An Art House Treatment of the upcoming Expressionist Film.
by Kirin Robinson
It was a simple Friday, with the saturated effluvium breezing up the courtyard that only a hotel filled with eager gaming conventioneers could bring. I was looking forward to a few gossamer hours spent with a personal hero of mine, one who had so intrepidly proselytized the virtues of what he referred to as "the one true game" for so long, and through the whimsical permutations of fate and perhaps a touch of slavish devotion on my part, I was perhaps fortunate enough to be able to take part in.
After a short and wistful breakfast, I assembled with the man and several compatriots in an ambassadorial quarter to get things prepared. Contrary to his reputation, Diaglo was a mild-mannered and humble personage, bearded and twinkly - both his eyes with a mischievous glint as well as what might have been a touch of garish jewelry - something of a "homunculus", perhaps, one of those little men in bottles in the laboratory of Dr. Praetorious.
"I have here a few simple pre-generateds", he smiled warmly, laying out index cards on the table, "but perhaps it would be just as easy if you wanted to roll three-dee-six," again with the smile, "in order."
I could hardly contain the glee in my heart. Surely such a man so dedicated and firmly rooted in a time of joy that ended near three decades ago - the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished, if you will - would find it troublesome to adapt himself to the massive complexities that reign in the gaming milieu of today. Not at all: there is no quest for transcendence here, but a simple exploration, if you will, of a divine temple devoted to that most elemental of evils.
The game progressed with all due circumstance and death, as such games are wont, and finally the morning lingered into the afternoon; whereupon my comrades and I, mere affectations to Diaglo's whim, were summarily destroyed by the cruelties of a five-foot-wide hallway trap. I was overcome with the aesthetics of the serendipitous event, a postmodern milieu of the futility but importance of man's dedication to his ideals.
We wrapped things up and found our way heading to the dealer's exhibition, accompanied by an inconspicuous and eager british gentleman wearing the most atrocious pair of bleached capris - though not scruffy-looking in the slightest, as I had thought he might be. Then followed a light lunch in the food court with others, only to return to the Embassy in nervous anticipation of a good board game of Talisman. It was at about this point that I began to notice how colorful my boyhood hero could become, occasionally besotted with emotion as to become quite profane - literally turning the air around us blue. It was quite fascinating.
The Talisman challenge was an exciting opportunity to see the gentleman in action - this time perhaps not so in control of events. Another game that hearkened back to more glorious, human days of yesteryear - a time of heroism unburdened by attacks of opportunity and lack of numerical designations for demons. The game was set up. Diaglo played the elf. He hated it.
What is the function of gaming? This question I wished to wax so philosophically about, with the man who had seemingly had the answers to this very postulation for I don't know how many years, was something I was far too nerve-stricken to express directly; and therefore I was forced to divinate an answer from such nonverbal cues as I could examine. Was there anything truly to say about what constituted a good game, was his hat of d02 so empirically deserved? I was desperately hoping that time would indeed tell.
Perhaps it did, in that languorous, ebullient Autumn morning and afternoon in the company of the man, but it was hard to say: a nebulous answer, one that was pursued in the depths of human inter-personality, of moving tokens along little squares, and testing the limits of a good ten-foot pole. Whether played thirty years ago, or yesterday afternoon, perhaps the answers lie not in the form and function of the game, but in the unostentatious ramifications and reputation of whom one is gaming with.
It didn't. That
.
ing.
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Linear Mode
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