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| I spent the next three years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk, and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can't get the spices right! |
or "I was down range when I went to wake the CO only to see that a bunch of terrorists had got the jump on him. I fought my way out. I deserve a bronze star. Instead, all I got was a stupid Army Achievement Medal!"
 |
| Totally Ripped Off |
to
"So one time, we were at the inn drinking and our dwarf fighter somehow critically failed his constitution check and got incredible drunk. It was then, the assassin's guild tried to take the party out while our fighter couldn't see straight!"
 |
| I typed in drunk dwarf and got this |
or "By the time we made it to the dragon's lair, we couldn't save the princess in time. But we did slaughter the Ancient Red Dragon. We should have gotten so much gold but instead, the GM punished us for ruining his plans or whatever so all we got instead was a room filled with stuffed animals!"
 |
| The new Monster Manual is full of cruel jokes |
Try for yourself. Next time you are reminiscing about old games with your friends, try to think of their veteran story equivalent. Honestly, I'm baffled at myself that it took me this long to make the connection. It wasn't until I began playing with gamers who were soldiers did I even pick it up.
Since I spoke in great length about my humble beginnings in college and my experience with the UMF TGC, perhaps I shall talk about the gaming group I had at my first duty station -- playing with a bunch of veteran gamers. There is a stage that happened between UMF TGC days and my Army days. I call it my Post-Collegiate Portland, ME days. It was kind of like the gamer's answer to Girls except without the sex. Or the sense of entitlement. Actually, it was really nothing like Girls.
 |
| Seriously, replace three of these girls with guys and it is just like Girls. |
I did also mention briefly how I ran D&D games when I was in Advanced Individualized Training (AIT) in the army. I met some real kindred spirits there -- who I lost contact with sadly. When I left Arizona for my first duty station in Germany, I had a hard time finding a gaming group. While I really enjoyed Germany, I did feel a little lonely for the first part of my first year. Then I made some non-gamer friends and wasn't as lonely.
I still wanted to do some tabletop but I had no idea where to start. There were three gaming stores in Mannheim and while at one of them the owner spoke English really well, there would be no way I could really play at the store with German speakers and keep up. In hindsight, it would have probably been an interesting way to improve my German but also, on the other hand, it probably would be frustrating for the other players. I do have a German d6, though!
 |
| Pictured: a city with three gaming stores *_* |
That all changed when a new NCO got assigned to my unit who moved across the hall from me in the barracks. We became friends because we were looking at anime at the PX and immediately bonded. Then I found out he was a gamer and we both tried to seek out other gamers to get a group going. We found a lot of video gamers in our unit but no one who played tabletop. We did sometimes stupid things like spend a long time at the gaming stores downtown to see if we could pick out English speakers that we could recruit. That didn't work so much, although we did find CCGers and we played a few games of Legend of the 5 Rings with them. But sadly, we could not find tabletop roleplayers who spoke English well enough at least. Then finally, he found out from someone, at the USO on Friday nights gathered a group of roleplayers who played a variety of settings. At last, our quest complete.
 |
| Shine Get! Wait wrong game |
The gamers who frequented the USO on Friday night weren't necessarily my style of gamers. They were more break down the door types while I tend to like a little more story. However, it kept me occupied and I got a circle of friends going. Besides, I needed my D&D fix and they delivered.
Despite them not being my style of gamers, I did find them to be a very creative bunch. In fact, many of the GMs used their expertise in the military and apply it to the game. For an example, we had one MP among us who used his time as a prison guard to design this complex and absolutely amazing prison break-out scene (Bam-Bam the Halfling Barbarian played a role in this game).
But it was here I really began to notice how Veteran Gamers and Gamer Veterans talk alike. Sometimes, one of our players would be talking about something he did that was badass and we would get confused on if he was talking about a game or that time he deployed to Iraq (the 2nd time). Sometimes a gamer story would segue into a war story or vise versa. The storyteller would use the same tone.
"So I was deployed in the sandbox..." versus "It all started at the inn..."
I'm not quite sure why this happens. Maybe it is because roleplaying has martial elements like war stories do. Maybe it is because both types of stories require you to tell it in an grandiose way like you are Achilles or whatnot. Maybe it simply is because storytelling has and will continue to be one of the main ways we as humans bond. Maybe it is a little of each.
Regardless, playing D&D with military personnel remained an interesting experience, especially where being a roleplayer blurred with being a soldier/sailor/marine/airman/etc.
I will end this entry with an e-mail I got a while back:
How to Tell if Your GM Has Military Experience
The orc hordes you meet have sergeants and medics.
The Winged Horse won't fly until you do a full safety inspection.
The dungeons are patrolled by MP's that keep asking 'Who started this
fight?'
If you don't state that your character is cleaning and caring for his
weapons and armor after each combat, they rust to powder in about a day.
You learn to retreat upon seeing any monster with a Marine Corps tattoo.
The curses attached to some treasures include KP Duty and Full Kit
Inspection.
You can't stop for a night without submitting a complete watchbill for the
character's camp.
New players joining after the adventure starts show up with Transfer
Orders.
The kingdom has a number of trolls, minotaurs and giants caged in silos on
the border. The threat of MAD (Monster Assured Destruction) seems to keep
the peace.
No matter what sort of area you adventure in, every single town, keep,
village, city or fishing camp you enter has a bar, a brothel, 3 pawnshops
and a barbershop.
The Healing Cleric always makes you wait for two hours before trying to
send you away with two toadstools and lots of fluids.
After the goblins pass by, all the dungeons have a fresh coat of paint.
Every door in the dungeon seems to have an incomprehensible number system
(12-114-2-3-S) that works fine for the monsters and tunnel oracles ("Go
down 4levels from here, that'd be 12, then forward 18 veins to 137, then
the second door on the right, that'd be 3, aft to the little......")
A mysterious figure, the Gunny, appears every time you make a mistake.
Don't make mistakes. Just don't.
Saying you'll 'tie him up' starts a 20 minute discussion of knots, with 4
skill rolls.
Guard Dogs are not just hit points that bark...they're chain saws with fur.
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