Introduction

At the time of writing, I am a 26-year-old graduate from ASU who still lives with his parents and has done absolutely nothing appreciable with his vaunted intellect or (more remarkably) his degree in computer science other than unpack Dell PCs on a loading dock for Boeing. And that job lasted almost exactly four days. I have little room to complain about a stagnant job market. I'll readily admit that my own failure to leave the nest comes from a near-total lack of interest in slinging code for a living and an apathetic self-image. I could get a job in the industry if I felt like it-- almost everyone starts out jockeying phones. I just know enough about myself to know that if I did, I would probably start a shotgun massacre within two days.

I do have "work," if you can call it that. I write a movie review for a magazine based on my own slightly-more-coherent-than-your-average-Internet-dork ramblings on a message board and I act in a local dinner theatre troupe. Both jobs pay about the same, ironically, each probably less in a month than your average waitress at Denny's makes in a night. But the sheer notion that either job pays at all is so astounding that most professionals in either industry would tell me to be pleased simply walking away with a profit of any kind. After all, telling people I'm an actor and a writer is as near to saying "I'm unemployed" as makes no odds. So I certainly can't complain about my success there.

I'm the sort of guy who still doesn't even really have a vague notion of what I want to do. I thought for a while that I wanted to work in the computer industry. I thought that for a long time until the movie Office Space came out and scared it out of me, and now I want nothing to do with any form of cubicle labor. I'm very talented when it comes to programming, software, and all of those kind of Internet things that my mother still thinks is black magic, but my attitude universally sucks and I hate people enough that putting me in any form of long-term group environment is about as helpful as using me as a disease vector for bacterial meningitis.

I suppose if you were to nail me down on the issue, I'd say that I'd prefer to do what I do now, if I could get paid for it. Acting, writing bitchy reviews about stuff, maybe making people laugh, generally sitting on my ass in a foul mood. But all of these are wishy-washy choices that nobody ever really gets paid for except people who least deserve it, like Larry the Cable Guy and Carlos Mencia. Success in those areas comes from a maddeningly chaotic ratio of hard work, proper contacts, shriekingly good luck, the inherent unfairness of the universe, and a stupid catch phrase.

The closest I've ever come to a job-- that is, the type of job where actual work is accomplished most days of the week was at my friendly local game store. This was in my high school days, when I was in my full-on nerd/rebel mode, rejecting anything mainstream and cool because of my desire to avoid being a drone: things like Green Day, Edward Scissorhands, and pussy.

I haven't really moved on much since high school, as you can probably tell. I still hate Green Day, Edward Scissorhands is overrated, and I've done little to revise my brilliant dating strategy of outright cowardice and self-pity.

Anyway, most of those days were spent in a state of near-total slacking-off. High school was never a challenge for me; I was one of those genius students who took all the advanced courses and still had time for marching band and drama club. You probably would have hated me. I spent most of my time at the local gaming pit playing RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, RIFTS, almost anything you can think of, I've picked up and played at least once. I spent almost every day down there after classes until close, gorging myself on enough snack food, sugar and caffeine to make a nutritionist want to retreat and say three Hail Marys for my salvation. I was about as permanent a fixture in Michael's Magic as Norm's ass on Cheers.

You have to understand, a gaming store is normally not like most other stores. Customer goodwill is paramount in a game store, now more than ever because there's nothing-- literally NOTHING-- stopping your average gamer from buying the books and games he needs on Amazon.com for far less money. All your average FLGS owner has is a near-feudal system of vassalage and loyalty. It's understood that if you're a gamer, you swear an oath to shop only at the store of your nearest liege lord. Any patronage of other stores is outright treason. In exchange for this loyalty, game store owners open their floors to daily parties of food, drink, personal abuse, and foulmouthed gaming.

Some stay there more than others. A lot more.

After a year or so of being legally unable to make me leave (after all, I was supplying him with regular business and was involved in role-playing games almost nightly) he offered me "work," which essentially amounted to doing everything I was already doing, jockeying the register when necessary, occasionally mucking out the toilet, and making sure nobody stole anything when Mike went out to get cigarettes. For this, I was paid in store credit and I was perfectly happy with the arrangement. Odds were good that even if he'd paid me actual money it would have just gone right back into the purchase of Magic: The Gathering cards or something equally frivolous from the store.

Most of the fine details of those memories are lost in a haze of Mountain Dew. I usually don't take the effort to remember anyone's name until we've spent about six months talking, but that's common for most hardcore gamers. We like to use nicknames and mnemonics to distinguish the crowd of gamers in our minds, especially since baby boomers were depressingly boring in the names they chose for their children. At one time I knew six Mikes: Big Mike, Crazy Mike, Store Mike (who had to be renamed to Viking Mike when there suddenly became two Store Mikes), Pizza Mike, Gay Mike, and Supermike. I remember at least three Steves and I still know three other Noahs (which admittedly is weird...), each requiring their own Mafia name. The point is, while I can't vouch for every tiny detail in the events I'm about to recall, I can promise that they're generally accurate. Probably.

Gaming has changed a lot from the days of my childhood. Michael's Magic closed a long time ago, victim of a lack of business and an inability to compete with the Internet and eBay. Old school gaming has likewise withered away, replaced with the polished, monolithic spectre of WotC and their popular d20 System: a cash cow of a game loudly derided by veterans much like fans of heavy metal complain and argue about when Metallica officially sold out. The grognards have retreated into their basements to get away from the noisy card gamers, and though there more gamers now than I ever remembered seeing in my past, I find myself rather unsettled by how much it's all changed sometimes. There's a new generation of gamers, and at 26 I'm already one of the grouchy old-timers trying to recruit people for an older edition of a game none of the kids have, a half-dozen retorts already pre-programmed in my mind to shout at anyone who buys the new Player's Handbook.

Bitching and arguing are two of the three major joys of being a gamer, the third being telling anyone who will listen about your characters and how they died in particularly gruesome fashion. This act is best told while hanging from the arm off the store counter, babbling endlessly about die rolls that you somehow remember and rules from obscure books to some nodding clerk who does an admirable job of pretending to be engaged in the conversation while secretly trying to make your head explode. People who compulsively tell these stories are known as counter monkeys, individuals who will exist as long as game stores endure.

Few other jobs have customers like this, where people will approach the counter, usually not pay for anything, and without preamble or warning launch into a forty-minute retelling of some fantasy siege that usually ends with someone inexplicably and improbably getting shot in the face. In all fairness, these stories are usually pretty funny when they don't lead into protracted arguments about how min-maxed they managed to make their characters, or how they don't like the magic system, or how they wish they could do away with feats entirely, or...well, most of these stories end up as labyrinthine roundabout parables about how either a specific person or game sucks.

I've been stuck behind that counter for years. And I've got my own stories.

Let me tell you of the days of high adventure.