Introduction (otherwise known as Read At Your Own Risk)

FYI, this isn't the most recent post. Scroll down for that.

Hello and welcome to Tabletop Tits. I'll be your hostess for the duration, and if it turns out you have a problem with me you can direct any and all comments to that brick wall over there.

I'm a girl gamer. Always have been. Some of my earliest memories involve an Atari 2600 and programming in basic. Sure, I started out with three line programs that involved PRINT and GOTO, but who didn't?

There are Pac-Man scores in my baby book. Do I really need to justify myself as a geek any further?

I'm really, really fucking tired of hearing "wow, we didn't know a girl could do that" over and over again. Yes, I play D&D. Yes, I own all three next-gen consoles (including two Xbox 360s) and at least six Game Boy systems (including the first generation one that's the size of a VHS cartridge). Yes, I can probably kick your ass six ways to Sunday playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I own memory chip earrings and more gamer t-shirts than I probably should. I read webcomics while wasting valuable work time.

I also have an incredible rack, thank you for noticing.

I want this blog to be a look into my gaming world. I play D&D twice a month with a group of friends all whom I've known over five years; that's in addition to the time I spend console and PC gaming.

Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times. Thank you for visiting Tabletop Tits and have a nice day.

Update

New post coming by the end of the day. :)

Bit of a non-sequitur.

I have never been more proud to consider myself a geek than I am today. www.reddit.com pulled together yesterday in the most amazing way to help my lifelong friends raise enough money (thousands and thousands of dollars) to fund their 3 year old son's bone marrow transplant this coming January. To everyone who donated, thank you for restoring some of my faith in the kindness of strangers. To my friends, everything is going to be all right as long as you keep believing. To all geeks everywhere, keep on doing what you do. Together we can accomplish anything. ♥ ♥ ♥

Memories... in the color of my mind...

Time really gets away from me these days, it's like I blink and another year has passed by. I keep meaning to get back to this blog, and then something happens (and keeps happening...) and I never update. I've still been gaming on and off this whole time, and I have a whole new set of rants for the gaming arsenal. Some are based on new games, and some are based on old games -

ok really now, does anyone else believe that Alone in the Dark came out in 1992?!? as in NINETEEN YEARS AGO?? or that the first Halo game just released its TENTH ANNIVERSARY remake? I didn't used to feel this old, but damn, what the fuck happened? -

Anyway, sorry for that small rant, but seriously. Anyone who's been playing games as long as I have understands what I mean. I've been spending a lot of time revisiting older games and remembering the first (or second, or ninth) time I played them, and it always brings back a flood of memories. Old apartments, old computers lovingly built by hand, old consoles... some people look at scrapbooks the way I look at old games.

Stay tuned, because my latest addiction has been horror-genre games. Oh yes, there will be ranting. And cursing. Much cursing.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

A lot of what I write on here is a dose of humor with bits of truth sprinkled in. I write about my own opinion, sometimes with a healthy dose of sarcasm and four-letter words. I stay away from personal subjects, things that are too emotional for a gaming blog. Things that are too "fourth wall" in my own mind, I suppose. But today I want to talk about something that's been heavily in my thoughts for a few weeks. This is to let a few of you into my head, to see a little more of who I am instead of what I think.

If you scroll back, you'll see an entry I did regarding Guitar Hero and mentioning how it was one of the few games I've played where I had faith in my ability.

"Faith in my ability." That's a strange term, isn't it? You would think that by admitting you have an ability it would automatically mean there was faith to go along with it, right? But - at least in my own mind - that's not the case.

I have been gaming on and off since I was a toddler. I've programmed on an Atari, played Math Blaster (the original, thank you) on an old-school IBM, and owned every variation of the Game Boy. I've saved the princess, almost cried during the end of Final Fantasy III (the Super Nintendo version), and logged hundreds of hours playing games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Don't even get me started on the days I've spent playing World of Warcraft. One would think that after all that playtime and all that experience, I would confidently proclaim to the world that I am a girl gamer, that I can hold my own as one of the Geek Incarnate. Sadly, no.

Even with all I've mentioned above, I have a difficult time with many things. The issue I will write about today - and my most frequently experienced one - is that I primarily play against (or with) male counterparts who have spent far more time and effort in whatever game we're playing, yet I continually hold myself to their standard instead of my own. I create an intangible goal I feel should be reaching in every game, one that is usually far out of reach and too stressful for me to have a good time. For example, when I first started playing Halo 3 a few months ago, it was my very first FPS and my very first Halo game (shut up). I was playing with someone who had played all three Halo games and beaten all three on Legendary (the hardest setting, for those unfamiliar). Within about ten days of playing casually, we had beaten the game on Legendary together. He was amazed that I'd picked up the game as quickly and as adeptly as I had; I was busy beating myself up because I wasn't as skilled as he. In reality I should have been feeling pride, and instead I was frustrated and upset.

It was only recently - after I left a Guitar Hero game in a huff because I wasn't playing as well as I thought I should - when I realized I carry this sentiment in nearly every aspect of my life. It's a huge, towering burden to shoulder; this feeling that I'm never as good as I think I ought to be or as good as others believe I ought to be.

It's a difficult existence, always feeling like I'm behind the 8-ball and running to catch up. When I think of the opportunities I've had or the happy times I've missed because I was too busy fretting over my level of performance, it breaks my heart. How many games could I have enjoyed if it weren't for my self-imposed rule of "make sure you look good in front of everyone else?" How many experiences could I have had if it weren't for the voice in my head saying "you can't do that, you'll look like a fool and everyone will laugh at you?"

I've played games with close, trusted friends and still felt touchy and upset when I'm last on the score roster. I've played with men who have seen me naked (this is my journal and I'll determine what's TMI thank you) and still felt ashamed that I couldn't keep up with them in MarioKart.

Where do I go from here? I don't know. Maybe I begin to communicate to my playing partners that I have a difficult time not being unhealthily competitive. Maybe I take a break from games altogether for a little while and reassess what made me a gamer girl in the first place. I need to find some of the passion and love I once had for games and gaming in general.

Ultimately, I have to take a long look inside myself and find out where this feeling is coming from. Why I am so predetermined to believe I've failed before I even start, and how it came to take over most aspects of my life. Not a fun thing to contemplate, but one that is absolutely necessary.

Once I come out the other end of this journey, I hope to not only have rediscovered the integral Geek part of who I am, but also on how to be a little freer and easier on myself because of who I am.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled gaming bitchfest.

You are victorious!

For those of you not familiar with the image to the right, allow me to introduce you to the first "puzzle/RPG" game released. To explain more fully, a set of developers took two of the most addictive genres known to gamers and combined them; both roleplaying and puzzle elements turn into a game about as addictive as Tetris. If you're familiar with PopCap games, this is the "thinking man's" Bejeweled. If you don't know what Bejeweled is, Google it and play a few rounds. I'll see you next week.

This genre is pretty much the S&M of gaming. You get so frustrated at the game you want to scream because you're doing the same thing over and over and over again, but it's so goddamn much fun that you go back for more every time.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords was released back in 2007. Puzzle Quest: Galactrix followed suit in 2009, and Puzzle Quest 2 was released about two months ago. The concept of each game is the same - walk (or fly a ship) around, go somewhere, and play a puzzle. Sometimes there's a minigame based on the same idea (unlock a door, open a warpgate, mine an asteroid). I have played and beaten all three of these games, and I enjoyed them all immensely. Mostly.

You see, the main thing that drives me batshit insane is the same thing that actually makes the game; the repetition of the puzzles. I know, I know. The game is called Puzzle Quest, therefore I should understand that the game will have fucking puzzles in it. That's fine, I get it. But I have to say that when I enter a room and see three monsters I have to fight, get through it and then go into another room where there's three more monsters to fight - and each "fight" (puzzle) takes between 10-20 minutes... well, let me just say my eyes were bleeding after about an hour and a half. If you've read my previous posts, you have a general idea of what I sound like when I get frustrated (lots of swearing interspersed with vivid imagery of inanimate objects being shoved in places they don't belong). I get frustrated a lot when I play Puzzle Quest.

It should also say something about the brilliance and addictiveness (is that a word?) of this game that I kept playing even though I was that frustrated. There is something so simple and so enjoyable about the similarity of the puzzles with just enough variety to make it challenging and interesting that I kept going back to them. I would get so pissed off after an hour that I'd shut the game off and sit on the couch muttering to myself for ten minutes - but less than half an hour later I was playing it again. I couldn't stop.

Fun, cursing, frustration, fun. Frustration, fun, a lot of cursing, a very strong mixed drink, more fun. Puzzle Quest is a cruel mistress that knows exactly when you're about to snap and then loves on you until you forget all the bad stuff.

If I ever meet the developers who came up with this series, I'd love to pat them on the back... and then slap them across the face. After all, that's what their games have done to me for three years. Oh, but it hurts so good. So good.

Tanking: The best way to get hit on!

Hi. Remember me? Yeah, I'm really no good at this whole "I'll update soon" thing, but I'm going to try to post at least twice a week from now on. Part of the problem is that it's FAR more difficult to be witty and amusing on a regular basis than I thought it would be; things that are pants-wettingly funny in my head are not nearly as hilarious when I get them down in print.

However, my first post back shall be about something near and dear to my heart.

Tanking.

Now, for those of you uneducated heathens (re: non-MMO players) that have no idea what tanking is, let me give you a brief outline.

There is a big, nasty, angry slavering creature in front of you. It's looking at you like you're a Grand Slam from Denny's and it hasn't eaten in six weeks (which is probably why it's contemplating eating anything from Denny's)...

Do you:

A - jump backwards and commence firing on it from a distance,

B - run forward and start hitting it from behind with a large stick, or

C - tell it to kiss your ass while doing the macarena, forcing it to constantly hit you and ignore everything else?

If you said A, you're what we call ranged DPS. If you said B, you're what we call melee DPS. If you said C, you're a fucking moron *cough* a tank.

A tank's sole purpose is to take as much damage as possible so that everyone else can whale away at said monster to their heart's content. Tanks are also responsible for making sure the monster doesn't lose interest in providing damage to them, so they have a multitude of options in order to ensure they keep aggro -

Wait, what the heck is aggro?

Taken from WoWWiki:

"Aggro is a jargon word in WoW, probably originally derived from the English words "aggravation" or "aggression", and used since at least the 1960s in British slang. In MMORPGs, such as WoW, aggro denotes the aggressive interests of a monster/NPC."

Aggressive interests, eh? Sounds like a shitty date I went on once.

Anyway, I digress.

It takes a certain person to play a tank. Tanking can be stressful, especially when you're new to it and have no fucking idea what you're doing. The main problem is that if you "lose aggro" on any monster - i.e. it's already heard the insults you're hurling at it and decides someone else looks far tastier than you - the odds are whomever it targets will bite it in not only a spectacular fashion, but also in record time. This generally does not bode well for said tank, as getting your group (or guildmates) pwned in the face is not what's supposed to happen.

Tanks often have huge armor bonuses to ensure they can take far more damage than your average player. They also generally have huge egos to go along with these massive bonuses - a giant e-peen cloaked in a impenetrable shield. Tanks generally blame anything and everything else if something goes wrong; the healer didn't heal them enough, the DPS was getting in the way, the sun got in their eyes (at 10 p.m.), the cat jumped across the keyboard, they were too busy preening and forgot what to do...

I bet that last one's happened at least once.

On the OTHER side, however, are the frustrations a tank has to deal with. Healer paying attention to American Idol and looks away at the wrong moment? You die, so does everyone else, and you get blamed for it. DPS gets too trigger-happy and does too much damage to the monster before you have proper aggro on it? They die, so does everyone else, and you get blamed for it. Ranged DPS pulls a monster before you're ready and they suddenly start chewing on your feet without warning? You die, so does everyone else, and you get blamed for it.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

I fell into tanking unexpectedly because it was needed and I was too stupid not to do it. I happen to play a character on WoW that is capable of tanking and decided it might be fun to try it out. I'd already played both melee and ranged DPS, and there's only so much of run over here and hit this or stand there and hit that I could take. So I started to gear up my toon and get her ready to foray into the Great Unknown of getting the living shit kicked out of her on a regular basis.

Now, remember I said earlier that tanking can be stressful. Good tanks who have been in the position for a while very rarely get stressed, because it becomes second nature to them. When you combine a player with a couple of brain cells to rub together, the right gear and the right set of abilities, all is well with the world and they become a valued and very important part of the team.

I, however, am not one of those people.

Am I good tank? Yes, I'm a very good tank. But this is pretty much what you'd hear if you sat next to me during any major fight:

"Come on you son of a bitch THAT'S RIGHT no I said get over HERE no HERE you fucking idiot I have to position you so that ten other people can hit you properly wait what the FUCK was that oh I don't THINK SO you motherfucker look at me I SAID LOOK AT ME you piece of shit that's right BITCH I am IN YOUR FACE."

I am not exaggerating, sadly. Combine that with trying to make sure I do all the right things at the right time, and you might understand why I would take Xanax for a four hour raid. Tanking is the most unique and rewarding experience in a MMO I've ever had, and it's ironically the one that burned me out the fastest. Never have I had so many people relying - intensely relying at times - on me as I have as a tank. It's both rewarding and frustrating at the same time, so frustrating at times I thought I was literally going to explode and nothing would be left but a pair of shoes and a whiff of sarcasm in the air.

I love tanking. It makes me feel like more of an integral part of the game than any other position has.

And one day - maybe even sometime soon - I'll be able to do it without wanting to flush my head down the toilet.