How can killing 12 goblins be so entertaining?

Last Sunday was the first meting for my Pathfinder campaign. For those that don't know, Pathfinder is Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. It's 95% or more the same as D&D. The reason I went with a Pathfinder campaign is that I'm sick of buying new editions of D&D where it feels the rules are changed so the company can make a buck. It doesn't seem like Pathfinder is looking to change it's core rules which I am happy about.

The group ended up with a dwarven cleric, a human fighter, a half-elf paladin, a monk, a ninja, and I believe another fighter type. All characters started at first level.

My Pathfinder world is pretty liberal. If a player wants to play a specific class, they can. I let any and all gods into my campaign. I also have a fairly generic city as a stage. It's on a river with some hills across from it. Diamonds and precious metals from the hills drive the economy. There is a decent sized forest below the city. Farm land to the north of the city and about 20 miles to the north is a dimensional rift that came into being about 10 years ago. From this rift have come many creatures and threats that have plagued the city.

Seeing how almost everybody was new to Pathfinder and I had played more 4th edition of D&D lately the first night was make characters and run a small fight to ease into Pathfinder. We had a blast. The was a simple set up: the player characters happened to all be in a tavern when some farmers entered and pronounced that they needed adventurer-types to seek out and stop a marauding group of goblins harassing the farmers. The characters all signed up and thus the group was born.

Some of the game developed 'on the fly' as the PC's first made a camp and then investigated some nearby woods were the goblins were suspected to be. Sure enough, the PC's found some tracks and set up and ambush. Due to real world time limits and also wanting to get the action going the goblins came down the path later that night.

And thus, dice and imagination took over and the fight began. The dwarf cleric made no attempt to hide and waited in the middle of the trail. The ninja and another hid in trees. Two of the fighter types hid in fox holes. Each side spotted one another and the fight was on! So, how could this have been so much fun? Seeing PC's try to communicate without alerting the goblins, the goblins hurling insults at the PC's making the death of the goblins that much more meaningful, and a ninja leaping out of trees plunging his weapon through the chest of his victim. The cleric hit with two confirmed crits splattering his teammates with massive amounts of goblin blood. And for comic relief, a goblin acting all big and bad slipped in some bat guano leaving himself open to be attacked and annihilated.

In the end, the excitement of just playing again, hanging with good people and brand new friends, along with crazy ideas and zany actions made killing 12 lowly goblins a very enjoyable event.

The campaign will attempt to meet every other weekend because Sunday nights are sometimes tough to make happen on a weekly basis. We'll see how it goes but the first night of adventuring turned out to be a blast with much swearing, killing and the quoting of movies and much fun was had by all.

So,... it seems at least once a month I see or hear about a blogger or an article, usually by women by sometimes by men pointing out just how bad comic books and worse, fans of comics are or can be to women. And they are correct. But what surprises me is just how many people speak about it. Some examples in comics for people that may not know is pretty much just how women are drawn. They are drawn as objectified sex objects most of the time: giant boobs, tiny waists, nice facial features. I read or did read Marvel comics quite a bit and I can't recall a fat or even a plain looking female character. Guys get off easier, most are heroic but some are ugly or not male model types. Wolverine I would suggest is a prime example. So it's not a level playing field.

I consider myself first and foremost a gamer. To me, a gamer is a person that plays games. I tend to have more credence to those that play role-playing games or specialized board games or even Magic the Gathering. To me, a gamer is more someone I would see at a gaming convention. I have lots of friends that play XBox or Playstation that pretty much laugh off Dungeons & Dragons or Magic the Gathering. So, to me, those folks aren't quite the definition of gamer in my opinion.

By my definition, many gamers are also comic book fans. My friends use to own a comic book store and we would regularly see the comic book/gamers as opposed to just a comic reader. All in all, both segments were some of the nicest people I have ever met. But like anything else, the are dickheads and dirtbags as well.

Here's how this relates to comic book conventions and other such things. Again, the vast majority of comic book readers that I have meet are nice people. But even nice people do stupid things. And sexual harassment is a very valid concern. The rules of conduct as I understand them at a comic book con are pretty simple: treat people, all people with respect. Do not touch anybody without their consent. Do not make lewd suggestions to anybody. I would think that should pretty much cover it but I might be missing something that's just escaping me at the moment.

But there is reality. Guys do stupid things around women. Their brains can go right out the window. For a long time and in some places I would gather that it is still the normal that comic book guys are geeks, nerds, socially inept, don't know how to react around girls, and many other social shortcomings. The Big Bang Theory in part plays this for big laughs. In a repeat episode I recently watched Penny calls Howard creepy and essentially socially inept. The live crowd actually goes pretty quiet as the Penny character dresses down  Howard and Howard leaves the scene clearly dejected. Penny refuses to back off telling the rest of the gang that it is the truth. Later, she is goaded into apologizing which she does. Howard takes it to heart and tries to kiss Penny and she belts him in the nose. I found it pretty funny. It's funny because it's safe. You like the characters and know that Penny has the power to stop Howard who once again has over-stepped his bounds. But if this scene played out in real life, I wonder how many people would really be laughing.

So yes, I am defending guys here. I am defending the loutish behavior towards women but I want to clarify which guys I'm defending. I'm not defending the guy that's a jerk. I'm not defending the guy that's going to treat women as lesser beings no matter where the social event is happening. I want to be clear that I am defending the nerd. That guy that has been picked on his whole life, that guy that is weird because as a young adult he still reads comic books and plays Dungeons & Dragons, that guy that doesn't catch the eye of the woman he longs for because he's fat or scrawny and probably has no chance at getting a hot girl because he has under-developed social skills, the guy that has little to no interaction with the female species.

I'm saying every stereo-type has some truth to it. Is it a big surprise when a woman, any woman but especially someone that is attractive, dressed in costume at a con get harassed? Zero tolerance would be a wonderful thing but it doesn't happen.

A woman can have a powerful effect on a man. Even something as simple as a smile can cause problems. To a lonely guy, a socially inept guy, or a guy desperate for acceptance, especially from a female, a simple smile can be grossly mistook as an invitation for more interaction or even the facade of the girl having real interest in nerd. Then the guy blows it by telling his life story in the 10 seconds he has to impress the girl before she walks off to the next attending fans who would like a picture of her excellently crafted costume.

The women are not the problem. The costumes are not the problem. But a guy lacking in social skills can misinterpret and make himself believe there is something there when a total stranger is merely showing kindness to a fellow human being. That's the power a woman can have over a man. 

I attend a convention called DragonCon. It's huge: takes up 4 hotels, has upwards of 70,000 or more people packed into said hotels and tons and tons of people in great costumes of all sorts. Statistically, something bad is bound to happen. There's so many people, lots of attractive people and many wear costumes. They do not ask for harassment, the costume they are wearing does not equal consent of anything, but shit happens. There are going to be horror stories. 

Like it or not, I think we can all agree that comic books are a male dominated field. I believe I heard something startling like DC Comics has something like 3% of its creative workforce being female. Think about that. The presence of women creators in the second biggest comic book company in the U.S. is virtually non-existent. I've heard computer gaming companies as an industry are pretty much the same. Is there any wonder why there is a problem? 

So that's my rant. There are always going to be douche bags that treat women like crap. They are in every facet of life including comics. But I'm also saying there are guys that make bad choices because this is the only venue where their fantasies might, well - not really in all likelihood, but might come true. And they lose sight of the proper path to get there.   

So,... why in the hell would I identify with a female comic book character while growing up???

I went to middle school and high school in the early and mid 1980's graduating in 1988 at the tender age of 17. Through an older brother's friend I was introduced to the Marvel Super-Hero Role-Playing game which eventually led me into reading comics. I had had some old comics from my even younger days but never collected anything. I can remember buying two comics to start of with - Green Lantern and West Coast Avengers limited series.
I went with Green lantern because he was awesome in the old Super Friends Saturday morning cartoons. It was actually titled something else but it was the cartoon where the good guys fought The Legion of Doom every week. When I read through the comic John Stewart had just recently replaced Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. I dropped Green Lantern pretty fast because it wasn't the guy I knew and just had no interest in this new guy.
I bought West Coast Avengers, I think it was issue 3 of a 4 issue limited series, because it had Iron Man. I knew Iron Man from previous comics. I'm blanking at the moment if Iron Man was Tony Stark or Jim Rhodes at the time of the comic. I didn't know at the time but I ended up favoring the Marvel Comics universe over DC which is Batman & Superman. The next time I was able to buy some comics I ended up with Marvel comics.
Back in the day I bought comics from a spinner rack at the local mall from Walden's book, a now defunct bookstore chain like Barnes & Noble. I can remember seeing this cover of a woman in flames and another woman in a swimsuit and thigh high boots opposing a third woman in corset and boots. I was intrigued and kinda turned on. Hey, I was around 14, maybe, possibly younger. I think I was a freshman in high school or 8th grade. The book was Uncanny X-Men back when there was just one X-Men book a month. The swimsuit/thigh high boots girl was Rachel Summers, daughter of Jean Grey and Scott Summers, Phoenix and Cyclops of the X-Men. Little did I know by that one glance at that cover that Rachel would become my all-time favorite comic book character.

So I bought that X-Men comic and because the rack would often have an issue or two of the previous months I bought those as well. I was well on my way to becoming an X-Men junkie. And boy, did I end up loving the X-Men. They were totally awesome.  :)

So here was this character, Rachel Summers, later Rachel Grey but I pretty much dislike what her creator later did to the character...

Anyways, Rachel was pretty cool. She was surrounded by the likes of Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler. But Rachel's voice resonated with me. She was from an alternate future - it is comic books after all - and her parents didn't know who she was because they weren't married and had no children in this universe. She was new to the X-Men and an outsider even though they loved her in her own universe where they were all aunts and uncles to her. In this new universe Rachel was persecuted and mis-trusted as she tried to make the world a better place and prevent the disaster that destroyed her own world.

I really bought into that. My family was always loving but in my own little head and being the youngest of 5 my views didn't carry much weight. I was always the tag along as well. I was usually skinny and not the best at sports so I was picker on at school by dickheads and those that felt they could overpower me. But I always wanted to add to the world more than I took away from it.

So that's how I ended up relating, at least in my own skewered view, to Rachel's character and she became my favorite. It also helped that she ended up being a hothead ready to use her formidable powers to punish and even kill when necessary. That appealed to me because I couldn't do that in my own world.

Another event was that she got the red 'Hound' costume. Fortunately, the man who ended up becoming my all-time favorite artist, Alan Davis, handed the art chores. Rachel grew from a skinny red-head into a great looking red head wearing spikes and stilettos. The costume, when drawn, either looks rather stupid, or really freaking cool. Davis made it awesome, others, not so much.

Later on, Chris Claremont, X-Men writer for over a decade was tossed off the books only to later return. He ended up using Rachel again after a long hiatus for the character. To my chagrin he dumped almost every positive aspect of the character and made her the rookie of the team and often fairly lame including turning her into a human dinosaur. Ugh. This is when Rachel dumped the Summers last name and adopted Grey. Boo, hiss. And since all this disaster the character has been a minor character in the X-Men lore since. At least she's gotten a bit better more recently.

So Rachel, in her heyday, will always remain my favorite character. She was the character that was mistrusted, misunderstood, was a bit of an outsider even in her own family, and persecuted even when trying to make the world a better and safer place. I related to that at an early age and it's stuck with me ever since.