Story time. About three weeks ago now, I agreed to do an interview with Total RPG, an up-and-coming RPG site, along with Thor Antirim, RPGamer's letter column writer. I was sent a slew of questions about RPGs, RPG fandom, websites, and things of that nature. I treated this as a serious site, which posed serious questions to me, and I gave them serious answers. Well, mostly. :)

The interview is now up. In retrospect, I was a lot more diplomatic than I wish I'd been. Be that as it may, I think it's a good read. There are good questions asked by Niels, the interviewer, and I think I answered them pretty well. Feel free to write in the column regarding anything said therein, since some of these issues, I think, bear further discussion.

All that aside, after the intense argument of the past two days, a distinctly lighter kind of Double Agent to bring in the weekend, one which promises to offer a few surprises. Watch the blue box, kids and kittens. That's all I'll say. Watch the blue box.

I feed the clown to the polar bear. Don't like funny little red noses, don't like white make-up, don't like big funny shoes, and I don't like their asinine attempts to make me laugh when I'm in the middle of something important. Plus all Russians are Commies or crooks, so he'd be no good to us anyway. I put one hot dog in eat bun, and give them all to the bear, too. Moogles are hardy creatures, and I have no intention of denying a polar bear of its food, thank you very fricking much. Next, I pluck off the moogle's flobies, grab a coconut from a nearby try, pull out my Visa card, and with those ingredients, plus the excess two buns, I display my MacGyver-like inventive skills and build myself a cross-dimensional teleporter, which I use to teleport off said island, and resettle in an alternate universe where the world is populated entirely by women who look just like Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Yugo is ancient Navahoe word. It means "I can't believe you actually bought this piece of shit."

Because, as a child, the developer of the letter grading system had a horrible experience involving a Wheel of Fortune-style quiz show and some loose grips on the letters. Thump, whoosh, snap crackle pop goes Mr. Developer. As a result, he felt a great deal of antipathy towards the second vowel, and left it out of his grading system, so no other child could be subjected to it.

Of course not. When god drops acid, he creates people. Weird ones. Think Richard Simmons.

It gets hit by a falling piece of the Mir. The remains then decompose, and years hence, a spring of mistletoe is grown from that very patch of dirt, so it all evens out in the end.

The ghost of Rasputin. He had a sense of humor, he did.

It'd be a pitched battle for a while, but then half of RPGamer's staff would quit, and form a third site, who would subsequently kick both our asses. Ouch. Nasty precedent.

It's better than cleaning up after Mr. Fluffy does a Bad Thing on the Persian rug.

There's the difficulty of finding a country for sale. Usually the inhabitants are kinda attached to it, for some strange reason. There's also the problem that he'd have to pay his neighbouring nations lots and lots of money to not conquer him and take all his money. And lastly, he doesn't move out of the United States because no matter how badly he loses the legal battles, in a worst case scenario, he's still richer than Croesus. As it stands, he lives like the geek king of Seattle in his automated mansion, with pesky lawyers toiling away with weed whackers at the shrubberies of his empire. If he buys a country, he's got to, y'know, run it. Who wants to rule the world? Who wants to do that much work?

Because they weren't so expensive back when they were first made. They're collectors items now, knickknacks, not counterculture icons and stoner crucifixes. They cost more now because people are willing to pay more.

Ahhhhhh. Thank you, Sultan. You have brightened my day.

The continued existence of your testicles thanks you for not calling me Thor.

Pokemon is the ultimate example of a game that, by rights, I should have really liked, but didn't care for at all. I mean, it's solid - decent graphics for Gameboy, okay combat system, and lots and lots of places to go and things to do. But two things didn't work for me. First of all, I didn't find any of the monsters cute at all. Totoro is cute, to me. Pikachu is just annoying. Having a game centered around a bunch of creatures I found disinteresting at best was, to say the least, not a lot of laughs. The other element that never captured my attention was the "gotta catch 'em all" principle in itself. I was the kid who wanted the most expensive baseball card, not the full set. So, sadly, Pokemon played into a mentality I simply don't have. Shrug. Good game, just not my cuppa. I didn't even notice the niggling faults you mentioned. I just never got into it.

Your Star Wars Prequel letter... erm... could you resend? I must have deleted it accidentally. Please note that those rumors about Square developing RPGs based off the Star Wars prequels has been proven completely false. It was a practical joke.

A hardcore lesbian sex gamer? Jesus, I couldn't even think of that phrase, much less use it seriously in conversation. Wow. So, do we have any other hardcore lesbian sex gamers in the audience? Is there a dress code? A handbook? Talk about a special interest group.

Serious aside: are there any non-heterosexual characters in RPGs? Anyone? The first person who writes in and says I HEARD A GUY SOMEWHERE WAS GAY has their intestines removed, by the by.

As for the challenge level of LoL, I can't weigh in, but remember that there's a lot of people who started playing RPGs with FF7, and may not be used to having tough ones (FF7 was many things, but tough wasn't one of 'em). I doubt it's the toughest RPG ever made, though. That honor belongs to the action/RPG, Exile: Wicked Phenomenon, which also holds the recor as the second-hardest game I've ever played. As for the contenders... PS2 was tough. DQ3 was tough. 7th Saga ranged from the okay to the preposterous. Valsu vs. LUX. Can we say ass kicking? Sure you can.

Fei was on his way to defend his genetic stock against your slanderous words, but slipped, fell, and broke his hip on the way. He's now developed a new personality, called Mabel, who is insistently asking his orderly to bring him candy canes and 8MM copies of midget porn movies. Poor man. All this over a banana peel.

Hey hey hey. Shriner cars are not for use by non-Shriners for petty revenge schemes. You need to be a duly appointed, fez-wearing Shriner to get behind the wheel of one of those mean machines, and baby, you don't know what power is 'til you've raced through the schoolyard of an elementary school, splattering the slow-moving kids all over your windshield. The best part is that the Shriners organization not only provides the car, but when you've got some kid's left arm caught in the bumper, they remove it and clean it up for you, no price tag attached. That's service.

That is, bar none, the stupidest goddamn joke I've ever seen, narrowly beating out this witty repartee from GIA's own Andrew Kaufmann.

AndrewV: I need some coffee. brb

AndrewK: Yeah, you need coffee

AndrewK: Like YOUR MOM

AndrewK: FOR ME TO POOP ON

If anyone out there can figure out what the hell was going through AK's hamster wheel of a mind right then, you're a better man than I. You're also a better woman than I am, but that's not much of an accomplishment.

Yeah, you're right. I had a major brain fart when I wrote my answer last night, working under the basis that there was an event referred to in FF:LoC, the War of the Magi. Where that idea came from, I don't know. I blame Square, just so I can fit in with the hardcore crowd.

To reiterate, none of the FFs are interconnected, except for FFV and the FF anime, Legend of the Crystals, the latter taking place 200 years after the former.

Ah, poetry. The music of the tongue. Who says video games rot your brain?

Closing comments

Michael Flatley wrote in to ask if Zelda is an RPG. I don't think further commentary is necessary. He is the Devil. He'll get his. Just you wait.

- Allan Milligan