Retro Re-Imagined: Encyclopedia Brown

One of my favorite series of books growing up was Encyclopedia Brown, which followed a 10-year-old boy who remembered everything he'd ever read or learned.  His and his friend Sally solved crimes and mysteries around the town of Idaville, and occasionally Leroy (his real name) would help his father the police chief solve crimes at the dinner table.

Author Donald J. Sobol described Brown as having read so much, "whenever he did cartwheels it sounded like a whole library full of bookshelves were falling over in his head".  He was very methodical during his investigations, especially during the cases he worked for his father; he would always close his eyes when concentrating the hardest, then ask a single question that would help him crack the case.

Sobol relied on logical inconsistencies that required readers to pay very close attention.  This dates some of his earlier books, which assumed the reader knew the rules of etiquette or other now-archaic knowledge.  However, Sobol has continued to faithfully publish books in the series through 2010, and the years of inflation still haven't changed the boy detective's fee of 25 cents per case.

But what if Encyclopedia Brown were re-imagined from the ground up, a new creation of the digital information age?  Would he be intended for children, adults, or somewhere in between?  Would he even still be the "boy" detective?

Unfinished Business

So I didn't get my application to be WoW Insider's Enhancement Shaman columnist finished in time.  In the end, it may have been for the best; while being paid to write about gaming is awesome, a weekly column that would likely have required me to spend more time in WoW just as I'm getting to a point with my full-time job that I need to stay focused on it probably wouldn't have been the best in the world.

However, parts of the application did get finished, and I'm posting them here so they don't languish away on a forgotten corner of my hard drive.  If you play Enhancement Shaman, you'll probably get a decent kick out of it. If you don't... well, it'll all probably sound like gibberish.

But it's awesome gibberish.

Don't Fear the Reaper

In my new D&D group, there are a few members that haven't really played a lot of pen-and-paper RPGs before.  There's the Coworker, who is picking up polyhedral dice for the first time, and the Son, a 15-year-old who was taught to play by his Dad and is still experiencing all those first-time highs and lows that come with trusting dice to determine your character's fate.

Last session the Coworker was absent to rehearse with his band (indie rock group called Prom Date:  look 'em up, they're from Baton Rouge), so the players were a man down as they dug into the meat of the Red Box's dungeon.  The Son is playing a paladin, and because of that he's taking much more damage than the rest of the party; we made sure he knew that meant he was doing well, because that damage wasn't going to his much squishier, finger-waggling friends.

The last encounter of the day was against a bugbear brute with a magic greataxe and some goblin cronies that liked to sneak attack.  Since they were short the Coworker's rogue that left the paladin to soak up a lot of melee attacks, and soon he was on the ground and sucking negative hit points.  That same round the halfling shaman went down from a goblin's throwing dagger, which meant both of the characters capable of healing were now unconscious.

While the wizard and warlock took cover in a doorway and filled the room with freezing bursts and eldritch blasts, the unconscious players began making death saving throws.  The shaman was doing well, but the paladin was not:  before the rest of the party could get to him and get him back on his feet, he had failed two death saving throws and was staring down the barrel at a third.

The dice rolled, skipped off the edge of the map, and came to rest... on an 8.

The first thought on all our minds was:  now what?

Be Careful What You Wish For

With a grunt and the scraping of stone on stone, Rhogar forced the chamber door open.  The minotaurs that built this temple many years before had made them heavy and loud, ensuring that no one could enter undetected or without effort.

It also ensured the dragonborn paladin would be leaving this place with a very sore shoulder.

Light spilled into the room from the sunrod being held by one of Rhogar's companions, Zahm; the halfling shaman was already whispering to a wooden totem in his other hand, calling to the spirits that protected him and the rest of their adventuring band.  The eladrin arcanists Fruven and Dayereth readied their implements a pace behind, preparing to hurl spells and curses in their fey tongue if the chamber held as many goblins as the ones they had just finished clearing.

Rhogar's attention was drawn by a gutteral shriek and a the whirling of metal; a crude blade had just been flung past his scaled head, and he could see the goblin who threw it cowering in a doorway across the room.

"Only one?" the dragonborn snarled as he raised his halberd and moved into the room.  "Why can't you just do the smart thing and surrender?"

"Careful," warned Fruven as he scanned the room with his slender wand, "where there's one goblin there's usually something worse nearby..."

No sooner had he said that then the door behind the goblin crashed open, knocking it to the ground.  The doorway was filled with the bulk of a hairy creature as big as Rhogar, carrying a black-bladed axe with runes that glowed a hellish red.  The bugbear snarled at the intruders as more goblins began tumbling around his legs and into the room, filling the air with more thrown blades.

"You just had to say that, didn't you?" sighed Dayereth as Rhogar bellowed a challenging roar, and rushed across the room to meet their foes.

Na-Ain't-Gonna-Happen-Mo

So NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo were complete, flaming wreckages for me. Writing for television news and helping manage our station's Facebook and Twitter stuff has made me a bit exhausted with both social media and creativity in general.  I just have no impetus to do anything when I get home, other than stumble through the motions of checking my WoW auctions, reading a couple of webcomics, and going to sleep.

And something in my head is telling me I could be a freaking news director one day?  What the hell is wrong with me?

So this is me, trying to flog my aching creative muscles into squeezing out a few more dribbles before I fall unconscious.  If I can do this more than one night in a row, I'll consider it a rousing success.

Where to start?  Where else:  the near-death of my D&D party this weekend.

A New Beginning

In two weeks, I should be starting a new D&D campaign with a new gaming group.  And when I say 'new', I mean it; only one of three players I've rounded up have any experience with D&D.  To me, this presents an exciting opportunity to pass along my passion for d20-kickassery and introduce people to the sheer fun of the game.

As long as I don't screw it up, which I have before.

Missteps


A long, long time ago I played Magic: The Gathering with a decent amount of zeal.  After moving to a new city without a prevalent card-playing scene at the time, I tried to teach my wife how to play.  She had been very accommodating of my geeky tastes and wound up sharing quite a few of them, but Magic turned out to be an epic fail with her.  She was having trouble grasping the often-tangled concepts I was throwing out, and stung from losing the first few games I tried playing with her.  She often remarked, "I recognize all these words are English... but I still don't get what they're saying."  After that disastrous process, Magic became a taboo subject and was pushed to the back of the closet with my other forgotten games.

Later I found a pair of very, very well-written articles about applying conventional teaching methods to people trying to learn Magic, and discovered that in my rush to get my wife to play cards with me I had made every wrong move possible.  I had failed to see things from her standpoint, build decks specifically designed to not be overwhelming to a new player, to introduce new concepts like summoning sickness slowly and only move on after they'd seen them in action repeatedly, and above all... let her win.

Evolution

This is something I thought (and kinda hoped) I would never write:

I bought a Pokemon game.  And I'm having a great time.

My first brush with Japanese pocket monsters was when I was around 15 and rockin' the Star Wars CCG something fierce.  Magic was going through the heyday that was the Rath Cycle, and Star Wars was the other big juggernaut on the CCG block.  Pokemon was also insanely popular but looked down upon as fodder for first-graders with sticky binders full of worn cards, or for that guy who wore the weird animal hats and bought manga online.

I recognized that Pokemon had some strong gameplay at its base and probably other vaguely-redeeming values, but as the craze took off onto Game Boys and TV shows, I turned away and said "No thanks; not for me.  It'll burn itself by the time these kids hit middle school."

12 years later those kids are in college, I'm standing at a GameStop needing a new RPG fix, and I hear Professor Oak whispering like a creepy guy on a street corner wearing a trenchcoat...

"Just give it a try.  What can it hurt; nothing says you gotta catch 'em all, right?"