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Nobody ask where this is coming from - I'm in a very weird place at the minute, and my head feels all stretchy. Also, I've noticed a trend for increased randomness over the past few days. Possibly I'm just generally overtired at the minute -_-;
I'm remembering playing computer games. And I'm not really sure why.
Firstly, you should probably understand that I am, and always have been, woefully tech-illiterate. Our family never had a games console. For years, we thought having a television with four channels was the heights (and it was, when you're as enamoured of kids cartoons and sci-fi b-movies as we were ... although, now that I look at it, I'm wondering about chicken-and-egg here). I mean, two years ago we got a Wii, and it was the first console we had (is a Wii a console? I'm not actually sure).
Point is, I've no idea how you talk about games. I've rarely played games. I don't know how they work.
But we had, on the ancient PC, a disk of games called Amazing Mazes, which had demos of puzzle-based computer games (and a few curios, like part of a text-based adventure game, and a few other random things). We also had Sim City 2000. This is ... I'm pretty sure this is actually the extent of my game-playing experience in any electronic medium. My sisters, who got gameboy-type things later, have more, and the youngest is now in college designing games, so a LOT more in her case. But I ... have always been somewhat tech-illiterate, apparently.
But for some reason, right now, I'm remembering those games. Sim City and Amazing Mazes. Don't ask.
There was one game (well, demo) that I was quite fond of on the AM disc. Called Castle of the Winds, and all it basically involved was your hero-type character going to various fortresses, descending through levels killing lots and lots and lots of monsters and collecting lots of loot, which you brought back up to whatever village/town was closest and sold for cooler weapons/items. Which, I gather, is more or less every adventure game ever. Possibly I should have explored the genre, as it was quite a lot of fun.
Funny thing is, I'm remembering the thought process that went into choosing my hero-types stats, and wondering if it doesn't reveal a lot more about me than I thought it would.
There were four options: Strength, Stamina, Speed, Intelligence, and a limited amount to go between them. And normally, my first instinct is to go for intelligence, because I'm me. Intelligence and speed, because in written or visual media, those are the characters I go for. Then, I tried the game. And I realised I had other priorities.
I started putting about 40% into strength. Not, as it happens, because you need strength to fight the lots and lots and lots of monsters waiting for you. No. Because you need strength to carry the loot. Without strength, your options are either to make multiple trips, encountering more monsters as you go, or leave the loot altogether. And sometimes, multiple trips means the loot will be gone when you get back. And I? Was apparently, on some fundamental level, incapable of leaving money or money-earning-items behind.
This was borne out the first time I encountered the thief-monster-thing. I was ... Look. I'd gotten killed about fifty times already. I was used to it. I didn't get pissed off when monsters hurt me. But this thing, and I'd no idea at first what it was, didn't hurt me. Didn't touch my hit points at all. It just came in, touched me, and left, and I was all ... okay. Weird, but okay. I was a bit paranoid about some kind of spell, or wasting sickness, but no, both HP and stamina were okay. Then ... I looked in my inventory, and saw that my money was missing.
And then? I chased that bloody thing across most of a level, killed a bandit and a manticore, the second of which up to then had scared me shitless, in order to get through to this bastard, who could apparently phase through bloody walls, and then made the crowning mistake of shooting it with a magic arrow mid-phase. This is a bad idea because if a thief dies mid-phase, inside a wall, all the stuff he was carrying stays in the wall. Where you can't get to it. All my money. Stuck in a wall.
The next time a thief came anywhere remotely near me, I chased it into a big room and blasted it with whatever was the biggest spell I had at the time before it could get near a wall. Oh. And I robbed it back. Because, apparently, I'm pissy about that kind of thing. Try to kill me, fine. I'll kill you back, but I won't get upset about it. Steal my money/loot? I will hunt you down.
It is mildly distressing to me to realise that, at least in the context of crappy computer games, my ideals about intelligence and sneakiness and virtue all go out the window in favour of being a very rich hulking idiot. *sighs*
Though, too, there were other reasons to putting most of my stats into strength and stamina. It turns out, apparently, that in a fight, my instincts are not for intelligence, or sneakiness, or strategy, but simply for persistently pounding a thing until it stops moving. The one time I tried a playstation fighting game with my cousin, for example, what I basically did was pick one effective move and button-mash it against the opponent until they broke me out of it, or KO.
So ... apparently, as far as gaming goes ... I'm a looting thug. A miserly looting thug. A miserly looting thug who is always, always going to pick up the shiny things, even if quite a lot of them subsequently do very nasty things to her.
It occurs to me that in a fantasy setting, for all my RL ideals and values, I would probably not be a very nice person. It occurs to me, in fact, that I might not be a very nice person at all. *grins sheepishly*
And yes, all of that was entirely random. My head is funny and squished right now. I am not well. My apologies, yes? *shakes head, goes to try and get some sleep*
Firstly, you should probably understand that I am, and always have been, woefully tech-illiterate. Our family never had a games console. For years, we thought having a television with four channels was the heights (and it was, when you're as enamoured of kids cartoons and sci-fi b-movies as we were ... although, now that I look at it, I'm wondering about chicken-and-egg here). I mean, two years ago we got a Wii, and it was the first console we had (is a Wii a console? I'm not actually sure).
Point is, I've no idea how you talk about games. I've rarely played games. I don't know how they work.
But we had, on the ancient PC, a disk of games called Amazing Mazes, which had demos of puzzle-based computer games (and a few curios, like part of a text-based adventure game, and a few other random things). We also had Sim City 2000. This is ... I'm pretty sure this is actually the extent of my game-playing experience in any electronic medium. My sisters, who got gameboy-type things later, have more, and the youngest is now in college designing games, so a LOT more in her case. But I ... have always been somewhat tech-illiterate, apparently.
But for some reason, right now, I'm remembering those games. Sim City and Amazing Mazes. Don't ask.
There was one game (well, demo) that I was quite fond of on the AM disc. Called Castle of the Winds, and all it basically involved was your hero-type character going to various fortresses, descending through levels killing lots and lots and lots of monsters and collecting lots of loot, which you brought back up to whatever village/town was closest and sold for cooler weapons/items. Which, I gather, is more or less every adventure game ever. Possibly I should have explored the genre, as it was quite a lot of fun.
Funny thing is, I'm remembering the thought process that went into choosing my hero-types stats, and wondering if it doesn't reveal a lot more about me than I thought it would.
There were four options: Strength, Stamina, Speed, Intelligence, and a limited amount to go between them. And normally, my first instinct is to go for intelligence, because I'm me. Intelligence and speed, because in written or visual media, those are the characters I go for. Then, I tried the game. And I realised I had other priorities.
I started putting about 40% into strength. Not, as it happens, because you need strength to fight the lots and lots and lots of monsters waiting for you. No. Because you need strength to carry the loot. Without strength, your options are either to make multiple trips, encountering more monsters as you go, or leave the loot altogether. And sometimes, multiple trips means the loot will be gone when you get back. And I? Was apparently, on some fundamental level, incapable of leaving money or money-earning-items behind.
This was borne out the first time I encountered the thief-monster-thing. I was ... Look. I'd gotten killed about fifty times already. I was used to it. I didn't get pissed off when monsters hurt me. But this thing, and I'd no idea at first what it was, didn't hurt me. Didn't touch my hit points at all. It just came in, touched me, and left, and I was all ... okay. Weird, but okay. I was a bit paranoid about some kind of spell, or wasting sickness, but no, both HP and stamina were okay. Then ... I looked in my inventory, and saw that my money was missing.
And then? I chased that bloody thing across most of a level, killed a bandit and a manticore, the second of which up to then had scared me shitless, in order to get through to this bastard, who could apparently phase through bloody walls, and then made the crowning mistake of shooting it with a magic arrow mid-phase. This is a bad idea because if a thief dies mid-phase, inside a wall, all the stuff he was carrying stays in the wall. Where you can't get to it. All my money. Stuck in a wall.
The next time a thief came anywhere remotely near me, I chased it into a big room and blasted it with whatever was the biggest spell I had at the time before it could get near a wall. Oh. And I robbed it back. Because, apparently, I'm pissy about that kind of thing. Try to kill me, fine. I'll kill you back, but I won't get upset about it. Steal my money/loot? I will hunt you down.
It is mildly distressing to me to realise that, at least in the context of crappy computer games, my ideals about intelligence and sneakiness and virtue all go out the window in favour of being a very rich hulking idiot. *sighs*
Though, too, there were other reasons to putting most of my stats into strength and stamina. It turns out, apparently, that in a fight, my instincts are not for intelligence, or sneakiness, or strategy, but simply for persistently pounding a thing until it stops moving. The one time I tried a playstation fighting game with my cousin, for example, what I basically did was pick one effective move and button-mash it against the opponent until they broke me out of it, or KO.
So ... apparently, as far as gaming goes ... I'm a looting thug. A miserly looting thug. A miserly looting thug who is always, always going to pick up the shiny things, even if quite a lot of them subsequently do very nasty things to her.
It occurs to me that in a fantasy setting, for all my RL ideals and values, I would probably not be a very nice person. It occurs to me, in fact, that I might not be a very nice person at all. *grins sheepishly*
And yes, all of that was entirely random. My head is funny and squished right now. I am not well. My apologies, yes? *shakes head, goes to try and get some sleep*