As it turns out, the article ‘the’ can be pretty important. Let me explain. I recently rented the movie Gamers thinking that it was the movie The Gamers. The latter is a movie that I’ve heard about on many podcasts, and I’ve heard mostly good things about it. The former is the cinematic equivalent of a wedgie: uncomfortable, unpleasant, and leaving me feeling like the butt of someone’s joke.

Gamers is a movie about a gaming group about to break the world record for the most hours gamed, or some such thing; at least, that’s what it’s ostensibly about. In reality, it’s less about humor that gamers would enjoy, and more about frat-boy dick and fart jokes that constantly point out what big losers these gamers are. They fit into just about every stereotype that exists for RPG enthusiasts. If done tastefully, this would probably have come off as being charming and self-deprecating. As it is, it’s unfunny and mildly insulting. If you enjoy gaming, don’t rent it. If you enjoy movies, don’t rent it. If you enjoy dick and fart jokes, you might find something to like here.

So, this past week my wife and I picked up a Wii and a Wii Fit. Both of these were excellent purchases. The Wii is something that I’ve wanted pretty much since I found out about it; it’s really the only one of the three major consoles that I’m interested in, as I’m primarily a PC gamer. The Wii Fit was also a great purchase because, well, I’m out of shape, and I need something to motivate me to exercise and tell me how to do it right. And the Wii Fit does a great job of doing just that. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a video game tell me that I’m overweight, and then help me fix that. The exercises are great and there are a lot of nice built-in motivational systems. Also, I’m very impressed with the balance board and how sensitive it is to tiny fluctuations in weight distribution.

We also picked up Wii Play (mainly for the packaged Wii Remote) and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, because I had a lot of fun playing this with my friends who got a Wii when it first came out. Wii Play is decent value for money, considering that the game-and-remote package is only $10 more retail than a remote by itself, but only a few of the games have real replay value, and there are only nine total. Super Monkey Ball, on the other hand, has a single player mode (which I haven’t played yet), and 50 multiplayer minigames that my wife and I can play together. Some of them are misses, but enough of them are fun and replayable that I feel like the $6 that we wound up spending on it (we had a gift card from buying a vacuum cleaner) was warranted.

Last night, I went to Delaware to see R. A. Salvatore at Borders for a question/answer session and a book signing. He (and his son Geno) were there to promote their new books. The Salvatores put on a good show, they answered some good questions, and I got my copy of Homeland signed, which was nice. The highlight, I think, was R. A. Salvatore telling his “Wubba Wubba” story, which I had never heard before. Check it out if you like D&D and have no idea what I’m talking about; you’ll be glad you did.

Ok, so I’ve been playing Tiny Adventures on Facebook for a while now. While I think it’s an amusing little diversion, I don’t feel like it does a great job of marketing or promoting D&D. It’s just too dissimilar from D&D to work as a marketing tool, in my opinion. Someone who knows nothing of D&D and plays Tiny Adventures, expecting a preview of the RPG, is going to come away with an impression of a game that’s extremely random, a little boring, full of randomized loot (most of which you can’t use and have to sell), and in which you really have very little control over what happens to your in-game avatar. D&D is not those things, and there’s a lot of great stuff in D&D that doesn’t make the jump to Tiny Adventures at all. I think the worst offender, though, is that your choice of race and class acts as a strait-jacket more than anything else. Most of your prowess as an adventurer seems to come from your gear, and your class (not so much your race, which barely matters) simply serves to limit the gear available to you. Like I said, I enjoy playing with Tiny Adventures for about five minutes or so per day, but as a way to promote D&D, I think it does the exact opposite.