all my credits to my partner.
The seximacy thing was weird because if my partner didn’t like the amount of credits I was making I wouldn’t get any well-being powers which actually made it harder to earn credits. Well during one turn my partner had been planning to create another player and did. Shortly after the new player was created, there was no more seximacy, which lasted for two years. I found also that my partner kept referring to my patriarchal powers and how the influence was affecting her ability to play and gain credits of and on her own. Except I wasn’t using that power cause I hadn’t accumulated any. Each time I tried to use it to help gain credits or prevent losing credits it never worked.
Like in one turn my partner wanted to relocate on the board but we didn’t have enough credits to achieve the move. I tried to use my patriarchal powers to influence her to wait, didn’t work I didn’t have any. We lost all the credits during that turn and other people were giving us intermittent credits just to keep us in the game. Of course, all those credits have to be paid back as you go around the board. If you don’t do it quick enough, sometimes you lose other powers to earn credits.
I never really got the whole aspect of the patriarchal power thing. Initially I could see how during some moves there is an obvious conflict that can arise, so I figured the patriarchal power thing might be good to mediate the outcome towards the best effect during that move. But it never actually worked that way. It was more like patriarchal powers were what my partner used as a device to gain more credits and control how I moved, like it was some kind of foul I was committing. Like a red flag. So it was really something that helped my partner acquire more credits that I didn’t have access to.
[quote]The one aspect of the game that really sucks is you can’t change identities if you are a dungeon husband. Which of course nobody told me when we started this fucking game. [/quote] I figured that if I sucked at earning credits I could switch with my partner, earn some of the credits, control the use of the credits and take care of the new players. I figured that if I did that I could save enough to gain a golden diploma by really focusing on the best use of the credits. My partner said there was no switching. So I pretty much was unable to gain a golden diploma and get access to the credit vault.
Given those circumstances it’s not hard to figure out the game is really rigged and there’s just no way. I tried one of those power gamble moves where you go off the board and you create special items to sell to the other players for credits. It started out pretty good and I quickly started acquiring more credits, until my partner started influencing other players not to let me play this way. I could never really understand, because all the credits were going straight to my partner. My partner figured that I might be earning extra credits and not handing them over.
It’s one of those game scenarios where the partner tries to control the outcome and control all the credits so you can’t alter the game. But when the game score is negatively affected you have to eat the shit for it, because you have no real patriarchal power. The whole thing was a useless attempt to play a game that became so contorted with control and power that even trying to fix it was useless. Of course as dungeon husband it’s all you’re fault because you are the one out there trying to get the credits to gain additional powers so the partner players have an easier time with the game. What a waste of time and effort.
Once I caught on to the real play and how this would never pan out I figured the best choice was to withdraw from the game. Hey what’s the point? Gee it only took me 24 years to figure out that I had a partner that was really playing against me the whole time. I packaged the thing up and decided the best choice was to return it, find something better to play. I walked into the store and told the guy I wanted to return it, wasn’t what I had in mind as a progressive game. The outcome was too predictable and the rules were not properly outlined. I leaned forward and whispered to him, you know who ever developed this game should be shot in the fucking head. He smiled as he processed the return and said, that’s funny we often hear those exact remarks from gamers, right up till we finish processing the return. His face and expression went stone cold he looked me straight in the eye and said, I have processed your order here sir the total is $600 dollars a month.
Wow I thought, at least it’s not a total loss, until he asked if I would be paying by credit card or cash.
