--Your subscription copy of Dragon shows up in the mail one month, and you realize it's the hundredth consecutive issue you've bought. (In my case, it was 187).
--You own consecutive issues farther back than that.
--You've read every issue from 55 on up.
--You're still looking for the rest.
--You've almost hit this point with Polyhedron.
--You remember when White Dwarf was an AD&D magazine.
--You bought a copy of the French-language edition of Dragon, even though you can't read French, because it had Second Edition rules for the Anti-Paladin class, and even though you don't like the class, you know that having that issue will really annoy the Anti-Paladin fans in your gaming club.
And for a completely non-magazine one....
Game dealers at Gencon recognize you and know your name, even though it's your first time at Gencon.
-- Michael Bauser "It's participant observation. Honest!"
From: Vermithrax
* You collect things shaped liked dice or with dice in them (drink stirrers, pens with dice-in-water in the end, brass dice sets, dice bookends...)
* You still have a set of dice-shaped cushions made as a gesture of understanding by your mom
* When you finally settle down with a loved one and build a home, you insist on designing a Gaming Room into the house
* And getting the stamped concrete patio/pergola/driveway done in hexagons
* You own "Intoduction to Traveller"
* Or the Traveller Supplement "Forms and Charts"
* You know which number Supplement that last one was
* You know which Sci-Fi novel series was the inspiration for Traveller's Imperium
* You don't just have maps of places that don't exist - you've had at least one of them made into a Globe
* You collect building plans (viewed from above) to use as Site Maps for games
* You have examples of weapons from your games in the house - "so the players can't argue about how heavy/long/clumsy/etc they are..."
* (For the [mostly] male gamers) You meet couples through your spouse/partner and form only a casual acquaintance with the half of the pair of the same gender as yourself - until one day, after months/years of having known them, one of you drops some gaming reference like "looks like a kobold" or "don't mind me - I've got a 12-point hide" (the more obscure the better) - and suddenly you're best of mates, and they seem to have value as a person now
* While you have a number of friends, only Gamers reach the status of Mates
* You buy CDs of specific music (or sounds) just to use as background atmosphere for gaming
* You've ever found yourself associating with people who you'd otherwise avoid in public - because they were Gamers
* You have a place where the paraphernalia of your gaming youth is displayed for the curious as a sort of shrine to "the good old days"
* You have three or more dice-boxes (one in use, the others retired, holding seldom-used (or antique, faithful) dice, or doing duty on the Gaming Shrine [above])
* You can remember where at least three Gaming shops USED to be located in your town/city, before they moved, were demolished or disappeared
* You whoop with joy on rolling a 20 for hit location with a Gauss Rifle on your first hit on an opponent
* You know which game that must be in
* You know the TWO meanings of the term "AC20"
* You keep custom clipboards (or similar contrivances) in the house for your gaming pals to keep their character sheets on when they come over
* Your memories of the best times your character(s) had when living their game-lives are sweeter and more worth retelling than the best times you had in your actual youth (partially because you were too busy gaming - and writing rules expansions you hardly used - to get out and have a life)
* You've ever written to a game designer personally
* They replied!
* You've phoned a game designer to chat about a game of theirs and where it's going
* It's a game they haven't even released yet
* From your computer, where you are now, you can look around and see most or all of your gaming gear
* You own a pin-on badge that says "Incoming Fire Has The Right Of Way"
* You still have the original three-booklet set of Traveller
* AND the box it came in
* OR the booklet-form of D&D (before the hardbound version hit the streets)
* You feel that Gaming has played a part in your developing a personal philosophy
* Your life-philosophy manifests as your taking Gaming seriously while taking most of the rest of life light-heartedly - the complete opposite to the way most of society seems to work
* Your spouse/partner agrees with the rest of society and wishes you would take life as seriously as you do Gaming
* You have a feeling that God is a big Gamemaster, we're all just Characters, and Life, viewed from the outside, is a Game after all
From: "James H. Jenkins"
- You've submitted to this list.
- And got your submission accepted!
- You get $30.00 in a surprise windfall, and don't drink it, but instead spend it on that supplement that you noted was at the local store.
- If you purposely stashed the supplement behind/near/out of its normal place so that nobody else buys it out from under you.
- You've moved the above back to your special hiding spot after store personnel reshelve it.
- You've thought about designing a game, and actually wrote more than 20 or so pages.
- and self-published it!
- All of oyur friends say, "You should start a game company."
- You do, and they end up working for you, until they leave to start their own.
- You find yourself teaching new players the ropes so often, you now have a down-pat speech, readily translatable to any game system for newcomers.
- You have no non-gamer friends, or you limit contact with such people.
- When describing a game scenario with your pals, you get real excited, waving your arms, drawing a crowd. Phrases like, "Man, we %^&*$%^ wasted 'em! Took out the tank with an RPG, then L-T was rocking out on the '60..." everything goes fine, as the crowd draws near, wanting to hear more, until you say, "Then I took a round, BLAM! 45 H.P." And the crowd leaves, saying, "Oh, it was ONLY A GAME."
- You get mad, BECAUSE YOU WERE THERE, DAMMIT!
- You don't think anything is wrong with the previous statement.
- You use issues of Guns & Ammo for the tech specs on your latest weapon supplement you're adding to your game.
- You know the BattleTech Hit location charts from memory, so that you don't need to use 'em anymore.
- In fact, you know 'em so well, THE GROUP doesn't use 'em any more, THEY USE YOU.
- When someone asks you, "Level Three fall, what's the piloting skill mod?", you know what they mean.
- You, reading this, know what it means.
- You not only know what it means, but can yell out what page it is on.
- And you're correct!
- And you get mad when somebody checks up on you, to see if it was the right page!
- When you search the internet nightly for cool gaming software for your PC.
- and you found this list by doing that! (Like I did.)
- and you add to this list, to keep the spirit of gaming alive! (Like I did!)
- You've learned more about space, and science fiction from playing traveller, rather than watching COSMOS by Carl Sagan, like everybody else.
- You're in the military, and the best tactics you've got came from your pre-military gaming days (or they improve daily, in continuing nightly sessions at the barracks/ship/base/etc.)
- You know more military tactics and strategy than most officers at your military post.
- ...Than ALL of the officers at your local military post.
- ...COMBINED!
- You know more than three definitions of the acronym RPG.
- You were around when SPI was.
- You KNOW what SPI was.
- You still have some of their games around.
- You know what AH stands for, and have copies of any of the following: U-BOAT, MIDWAY, GETTYSBURG.
- ... and they're less than 10 years older than you are.
- You were around when the only games out were CHAINMAIL, METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA, GAMMA WORLD 1st ed., and TRAVELLER.
- and you bought 'em, cause they were "What the cool grown-up college kids were playing."
- And you still have 'em.
- IN THE ORIGINAL BOXES!
- You remained loyal thorough the right-wing religious anti-gaming crusade.
- You know what to say (delicately, without sloppy missionary fervor) when someone says, "Oh, you don't play that "Dungeoens & Dragons thing, DO YOU?!?!?!?!
- You know the real tragic truth about Dallas Egbert.
- ...and you learned it by reading the book on it, "The Dungeon Master." (Required reading, IMHO, for all DM's, and players, BTW.)
- You'd rather game that visit your boy/girlfriend.
- ...That's how you met them.
- And then got married. (It didn't work for me. Your mileage may differ.)
- And got divorced, OVER GAMES! (Like me. She was fantasy, I was Sci Fi/Military.)
- You see a car crash, or accident on T.V., and scream, "Oooh, CRIT!"
- You've said, "Roll initiative" more times than you've sung your countries' national anthem.
- You tried gaming outside, for that "Natural, Woodland Atmosphere." Ahhh.
- Until you found out the hard way about the ^&#%^&* WIND, when it blew all of your maps/character sheets away.
- ...and you felt that they were so irreplaceable, you chased after them, tripped on a root, fell, and split open your knee.
- ... while your friends were yelling stuff like, "Cleric, bind wounds! Cure Light! Etc."
- and you thought it was so funny you peed all over yourself laughing.
- You're STILL reading this list!
- You're REALLY thinking of adding to this list, now.
- You've actually played a halfling, but kept telling everybody you were a "Hobbit."
- You read the issue of Phil & Dixie, about, "Hey, the phone is circular-metal-banding!"
- and you thought it was funny.
- And you know what I'm writing about.
- and you're remembering it now, and how funny it was.
- You realize that this list is a common bond, among all gamers, of all races, in all countries, and that the Internet is just amazing, and that now, games will only get even better.
- And you're looking forward to that. (poignant, emotional sniff.)
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 17:41:35 -0500 (CDT) From: Mellissa Wright To: vesanto@snakemail.hut.fi Subject: You might be a gamer if . . .
You might be a gamer if . . .
. . . You think that that the D&D progression is Basic, Expert, Advanced.
Milk & Cookies, ---> Irish a.k.a. Mellissa Wright
From waylyn@mindspring.com Fri Jul 11 09:27:46 1997 Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 00:15:54 -0700 From: Williams To: vesanto@cc.hut.fi Subject: you might be a gamer if...
...after your GM sort of explains what thet monster looks like you know your exact roll needed to hit and how much damage it can take
...you know how to roll the dice to get any number you want
...you don't need any gaming books because you have every detail memorized
...but you always keep two copies handy just in case
...you keep up with your character's kingdom's politics more carefully than your own country's
...you scream in pain whenever your character takes damage
...you know all the exact somatic and verbal components of you wizard's spells
...you keep a copy of your character in your wallet
...your GM thinks you live in his house
...your GM thinks your married to him
...your characer has killed more than one Tarrasque
...you get your friends and your character's friends mixed up
...after a fistfight you search whoever you knocked out
...you've ever played your defiler in the Tank Girl R.P.G.
...you've ever played the Tank Girl R.P.G.
...you were highly offended by that last comment
...you've played The Wizard's Challenge more than once
...you created a random die generator in DOS using BASIC commands
...any of your characters has ever broken a staff of power or a staff of the magi for a retributive strike
...and lived
...you changed your name so that your initials read R.P.G.
...you ever started a character as evil
...you missed the O.J. Simpson trial because you were on this really long adventure
...one of your wizards has ever roasted another person's characer with a fireball, then commented, "Hey, he was a dwarf. He didn't need that extra constitution point anyway
...you've ever had a character named Rath or Delsenora
...you've ever played as the player and the GM because noone was around to play with
...you own the Japaneese version of any of the Final Fantasy series
...you read the entire Encyclopedia Magica set
...you know what a claymore is and what it looks like
...your characer has created more spells than TSR
...you have the BATTLESYSTEM rules memorized
...you have the BATTLESYSTEM rules
...you have the SPELLJAMMER rules memorized
...you have the SPELLJAMMER rules
...you have the Players Option rules memorized
...you have had more than one paladin character
...you wonder why I didn't just write: you have the Players Options rules
...you understand the Rift alignment rules and actually use them
complements of Chas Williams
From: Trevor Salyzyn
You might be a gamer if...
...you've named EVERY one of your dice.
...you remember all their names.
...you realized that there ain't that many names in the world.
...when people talk about AC Adaptors, you misinterpret the meaning.
...It need to budget your money in gaming sessions.
...The constant squinting and reading during gaming sessions has made you permanantely nearsighted.
From: gdscholtes@bsuvc.bsu.edu
You might be a gamer if...
You've ever spent more time in a single gaming session than a Jerry Lewis Marathon.
You do this regularly.
You've ever taught your children to read using your game books.
Your collection of gaming books are worth more to you than your car.
Your House
Your Firstborn child
Your learned about sex during your gaming sessions.
You see every monster or person in every movie you see and think of it in game terms.
You've screamed at the TV "Hey, He can't do that, he didn't have the right material components.
You've ever had your character create bateries for the Laser pistol in the Robe of Useless Items
