Page 48 of Looking for Group
I get very “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” about these places, perhaps because they exist between someone else’s creation and my own imagination, perfectly and eternally mine.
17. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Solace]
Alexis: This guy is a cruel dig at Tirion Fordring from A Certain Popular MMO. That long-winded, kill-stealing bastard.
Chapter Three
1. Paragraph begins with: [Raid][Dave]
Alexis: I honestly have no idea if DKP or a DKP analogue is even still a thing. Back in the day, 50 DKP Minus was a meme.
2. Paragraph begins with: “Hey.”
Alexis: One of the dynamics I really enjoyed writing in this book was between Bjorn and Ialdir’s equally deep but fundamentally oppositional forms of nerdery.
They’ve both been playing since vanilla, but Bjorn is all about mechanics and mastery, whereas Ialdir just loves the game world.
And both of them are extremely keen to talk to you about it.
3. Paragraph begins with: [Raid][Prospero]
Alexis: I also had so much fun making up loot and item names.
I particularly enjoyed the [Gargantuan Corpse-Hide Satchel] because the implication here is that it’s one of those upgraded versions of upgraded versions of upgraded versions where the names get progressively more dramatic and outlandish for what is essentially just a fucking bag.
4. Paragraph begins with: “Yeah, good job, guys…”
Alexis: I think the fact that Bjorn is genuinely appreciative of the people around him is what makes him not unbearable.
Even though he’s still pretty unbearable.
I feel like every casual guild has (and needs) a Bjorn: someone who would rather be the star of a casual guild than a middle-ranker in a hardcore one.
5. Paragraph begins with: Drew flicked open his professions menu…
Alexis: For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s convention (or at least used to be convention) for the names of in-game items to be linked in chat so that a tool-tip could come up when you mouse over them.
This makes them appear in square brackets.
Which is why they’re always written like that in the book.
And, honestly, I just thought it was funny because there’s no tool tip available in raw text.
6. Paragraph begins with: One of the problems with raiding was that, after a while, it began to be a chore rather than a challenge.
Alexis: Reading this, even years later, is making me miss the shit out of A Certain Popular MMO.
7. Paragraph begins with: Drew put his head in his hands.
Alexis: Okay. That reference was even dated at the time. In my defence, Alpha Protocol has some epically cringy dialogue options. And, yes, it did label some of them “suave.” And no, no they weren’t.
8. Paragraph begins with: Bjorn snorted.
Alexis: Sorry to be smug but I’m secretly proud of the sheer level of game mechanical detail implied by this. I’m aware it’s probably boring to read if you’ve never played this type of game but I hope if you have ever played an MMO it really captures that way you talk and think about these fights.
For what it’s worth, the reason Ialdir is last priority for Glory Through Pain is that it’s a buff/debuff that attaches to your character, increasing their damage output but slowly killing them.
Because a lot of Ialdir’s damage comes from his pet, [Small Mangy Owl], which doesn’t get the buff, he benefits from it less than the other characters.
I did warn you, I’d thought about this way, way too much.
9. Paragraph begins with: [Raid][Jargogle]
Alexis: For me, one of the ongoing pleasures of these was capturing the very specific dynamics between particular people and particular roles.
Ranged DPS vs. Melee DPS is a whole thing, believe me.
And I think in SCDD it’s particularly intense because Bjorn and Jargogle have a kind of competitive competence with each other. Or, I guess, an affectionate foeyay.
10. Paragraph begins with: Orcarella ran around in circles excitedly and a few guildies cheered as she passed.
Alexis: One of the slightly curious things about this kind of game, especially back in the day, is that at the top end there was something of a macho culture around raiding.
But what raiding actually comes down to, if you stop and think about it for a moment, is shopping and synchronised swimming.
Like, you coordinate yourselves to move in pretty patterns and you get rewarded with clothes and accessories you then model for your friends.
11. Paragraph begins with: [Guild][Sindarella]
Alexis: This is completely irrelevant but one of the little background details of the guild is that Sindarella (Mike) and Ignatius (Helen) are a cis straight married couple, only she plays a male character and he plays a female one—both of which are fairly unusual statistically in that, generally, people choose a player avatar that matches their gender.
12. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Orcarella]
Alexis: Drew’s approach to gaming isn’t one I share or naturally empathise with (to be honest, I’m just not skilled enough) but I did want to try and present various different perspectives on the hobby as equally valid.
I tend to knee-jerk react against “too easy lol” type discourse, but I also do get that some people want a game to be a challenge they meet on its own terms.
Magic: The Gathering divides players into three psychographic profiles: Timmy (who wants to experience something), Johnny (who wants to express something), and Spike (who wants to prove something)—the fact these all have male-coded names says a certain amount about MTG in the 90s.
Although, to be fair, when they printed cards for these three, Spike was a girl.
In any case, while I’m not a big fan of categorising people in general, I do think T/J/S is a good way of summarising approaches to gaming, as long as it’s used in a careful way.
Drew is, of course, a massive Spike. Whereas Solace and I are both Timmy/Johnnys.
But that’s the thing about writing a book. The last thing I wanted was a situation where the person who was most like me was most right. That’s obnoxious AF.
13. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Solace]
Alexis: Not to spoil my own plot here, but I think this might be Solace trying to indicate to Drew that he’s a gay man, not a cute elf chick.
14. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Orcarella]
Alexis: Going back to the Drew/Solace Spike/Timmy balance thing, I think one of the things I wanted to demonstrate with SCDD is that Drew’s need for mastery of the game can be met in a context that’s more gentle than the one he experienced in Annihilation.
There’s often a bit of a false dichotomy in gaming circles of all kinds between “having fun” and “taking it seriously” when the truth is that either approach can get toxic when taken to the extreme.
What Drew finds in SCDD is an environment where people who want slightly different things out of the game (Solace’s love of the virtual space, Ialdir’s love of the lore, Drew and Bjorn’s desire to be extremely leet) can respect and value each other’s priorities.
And this makes everything better for everyone.
There might even be a broader point there about, like, life and shit. But who can tell?
Chapter Four
1. Paragraph begins with: It was a pretty good evening, though.
Alexis: I’m pretty sure Twilight Imperium is still the best board game nobody has ever finished a game of.
2. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Efthalia]
Alexis: This conversation massively understates what a dick Simon de Montfort actually was.
In a naked grab for power, he used populist rhetoric and grievance politics to launch what was essentially a brief takeover of England (including multiple antisemitic massacres in London and elsewhere).
Now I think about it, it’s actually slightly chilling how little populist tactics have changed over the centuries.
It’s naked bigotry framed as a stance against the elite.
Problematically, although perhaps unsurprisingly given our history, Simon de Montfort is also seen as one of the fathers of British democracy.
3. Paragraph begins with: Over the next few hours they massacred most of the native wildlife
Alexis: This kind of low-level MMO gameplay is, let’s face it, objectively shit but it’s also strangely good fun if you’re doing it with somebody you like. Although I guess that’s true of most things in life.
Chapter Five
1. Paragraph begins with: “Do you know if anybody really exists?”
Alexis: I think Drew’s university friend group have a kind of archetypical quality to them (with the exception of Andy who is just there—although that itself is kind of an archetype).
I vaguely wanted Tinuviel and Sanee to be a little bit shoulder angel / shoulder devil, in that Tinuviel tends to be open-minded and optimistic, and Sanee is more cynical and down-to-earth.
But, as with most of our friends, they pivot quite a lot between roles.
And I definitely didn’t want a situation where the most politically progressive person was objectively the better friend—hence the fact Tinuviel isn’t always helpful or un-annoying.
2. Paragraph begins with: “Can we come back to the bit where your mum tells you stories about her lesbian affairs?”
Alexis: I think this, combined with the fact that they named her Tinuviel, tells you everything you need to know about Tinuviel’s parents.
3. Paragraph begins with: Except he did.
Alexis: Looking back, the dynamics of the Drew/Solace relationship go to some difficult places when you bear in mind the possibility that Solace might be trans or nonbinary (which he isn’t, but Drew doesn’t know that), and I’ve tried to tease that out a little better in this scene without totally rewriting it from the ground up.