I've mentioned that I dismissed Basic and Expert D&D back in the day, because I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and also because I was an insufferable 13 -year-old. But reading about Moldvay and Cook's games on Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia lately has left me itching to get my hands on them and see what they were all about. Because they sound hugely fun.

So when I dropped in at Half Price Books today to kill some time while our car was in the shop, and saw multiple copies of Basic and Expert in the game section for five or six bucks each -- it was a bloody Christmas miracle.

True story: I never played nor read The Keep on the Borderlands. Which is sort of like the 80s gaming geek equivalent of not having seen Casablanca.

I saw these ominous figures in downtown Seattle during my commute the other morning. They look as if they work for some law enforcement agency in the lower reaches of the Abyss, and they have some questions they'd like to ask. Unpleasant ones.

In a Businessweek article Seth Priebasch of SCVNGR declares the decade of “social” over – by which he means the decade spent constructing the frameworks that we now use to share and communicate. The dust has settled, and we’re entering an era in which game dynamics will shape how people live, work, share information and make decisions.

Seth describes three (of seven) specific game dynamics that can be used to influence behavior: Appointment, Progression and Communal Discovery. You’ll find these dynamics at work in our lives in areas as diverse as Farmville, World of WarCraft, happy hours and supermarket loyalty programs.

Several years ago I worked in marketing as a copywriter. In my off-hours I wrote multiple blogs on a variety of subjects, and did a podcast for a year. I talked to people with names like "Flaming Weasel" on websites with strange names, that worked in ways that were hard to explain to casual Web users. I did all this because it made my life better, happier and more interesting.

At some point I connected the dots between what I did at work and all of these online activities, and I realized that the business I was in -- telling people about things in ways that, one hoped, would influence how they thought and behaved in regard to those things -- was changing in a fundamental way. I started to tell my colleagues about these new ways that people were getting and sharing information, and suggest ideas on how we could use them.I became "the social media guy", a role that was formalized when I joined a PR agency as a Digital Strategist.

Recently I've been taking on a role that's giving me a sense of deja vu: my work and non-work lives are colliding once more so that I am now "the game guy." This is because I have the strong sense that what Seth's saying is right on target. We're in another one of those transforming moments in the world of communications. It's not as dramatic and obvious a change as the rapid, widespread shift from offline to online, "socialized" content. I think it's a matter of understanding how communication, influence and motivation now work in an always-on, highly-connected, highly-mobile culture.

People are incorporating randomness into their lives; they're going multiplayer, leveling up, competing with strangers for digital rewards (or for the pure joy of it), they're having passionate discussions about strategy. They're using online games to stay in touch with distant loved ones. They're discovering how play can change the world for good. 

 So! Where do we start, then?

Oh, right. Silly me.

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>

Minecraft is a sandbox game which allows players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. And then accidentally set them on fire.

Via @WindowsGamer

A psychedelic take on the olden days of Dungeons & Dragons adorns the Wizards of the Coast D&D bus at the Penny Arcade Expo. (Bear in mind the "olden days" were when I started playing. I am olden.)

The parking lot also featured a tent where WoTC demoed Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game: An Essential D&D Starter (4th Edition D&D) -- aka "the red box"-- and the Castle Ravenloft Board Game; giant dice that people could lift and heave; and a stage for activities such as a spelling bee for words like Blibdoolpoolp, Flumph and Zagyg.

The Red Box demo was a lot of fun. I suspect I'm a key target audience for this product: I enjoy 4th Edition but when I play it I'm often overwhelmed by all of the stuff I have to manage just to hit monsters. My character sheet is like a control panel for a fighter jet. Red Box appears to fix that -- I can go as simple or complex as I want.

Over on his Facebook page, Paizo's Erik Mona says that they're planning to release a starter set for Pathfinder within a year or two. Bringing in new players and activating dormant gamers = good.

Yo, when I hit it, I hit el-shift oh to the quote, and then dollah...

It's that time of year again, when downtown Seattle is submerged in a tide of nerds; when the priorities for just a few days become creative play, and being enthusiastic about things, and sharing amazing experiences with people. When people can come together in peace and geek out en masse.

I will be there, O my droogies (and Twittering.) If you see me, say hey!

In his "black hobbits" post, Jeff Rients recounts how his D&D party encounters a group of Chaos-affiliated halflings on the first level of a dungeon, where they are busy building...a parade float.