...loosing your dice bag would be a serious financial blow.
...you could paper you bathroom in character sheets.
...you could paper your bathroom in different versions of just ONE character.
...you are unable to walk past the latest TSR supplement without leafing through it, even though you know it's going to be bad.
...you have more entertaining "No-s&$t,-there-I-was-in-a-game" stories than you do anecdotes about your family.
...you talk about your characters as if they are real people.
...you alternate between referring to your characters in the first and the third person.
... and none of your friends gets confused.
...you've ever spent a significant fraction of your life modifying game rules that you didn't like... and, as soon as the system worked to your satisfaction, discarded it.
...when someone says "The blue books," you don't automatically picture the kind that they give you during a college final exam.
...you worship idols of Gary Gygax in your basement.
...you burn Gary Gygax in effigy in your back yard.
...you will not buy comic books with the Dragon Strike (tm) logo on the back.
...you've ever seen the old AD&D tv series.
...you're still reading this list.
...you hang out with people you actively dislike because they give good role- play.
...you've ever gotten into a screaming match over something that happened in a game... (You are so dead! I am not dead!)
...you've ever neglected to buy the new edition of your favourite game because you already have three.
...you have more than one photocopied bootleg of a gaming text.
...you keep old characters around just in case someone might run that system again. (Never mind that its TS: SI)
...You knew what I meant when I said TS:SI.
...you have a PhD in manipulating point systems to the best effect, even though you failed high school geometry.
..you can consume your body weight in junk food in one gaming session.
...you consider Altoids, Salt-&-Vinegar chips, and blue Teeni Hugs a balanced diet. (or even an acceptable combination.)
...you have been known to drive to far away places where you paid enormous amounts of money for the privelege of sleeping on floors, eating [censored], buying little pewter statues of Gandalf, and meeting dozens of psychopathic members of the alternate (or similar) sex who will follow you around for months, merely for the pleasure of playing with gamers you don't know.
...and then signed up en masse with all of you friends to play in games with game masters who you've known since high school.
...you own your own weight in gaming books.
...the owners of local hobby stores take your checks without ID because they know where you live.
...you can do AD&D money conversions in your head.
...you could wallpaper you bedroom in Dragon Mirths (tm).
...you consider the demise of "What's New With Phil & Dixie" a blow to great literature.
...you consider the resurrection of "What's New With Phis & Dixie" the redeeming feature of Magic: The Gathering.
...you consider the 20th century a state of mind.
...you have a random NPC generator, written in BASIC, designed to run on the Trash-80 or the Commodore 64.
...you've ever designed your own character sheets.
...you can be more that three NPCs at the same time without generating more than reasonable confusion in your players.
...you have ever played a Dwarven character who did not have "axe" or "beard" ANYWHERE in his or her name.
...you know how to sex dwarves. (chromosome typing- required a blood sample. I'M not getting it...)
...you've ever tried to explain gaming to a school counselor, parent, or other PW/OC (Person With/Out Clue).
...you've suceeded.
...you've played Talisman more than once.
...you've finished a game of Talisman.
...more than once.
...you're STILL reading this list.
...you can quote extensively from the Wandering Damage Tables.
...you've mistaken a d12 or a double d10 for a d20 while playing AD&D and had a THAC0 low enough to hit the 8HD monster, anyway...
...you understood that.
...you carry AD&D insurance.
...your AC is so low that even you can't hit yourself.
...an 87 point Balrog is no big thrill anymore.
... you bring your dicebag even to diceless roleplaying events.
...you've ever discovered, after gaming with your significant other, that you like their character better than you do them.
...you have friends or acquaintances who regularly refer to you as "Og." (Or something similar.)
...you've ceased responding to your birth name.
...you spend more money on dice than on food.
...you sometimes forget what century this is.
...your first response to any frustrating situation is, "I bash it with my axe."
...you know a lot of gaming jokes that used to be funny once.
...your friend(s) who does not game feels very left out of all of your conversations.
...you have more gaming books than the local hobby store.
...you've discovered that spare dice make good beanbag filler.
...you knew that that last question was a ringer: who has more dice than they can use?
... you have a copy of "Dark Dungeons" kicking around somewhere because a: you thought it was funny b: your parents got concerned that you were living in a fantasy realm.
...you're sortof dissapointed that you haven't reached the level where they start teaching you the real spells (as described in the above "Dark Dungeons" pamphlet) yet: You're sure you must be a high enough level.
...you've been gaming for more than half of your life.
...you still laugh when someone says "Hey, Dave, I think the barbarian in the corner wants another beer."
...the phrase "Collect Call of Cthulhu" brings back fond memories.
...you can quote the whole "Trolls! Mutants! Trolls! Mutants!" strip from "what's New With Phil & Dixie."
...you knew a female gamer once.
...you were a female gamer once.
...you tend to play characters as different from you in race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and what have you as possible, just to confuse your friends.
...(For New Englanders only) You were able to find stuff at "Flock, Stock, and Barrel."
...you've been known to have in-depth conversations about the relative merits of Champions, V&V, Marvel, and DC heroes... ignoring the fact that all superhero systems are intrinsically sucky.
...you like one of the above systems enough that you yelped when I called them all, "sucky."
...you've thought of four or five additions to this list.
...you actually bought TSR's "Dungeoneer's Survival Guide" when it first came out.
...you've ever tried to discover the strengths and weaknesses of a haemophiliac werewolf.
...someone is attempting to explain the floorplan of a building to you and you immediately start thinking in terms of 10X10 squares.
...or 6'x6' hexes.
...your first though upon walking into a friend's domicile is to reflect on where you'd put the machine-gun nest.
... Everything you see, hear, or taste translates into some form of stats for a game. ("Wow! That move was cool...that means he's got Swing S
On the same note:
..you and your friends have spent a screening of "The Crow" assigning vampire clans to the various characters.
..you actually wear that little ankh that comes in the Vampire Live-Action box...in everyday life.
..you've ever gotten wierd looks from other customers at places like Denny's or IHOP because of the nature of your conversations.
..a friend of yours screws something up and you respond with, "looks like you failed your _________ roll."
..you've actually paid to have custom fangs made.
..you wear these fangs in everyday life (not to mention Renaissance festivals).
..you've ever argued against a combat rule based on your experience in the SCA/Military/Police, etc.
..you have a dozen things in mind for when you come across a magic lamp.
- when you talk about the "good old days" you mean when games cost $12 and came with their own dice.
- If you played a different game every night, you'd need a fifty-day week to use your RPG collection to its full extent.
- The six-siders in your dice bag have been worn down to the point that they look like 20-siders.
- your car and/or home is falling apart, you're wearing the same clothes you wore in the 1980's, and you miss meals regularly, but you've got the money in the bank for the next year's worth of 's products.
- If your computer broke down, your biggest worry is how you'd print out your character sheets.
- you can cite the differences between "official" Star Trek, and FASA Star Trek, and Star Fleet Battles.
- your character has more close friends than you do.
- you have more Star Frontiers modules than you have close friends.
- you could write a biography of your character easier than you could write your own autobiography.
- you think that such a biography WOULD BE an autobiography.
- you can't find your favorite shirt, but you know where all the dice that came with your first D&D set are.
- you remember when games gave you tips on "inking" dice with crayon.
- you can give no fewer than six different speeches on "what is roleplaying?", verbatim, from the introductions to different games.
- you've bought a game even though you didn't like the genre or the rules, so that you could fix the rules and convert them to a different genre.
- you've looked into how much it would cost to build a castle
- there is virtually no game that you can't name the genre, company, or country of origin for (Hunter Planet, anyone?).
- your most important criteria for a mate is that they're a gamer, too.
- you're a hetero male and you've considered changing orientation just to find a mate to meet that criterion (that's a word, right?).
- you've ever written a speech for your character to make just in case he should find himself in such a situation.
- you remember when all games referred to characters as "he".
* Your idea of a fun Friday night consists of getting the gang together and playing for eight or more hours.
* The only reason you want a lake cabin is so you and the gang can go up there and play non-stop all weekend without any distractions.
* You finally get to the point where you look at everything on the shelves and say "*I* can do a better job than these bozos!"
* You actually get a chance to do just that.
* ...and you succeed!
* Everything you see, hear, or taste translates into some form of stats for a game. ("Wow! That move was cool...that means he's got Swing Sword +20 and Look Cool In Armor +15.")
* You write a parody of the RPG industry, and it's also a game.
* ...and one of the companies you slam picks it up for its "Mature" imprint and distributes it gleefully.
* You go into business as a consultant on the RPG industry.
* ...and you actually are *hired*! (Neener-neener!)
* You branch out from RPGs into the stuff that game was derived from so you make better sense of the bloody thing. (Gamers-turned-Otaku, Gamers-turned-occultists, Gamers-turned-goths, Gamers-turned-military personel, Gamers-turned-martial artists, etc.)
* ...and you *still* don't stop playing! (Loyal man! I like you!)
* You remember when there was none of this "no exclusively (fe)male viewpoint" [censored].
* ...or when there was none of this "no cussing" [censored] either.
* You make up songs like "Livin in the Kaer" and "Fun Fun Fun (Till the Horror took her Free Will Away)"
* You've written character histories that are longer than most novels...
* ...For Paranoia Characters.
* You Watch war documentaries with GURPS Vehicles so you can tell how much damage the 4-inch Naval Gun using an APX shell does.
* You spend five hours converting Modern Aircraft, when you run a fantasy campaign.
* You can quote the exact chance of a 1st-level Mage defeating an Umber hulk from memory, though a Voydanoi takes a little work.
* You break your leg, but insist on using a 'Recovery Test' before calling the ambulance.
* You have a list of what all the potions taste like.
* Your resume descrivbes you as a '5th-Level Civil Engineer'
* Drac's Raving at you.
* You've figured out that the Average AD&D Great Wyrm Red Dragon has 7 cubic feet of treasure.
* You Demand Experience points after winning a fistfight.
* You have a nickname that makes no sense because one of your characters had it.
* You Buy Dragon Magazine "For the Articles."
* You Worship TSR.
* You Detest T$R.
* You've ever constructed yourself as a character.
* You've got more tables than all the restaurants in town.
* You know how to use dice as weapons.
* You use phrases like 'Save vs. Graduation or go insane for 1d4 days.'
* You know how many hit points every member of your family has.
* You know that you can fit 20 d4's together to make a large d20 because you've actually tried it.
* You are not cleared for this information.
* You're up until 5:30 in the morning posting to rec.games.frp.misc. Trivia: You know what the following names originally stood for: (easy) SPI, SJG (med.) FBI, FGU (hard) TSR, FASA You know the following acronyms (feel free to append, and credit the game) AD&D's THAC0 Hero's 1d6 AF NND AE w/14- act > --- You own a copy of "Metamorphosis Alpha." ..you spend hours poring through this newsgroup, but just can't find the time to read Book IX of Paradise Lost for your Milton class tomorrow.
>- you own Dragon magazines below number 100
Gorsh, is that all it takes nowadays?
--Your subscription copy of Dragon shows up in the mail one month, and you realize it's the hundredth consecutive issue you've bought.
--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.
Game dealers at Gencon recognize you and know your name, even though it's your first time at Gencon.
..you remember GenCon in tents.
For "You know you're a Gamer":
* 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
- 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!
