Folly of the Faithful Canine

A role-playing game before Dungeons and Dragons
That didn’t have even a title
Has nevertheless left its mark with a story
That’s worth a poetic recital.

A game master spoke of a garden that had
A gazebo upon a small hill.
A player named Eric requested more details.
The master obliged him, but still

It soon was apparent that Eric assumed
A gazebo was some sort of creature.
He tried to detect any goodness with magic.
In objects, that just doesn’t feature.

He called the gazebo; it didn’t respond,
So he fired an arrow right in it.
The master suggested an axe or some flames.
(This all happened in less than a minute.)

Since Eric had neither, he opted to flee,
But the master had had quite enough.
He said the gazebo awoke, chased down Eric,
And ate him. That structure was tough!

Poor Eric was planning to make a new mage
To avenge his dead paladin then.
The rest of the players defined a gazebo.
He wouldn’t attack one again.

Some 15 years later, the story got published
In amateur press magazines.
It’s led to some 21st-century jokes
Among folks in the RPG scene.

The symbol of clubs in a playing card deck
Doesn’t look like a club much to me.
A forumite said that it came from a myth,
But the sources I found disagree.

In French, it’s called tréfle, which translates to clover.
Historians therefore suspect
The English used Spanish suits first and continued
The name when they swapped out the deck.

That also explains why the symbol of spades
Hardly shows what a shovel looks like.
Its name’s from the Old Spanish word for a sword,
Which the French had replaced with a pike.

So why aren’t the hearts still called cups and the diamonds
Called coins as the Spaniards would do?
The symbols are easy to recognize; naming
Them wrong makes you sound like a fool.

A forumite went looking for a parody of ABBA's "Super Trouper" called "Koopa Troopa," in reference to an anthropomorphic turtle species from the Mario games. He found a lousy one and made an open request for another. I found a second version that wasn't bad but decided to try my hand at it anyway. For the sake of more difference, I focused on the character's role in the Mario Kart series rather than a platform game.

Koopa Troopa, racing in a go-kart,
Drops a big green shell,
Bidding me farewell
As everybody drives pell-mell.

I was nervous when the cup began,
As I started right out in last place.
Couldn’t hear the cheering of a fan,
But I managed to set a fast pace.
In a minute, I had passed most other racers.
Suddenly I hear a sound,
And I know that it means trouble as I skid across the ground,

Because the Koopa Troopa doesn’t have a slow kart.
Using one bright star,
It will travel far,
Not like normal turtles are.

And then the Koopa Troopa, racing in a go-kart,
Fires a big red shell,
Making me unwell.
My injuries are sure to swell.

Facing lava pits and falling stones?
How can any track be so risky?
No one even put up traffic cones.
Was the management drunk on whiskey?
Nonetheless, I plan to gain a golden trophy.
Hear them play my winning theme.
Still, I must remember things here are not always as they seem,

Because the Koopa Troopa doesn’t have a slow kart,
Thanks to that darn star.
This is so bizarre.
We shouldn’t even be on par.

And then the Koopa Troopa, racing in a go-kart,
Fires a big blue shell,
Causing me to yell,
“I wish that you would go to…”

I hope to stand upon the stairs
With other winners; I’ll have mine, and they’ll have theirs.
If I’m not higher than the shorty at my side,
I think I’ll ditch my kart and hitch a ride.

That stupid Koopa Troopa doesn’t have a slow kart.
What a shining star.
This will leave a scar.
I’m feeling like I’m stuck in tar.

When Super Mario Bros. was released on NES,
Some players soon discovered quite an unintended mess:
By jumping off the exit pipe of World One-Dash-Two
While holding down and right, you let the hero pass right through
A wall of bricks to reach the open-secret Warp Zone pipes
Before they’ve loaded properly. What happens next? Oh, yipes!
The middle pipe just takes you to the start of World 5.
The others take you somewhere that the hero can’t survive,
Because it loops around without a way to let him out.
It wasn’t even programmed! How’d this feature come about?
It looks much like a certain other level, since a bug
Throws off the system’s math. The explanation makes me shrug.
I do know this: It’s designated World Blank-Dash-One,
“The Minus World.” Players often check it out for fun.
The Famicom Disk System version, only in Japan,
Gets even more bizarre, with three whole levels that you can
Complete, and then the game pretends you beat it all the way.
What happens in those levels? There’s too much for me to say,
Except they break a lot of rules enforced throughout the game,
So once you try them out, it really doesn’t feel the same.
Some hackers wanted even more and found a way to end
The endless one, revealing more weird levels to transcend.
The Minus World has to be the most oft-cited glitch
In console gaming history, and now I have the itch.

We nearly all know Simon Says, the classic schoolyard game,
But recently I’ve come to wonder where we got the name.
The earliest known version uses Cicero instead.
(Of course, if all obeyed him, he would not have lost his head.)
We now have many variants, but Simon leads the way
In several different languages across the world today.
It’s possible that players merely thought it sounded nice,
But one historic figure I’ve seen nominated twice:
De Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in the Second Barons’ War,
Took over all of England; he sure gave the king what for.
He didn’t reign for long before his own assassination,
But maybe it was long enough for age-old adulation.

Most role-playing games involve classes,
Which shape what the players can do.
Some patterns emerge across series,
And trust me: I’ve tried quite a few.

There’s often a class just called “fighter”
Or “warrior”—something like that.
Their brawn is quite handy for melees,
But that’s about it—kind of flat.

There might be an archer or sniper,
Who does the job best with a bow.
Except with a bonus for flyers,
The damage per hit is quite low.

For power and range put together,
The wizard or mage is on top,
But magic is pricy and fleeting.
They don’t fare so well once they stop.

In games where a party assembles,
There should be a cleric or priest.
They’re special for healing their allies,
But combat? For that, they’re the least.

A thief or a rogue may be present,
Despite being heroes in name.
They’re swift and amass the provisions,
But fighting with daggers is lame.

In some games, you may see a knight class,
The one with the highest defense.
They have to be strong for their armor,
But speed’s not their forte, which makes sense.

You might find a type of arcanist
Who summons foes back from the dead
Or someone who captures the weak ones
And swaps their alignment instead.

Take note that a bard or a dancer
Is there to give allies a boost.
They may or may not be the same class
To have the foes’ powers reduced.

The monk class is often bare-handed
But nimble and tough to suffice.
Berserkers are forceful yet flimsy.
The druid can shape-shift; that’s nice.

The paladin’s power is holy.
The gambler leaves fighting to chance.
I may have omitted some patterns,
But these are enough for a glance.

These people I knew led some semi-charmed lives,
As their fridge always had what they needed,
And anything else could appear in a flash.
Even trainings were swiftly completed.

They didn’t use space for the clothes they weren’t wearing.
Whenever they wanted to change,
They would pivot in place, and behold, a new outfit!
To them, this was not at all strange.

They bought a new house when they didn’t have jobs,
And in no time, they found themselves hired.
All they did was to glance in the paper for ads
And declare that those jobs were desired.

Their neighborhood also was pretty darn friendly,
The crime rate apparently low,
And the weather looked pleasant day in and day out
All year round (hope they didn’t want snow).

I still should acknowledge the downsides as well.
Their employers were very demanding.
They got zero days off, and if one second late,
They’d be fired. That’s not understanding.

And as for their time saving, that was a wash.
I considered how slowly they’d walk.
When they crossed from one side of the house to the next,
Twenty minutes could pass on the clock.

Perhaps what I envied the least in these people
Pertained to their limited will.
I could force them to do many things and desist
From mere thinking. That gave me a chill.

In truth, they did poorly when left in control
Of themselves; they could die of starvation
Or pass out from exhaustion or sully their pants.
Boy, the Sims were a crazy creation.

Mario Bros.? A ludicrous game
For calling them both by one plumber’s first name.
And what’s with the ape who got named for King Kong?
That’s “Donkey,” not “Monkey”; it sounds rather wrong.
But “right” gets too obvious: Take Metal Gear
Or Metal Gear Solid. What’s going on here?
And how many fantasies claim to be last?
Well, “final.” Regardless, that series ain’t past.
Is Mega Man mega or even a man?
The Smash Bros. titles—who thought of that plan?
Whatever the reason, it sure seems to me
That silly names reign in the game industry.

There’s a place I used to visit with my sister every week.
It was always fun, but now when I describe it, you may freak.
The people there were all the same in height and girth and weight.
There seemed to be no kids apart from us (it wasn’t late).
A lot of folks were mean; it’s just as well they had no youths.
Quite few of them had houses, and the houses had no roofs.
Don’t get me wrong; they often had construction going on,
But any day, an edifice might suddenly be gone.
There was neither much for plant life nor for paving of a street.
It was even hard to find a place with anything to eat.
But those facts rarely bothered us, because our time was grand
In the itty-bitty little place we knew as Legoland.

(ADDENDUM: If the ending confuses you, understand that I'm not talking about the theme park, which didn't exist in my childhood. Ads at that time used the term "Legoland" to refer to pretty much any large personal collection of LEGO blocks, so my sister and I co-opted it as the name of a township of sorts.)

I recently browsed Farmer's Almanac (not surprised the old-fashioned thing is approaching its bicentennial) and, in testament to my lingering youthfulness, took most interest in the game section. One of the easiest puzzles also struck me as the most curious. Let me paraphrase in brief:

Some kid broke a neighbor's window during baseball. Each questioned player told one truth and one lie. Who did it?

Four of the five pairs of statements that follow take the form of "It wasn't X. It was Y." The last one goes, "It was X. It was Y." You don't need much logic to notice that all the "wasn't" statements have to be true. From there, you can rule out one of the last two statements, completely ignoring three testimonies.

I don't blame FA for varying the difficulties from elementary level to, well, frustrating for me. But this setup raises several questions that must not have crossed the writer's mind. Why would all the players make various false accusations? How would anyone determine that they alternated between truths and lies except by already knowing which was which? Why would they bother with the denials, which are implied by the accusations? And why accuse two people back to back for what's decidedly the work of just one of them?

You can call me picky, but hey, this is a logic puzzle. Logical thinking doesn't stop with the rules. ;)