Appalachian Trail- the Video Game

I am a pretty amazing dork. By "dork", I mean that I still play pencil-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons at the age of 31. To be honest, the "dork" assessment needs review, as there are legions of older "dorks" on EverQuest, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and, oh, see here . The difference between me and them is that they use software to help imagine that they are a Cajun Aquatic Elf, and I do not. In this sense, a "dork" is simply someone who finds it easier to suspend disbelief in the unreal world. On the savannah, such an ability would indeed prove fatal in short order. So I am a dork, but so were the first priests so many tens of thousands of years ago. Not such bad company, although it'd be nice if roleplayers built up an ideology more long-lasting than that of Gary Gygax, which seemed to revolve around polearms.

To be honest, the "roleplaying" part of gaming never appealed to me overmuch. I preferred the part where we reduce the world to a series of statistics. It's no accident that the first researchers of the personal computer were also Tolkein fetishists and, to a large extent, pencil and paper gamers. Information science is all about reducing the world to a series of numbers and simple themes. Gamers seek to reduce experience to a set of statistics and easily remembered themes. We reduced the world for our machines, and found that the machine's way of looking at the world was a lot more fun than ours. Now more than a million people around the world live through machines, run forests that exist only in the machines, hunt orcs in the machine, buy, sell, love, and die as people that exist only in the minds of our machines. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the world of online role-playing games is a sugary heaven or a sexy hell.

To keep in the spirit of this thing I propose an Appalachian Trail Role Playing Game. Character creation can use all six of the classic statistics- Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. Starting money could be a derived statistic of Intelligence and Charisma, representing the level of income you had when your fake person decided to quit his or her life to start the appalachian trail. Mileage per day (MPD) would be the most important derived statistic. Constitution would be a core determinant of MPD, but Wisdom represents the willpower to resist spending days in town motels. Roll a Will saving throw versus pizza! Oh, no, another day in town for you! A ratio of strength to pack weight (LOAD) would also go toward the MPD- and provide a use for higher income, as super high tech lighweight gear would cost a lot (even if you make it yourself, that still represents high INT, so to some extent the income statistic does not represent a cash salary but a level of resources). Complicate the MPD by throwing in a Chance of Injury Per Day (CIPD), which would be some factor based on MPD, Dexterity, and LOAD. Injury is bad, it would do point damage to Wisdom, as well as taking multiple zero days, and you have to check Wisdom every time you leave town, or face a particularly bad stretch of terrain and/or weather, or phone your girlfriend. Wisdom also allows you to spot objects, like the bear and her cubs in the middle of the trail fifty feet away. So losing wisdom can easily lead to losing more wisdom. Charisma is a grease statistic, increasing chances of hitches into town, reducing prices in town, and generally serving as a "luck" statistic, as well as contributing to your starting income. And . . . and . . intelligence . . you know what? This is ridiculous. Anyone looking for "AT: the MMORPG" can, well, go take a hike.