{"id":28797,"date":"2015-09-29T18:44:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T23:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=28797"},"modified":"2015-10-12T11:26:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T16:26:48","slug":"half-time-ch1-no-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=28797","title":{"rendered":"Half Time CH1: No Quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey, folks, Rutskarn here. I think we can all agree that the one thing really missing on this blog–the one subject you’d demand a website called Twenty Sided <\/em>cover–is the world of professional sports. With that in mind, may I present my foray into the first videogame adaptation of Blood Bowl.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Congratulations, lad,” said McGurrt, “you just bought yourself a Blood Bowl team.”<\/p>\n

I live a fast-paced life with little room for complications. That morning, I had followed a train of logic that followed: I needed money. Sports teams make money. This sports team was very cheap for probably no reason in particular. To learn any other details before signing the contract would be not only irresponsible, but inconsiderate towards the feelings of others, particularly: Vicker the Shark, Tomag Loansemdollar, Zigler the Shark, Knee Breakin’ Frank, Dickie the Shark, and Mr. I Will Kill All Deadbeats, Esq, whose interests rates were fantastic <\/i>thank you very much.<\/p>\n

“Something the matter?” said McGurrt. “You look worried.”<\/p>\n

“What? No. Why would I be worried?”<\/p>\n

“I don’t know. I mean, you haven’t even seen them yet.”<\/p>\n

“Exactly!”<\/p>\n

It turns out I’m not very good at spotting red flags.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As McGurrt showed me around facilities that looked and smelled like rotten teeth, I feigned composure as best as I could. So the team’s gym was a little neglected. I didn’t need to win the league to pay off my debts; all I needed to do was to turn in a half-decent season, score a few goals, get my sponsor to pay out, and we’d be golden. And the sport we were talking about was Blood Bowl, for crying out loud. The game’s ball just gave people something to do with their hands while their feet were busy killing people. Unless McGurrt had somehow been fielding a team of squat obese pacifists, I should be able to pull this off somehow<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“You’ve much experience with the sport, then?” he said as we came to the equipment room.<\/p>\n

“Yeah! Tons. If you could actually just remind me real quick how, exactly, one…”<\/p>\n

“Get the ball to the goal.”<\/p>\n

“Right! Just checking. Here, hit me with a…pass? Pass.”<\/p>\n

He lobbed the ball underhand to me.<\/p>\n

“I got\u00e2\u20ac"oh. Whoops. That’s surprisingly slippery, huh? Is there a trick to holding it?”<\/p>\n

“Oh, aye,” he said. “We think there might be.”<\/p>\n

“Pardon?”<\/p>\n

“Well, follow me, then,” he said. “Time for you to meet the boys.”<\/p>\n

That’s when he led me through to the locker room. There were, in fact, the boys. There were a dozen pairs of wide eyes staring up at me.<\/p>\n

“Oh, shit,” I said.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac"<\/p>\n

It makes sense that to have a diverse and well-rounded world, you need to have halflings. You can’t have everyone out there slaying dragons or discovering strange new metals or pushing the boundaries of magical knowledge. To round everything you needed to have\u00e2\u20ac"in the most broad and general way\u00e2\u20ac"someone willing to hunker down intellectually and emotionally over pastrami sandwiches. But this is a general principle; it does not apply fractally to all worldly pursuits. I stayed up all night checking: pastrami sandwiches do not actually feature much in Blood Bowl. Possibly even less than I had guessed.<\/p>\n

My team was called the Skeeters. They had never played a match of Blood Bowl as a team before. They looked to me with eyes brimming with hope that they would be guided, mentored, and fed promptly. Good. Why shouldn’t they be <\/i>disappointed?<\/p>\n

“Let’s call roll,” I said. “Where’s, uh…Potatoe?”<\/p>\n

“Present!” cried three people.<\/p>\n

“Fuck me.<\/em>“<\/p>\n

FUCK me.<\/div>
FUCK me.<\/div><\/p>\n

The halflings winced at the sudden profanity.<\/p>\n

“Sorry. Sorry. Broccoli…s?”<\/p>\n

“Here!”<\/p>\n

“Giant murderous tree thing number one?”<\/p>\n

“Huuuurmgh.”<\/p>\n

“Okay, quick <\/i>rules question. How many of those am I allowed to have? Maximum?”<\/p>\n

“Two!” piped Potatoe (A).<\/p>\n

“Two? Okay. And how fast do they run?”<\/p>\n

Broccoli squinted as though reviewing some internal playback. “I guess <\/i>they can move.”<\/p>\n

“You know what, let’s just get our strategy together right now. Don’t teams have specialists? So who here has thrown the most passes?”<\/p>\n

“Does it count if it’s to the other team?”<\/p>\n

“Sure.”<\/p>\n

“Does it have to have been on purpose<\/i>?”<\/p>\n

“Well, yes.”<\/p>\n

There was a long silence.<\/p>\n

“Alright, look,” I said, taking a knee. “I’m not going to lie to you people. This is…the best team I have ever coached. All of you show tremendous promise. I guarantee each and every one of you is going to have a food stand special named after you before this season is over. You’re all…heroes<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

“Are you okay?”<\/p>\n

“I am crying because of this weighty <\/i>destiny.”<\/p>\n

“You look like you’re gonna be sick.”<\/p>\n

“Sick with pride, son. Sick with pride.”<\/p>\n

This was going to be a very long very short <\/i>season.<\/p>\n

The Skeeters: We may be little, but we suck mightily.<\/div>
The Skeeters: We may be little, but we suck mightily.<\/div><\/p>\n

I had five hundred thousand gold in war chest money to equip this team for the upcoming season. The money isn’t actually mine; it’s contributed by a wide network of investors and sponsors who are mathematically nearly as screwed as I am. The sport is heavily regulated, so fortunately nobody can just walk away with their money.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, <\/i>nobody can just walk away with their money. Not even if you forge a dozen signatures and flash your team owner’s hat to an amicably sadistic goblin clerk in a cardigan. I was forced to pursue my last resort, which was to spend this money on the team.<\/p>\n

The first thing to do after enrolling in the local league was to negotiate with my sponsor for additional cash. I projected to him that I would win ten percent of games and place second to last in the league; the sponsor rewarded what he optimistically assumed was my honesty by injecting a little extra cash into my kitty. I used it to hire some assistant coaches, accredited and overqualified by the fact that they’ve actually met a Blood Bowl player, a few apothecaries to keep the fatalities to a dull roar, a few “fans” to throw things and make a nuisance, and a few cheerleaders to sympathize with the burden of pretending this was going to be remotely okay. And that was that. My team was together. The season was starting. My fate was in their tiny, fat little hands. If i could win just a couple <\/em>games this season, I might get out of this in one piece. A couple games. One or two.<\/p>\n

You think the locker room has any extra kneepads?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, folks, Rutskarn here. I think we can all agree that the one thing really missing on this blog–the one subject you’d demand a website called Twenty Sided cover–is the world of professional sports. With that in mind, may I present my foray into the first videogame adaptation of Blood Bowl. “Congratulations, lad,” said McGurrt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}