“I would not expect to understand your world immediately or readily,” Zanshe said. “Not even your own culture within it. But I’m afraid I am curious.”
“I keep asking questions. I don’t have a problem with trying to answer them. It just might not make much sense sometimes. It isn’t just that the cultures are different. Physics and biology are different too.”
“Mm, yes, Serru mentioned that this world reminds you of games in your world? And that this has something to do with how the Zombie King sees people? Would you mind expining?”
“You mentioned that there’s a history to these games,” Aryennos said. “How far back does it go?”
“Ultimately,” I said, “it’s just an adult version of children pretending to be different people and interacting with each other that way. No script like theatre, just being those characters for a while. About, um, I think about fifty years ago, someone smart and creative came up with a way that a group of people, of any age, can sit around a table and do a kind of interactive storytelling. One person is the storyteller, they do a lot of work in advance to create a setting and a situation that the others will have to find a solution to.”
“That sounds like fun,” Zanshe said.
“It is. To add a bit of... randomness, and realism to it, that person created the first version of a set of rules for what you can do. He created a world that’s different in many ways from the real world, in some ways more like here but not really that much, based heavily on a cssic work of fiction that was itself based on the folklore of a historical culture, and made the rules based on that. He divided characters into csses, which determine what skills they have, and races, which are like species here, and everything came down to numbers. A character would have a number to describe their strength, or intelligence, or charisma, and then for some kinds of challenges, you’d have to roll dice using that number to see if you succeeded or failed at something. There have been updated versions of the rules, which some people think are improvements but not everyone does. There have been other game systems invented that take the same basic premise but do it in different ways, sometimes very different, but once that original system was released onto the world, the whole concept became really popur with some people.” I wasn’t getting into the stigma, thankfully a thing of the past, that associated tabletop gaming with socially-dysfunctional nerdy males. I definitely was not going anywhere near the Satanism hysteria of the 80s. “Unfortunately, since the cssic system involves multiple books, and I haven’t had time to learn any of the more recent ones that are a lot lighter on rules, I can’t exactly reproduce it for you.”
“Once I can pay undivided attention,” Zanshe said, “I’d like to hear more about that. Not the specific rules, but what kind of csses and skills? What races? And what sorts of situations?”
“Sure, if you want.”
Aryennos pulled out a notebook, not the one he normally used as a journal. “I’m writing this down.”
“All right.”
Once we were out on the road, Terenei paused the ornithians, and Zanshe moved to the back of the wagon; Heket switched to the front to keep Terenei company, although obviously they could both still be part of the conversation. The wagon bed was wide enough for Zanshe to stretch her legs out, although the seat must be a bit lower than really comfortable for her; her pragmatic solution was to pull bnkets out of the camping supplies and fold them into thick pads until she had enough under her to let her sit with her feet more or less ft. It did mean she had less back support, but she dismissed that as irrelevant and leaned forward with her arms resting on her knees. Aryennos was beside me, and Zanshe directly opposite both of us, midway between, with Myu sprawled next to her.
“You were saying, about these games?”
So, while we drove, I told them about fighters and rogues and magic-users and clerics, and about the old-school races of humans and elves and dwarves, and tried to give them examples of adventures and the things that happened, and about NPCs and rolling dice and monster manuals and some people using miniatures on maps and the broad styles of groups that preferred rolepy or problem-solving or strategic combat. I did try to keep it reasonably generalized and simplified. The details of obscure cultures or prestige csses, even if I could remember them when I hadn’t pyed with a group in person for years, were not going to help. I really wished I knew more about some of the modern rules-light systems, they’d probably prefer those.
“It sounds like it involves a considerable amount of pretended violence,” Zanshe mused. “But also a way that a well-matched group of people can share an experience that is emotional and challenging. The events don’t need to be real in order for the emotions to be. Even in a py one is watching or a book one is reading, suspense and uncertainty can make the ultimate victory feel that much more intense, and that moment of triumph feels very good. All the more so if you have a direct hand in reaching that victory. It’s a lot of work for the storyteller but I could easily imagine it being very rewarding, as well. And this is very popur in your world, and the Zombie King pys it?”
“Yes and no and sort of. This is going to sound like I’m going way off topic but I promise it’s relevant.”
“All right.”
“We have these things called computers. It’s basically a box powered by electricity that has some very tiny things inside that flip on or off, and different combinations of on and off have different meanings. It can do, I don’t know, thousands? Millions, probably, or billions, of those combinations very quickly, and that lets it give the illusion that it can think. They’re very good at, say, doing math calcutions, but some people have figured out ways to turn just about everything possible into math calcutions. So now computers are used for just about everything. People use them to send messages, and to keep records, and more other things than I can begin to tell you. And one of those uses is pying games.”
“Pying that sort of game across a distance with something that works like a small personal post office could be fun and convenient, if maybe less immediate.”
“And people have done that and still do. But it got more complicated. A computer has the box in the middle that does the pretend thinking, and it has a device that has one button for each letter of the alphabet so you can give it commands by pressing buttons, and and it has a box with a gss side that has complicated technology inside that I’m sorry, I really don’t understand, but it makes images on the gss from inside. It shows you text from messages, or the records you put into it, but you can also watch a whole py on it. No broadcasting onto a wall, it’s all in the box. And you can connect speakers so you get sound.”
“Interesting. All right.”
“People came up with a way to make games that run on computers. The older ones have very rough art and you can’t do very much, but you don’t need anyone else, you can py entirely by yourself because someone created a story and put it in a nguage the computer can read and then the computer acts as the storyteller. It’s less flexible but, well, you can py any time you want. Modern games have more complicated stories and the art you see on the computer can be very detailed or very creative or both, and you can see the created characters moving around and doing things like you’re watching a recording of real people. They can be extremely immersive. People sometimes spend hundreds of hours coming back to them and pying them. Sometimes the map you can travel around is rge and diverse. Sometimes there are a lot of different challenges. A lot of the time, there is a lot of violence, but sometimes there’s a lot of interesting characters and story to interact with, too.”
“Can you tell us about one you like?”
“Um... if you want, but it is violent. I wouldn’t hurt anyone in real life, but I know it’s just a game and no one’s really being hurt. And some days, when work’s been bad and I’m frustrated, it sort of feels good to just let go and stop caring.”
“I only just met you,” Zanshe said gently, “and I do not think that enjoying a game that includes violence means you are a bad person. I am quite certain that the friends who have been with you this long are not going to think any such thing.”
“No, it’s fascinating,” Terenei said. “Not only because of the moving art. There are ways to do that here but it isn’t easy.”
“It’s not easy there, either,” I said. “Your eyes only analyze what you see at a limited speed. If you can fsh hundreds of images, each just a tiny bit different, fast enough that your eyes stop seeing them as individual images, it looks like motion.”
“Like flip books, and I’ve heard of devices based on them, a whole wheel of images.”
“Same idea. It used to be that a lot of people together would do the art. Now, as I understand it and this is absolutely not my field, you can give a computer several points that you want it to reach and it will fill in the necessary steps itself.”
“Potentially useful and less monotonous but rather impersonal.”
“So is my mecha,” Heket said. “I can dig a garden patch much more quickly but never feel the soil in my hands, but I can do it without my mecha when that’s what I need. Tools are only tools.”
“That’s an excellent point.”
“So,” Zanshe said. “A game that is an interactive story composed of images that are drawn and made to move and involve sound as well, watched on the gss side of a box, and in which you pretend to be someone you are not, yes? Are there a lot of them?”
“Beyond any counting,” I said. “Large businesses pay teams make them, single individuals make them in their spare time, and everything between. Okay, one of my two favourite games isn’t actually one game, it’s a series.”
Expining science fiction, space ships, vaults with mysterious treasure, and running around killing monsters with a vast array of guns went more smoothly than I expected, and they were delighted by the spin-off callbacks to tabletop gaming. They liked, but probably for the most part accepted as normal, the diversity-positive cast. I was trying to expin what a pre-sequel was, with less success, when Zanshe tactfully interrupted me.
“It’s ft a short way ahead, and there’s water. It’s a good pce to pause for lunch.”
“Also tea,” Heket said. “Your voice must need it by now.”
“It would be good,” I admitted.
“Stopping,” Terenei said cheerfully.
“Are there other types of these games?” Zanshe asked.
“Oh, lots. Grace loves one that involves looking after a lot of exotic animals from all over our world and helping people see them and learn about them. My sister likes one that lets you build whole cities, with all of the services and infrastructure you need to keep the economy healthy and the people happy, although sometimes she also likes a type where you start with one vilge and you explore and gather resources and your vilge grows and you do research and you get more settlements. That one does involve a bit of fighting to protect your settlements and maybe, if you want, make more cities join you. She likes one that involves magic and you can pick which... which species. Sometimes I py one where I get to run a hospital, a pce that offers medical care, but all the health conditions are jokes and puns and it’s all just very silly while still being pretty challenging.”
“All of these involve being alone in front of one of these computer boxes and interacting only with it?”
“Most of them. I’ll tell you about open worlds ter. Grace and I used one a lot early in... we had a bad illness that spread fast and everyone was supposed to stay home and only go out to get essentials or if your job was essential or to get fresh air if you stayed away from others. Grace and I used one to pretend that were were outside riding around together on some rather pretty horses and looking at some striking scenery. We eventually got bored because there wasn’t much to do and the wildlife tended to be improbably aggressive, and we haven’t found another one we both like.”
