game trailblazer

Chapter 31 The Appearance of BADD

Soon after the reception, under Zhang Lexing's urging, Honghe Fund signed formal investment agreements with John's MIPS project and Posak's multi-protocol router project, and successfully completed two important investments.Participating in the cocktail party has gained a lot, but Zhang Lexing has not been proud for a long time, but his PC game studio has encountered a big trouble.

Stimulated by the signing of the contract between the Lüberta development team and IBM, Zhang Lexing's Blue Dragon Studio (KF-Panda Studio) was established. Zhang Lexing's PC game studio also had its own name - Blue Dragon, and its own logo - Blue Dragon. colored Chinese dragon) the crowd is excited, and everyone is trying to have a similar opportunity.In this context, Mike Ronald, who is addicted to D&D (Dungeons and Dragons), took the lead and launched a development plan for a role-playing game (RPG) based on D&D rules. The development of RPG with D&D rules is actually relatively simple, because there are already quite mature paper role-playing games (TRPG) for reference, and the system of D&D itself is quite complete.

Ronald's development plan was quickly approved, and the game was successfully completed a few months later, just in time for the peak sales season of Christmas in 83.Ronald's RPG game on the computer screen shows the appearance of an RPG game close to paper. In the game, players can choose the protagonist of four professions (warrior, priest, mage and thief), and can play various roles throughout the game. Form a 6-person team expedition with two NPC characters.The scene of the game is called New Phlan. It is a city built on the ruins of an ancient city. The residents in the city have been working hard to drive away the monsters around them. That is why the player's adventure team was invited.The monster shapes in the game are basically designed according to the illustrations in the "Monster Handbook" (the monster information book of the D&D paper game), which brings a kind of friendly and authoritative feeling to the players.The game adopts the No.1 perspective when taking risks, and adopts a top-down perspective and a turn-based system when fighting, which gives the players on the previous D&D paper a sense of freshness.The mature system and novel experience have enabled this RPG game under the banner of D&D to achieve good sales performance.

Good sales results represent the best time to develop a sequel, and Ronald is no exception. The development of the second part is quickly put on the agenda, and everything seems to be developing in a good direction.However, the sudden arrival of a California district court summons disrupted everyone's plans. Zhang Lexing had to arrange professional lawyers to deal with the upcoming lawsuit, and Ronald's game development plan had to be temporarily suspended.

Speaking of this subpoena, Zhang Lexing has never understood how he was involved in his studio. It was clearly a case of a boy named Darren Molitor who accidentally killed a girl. Could it be because Molitor was a Computer gamers, have you ever played that RPG game released by Ronald?Could it be that people who have played games can use the game as a scapegoat if they have any problems in the future? Zhang Lexing suddenly understood where the banana surnamed Tao learned from and returned to China after many years.

Zhang Lexing knows that he is not a genius, and matters such as litigation must be handled by professionals. Rhodes Law Firm is the largest law firm in California, and it has also cooperated with Visual System for many years in legal affairs, so it is natural to become Zhang Lexing first choice.Relying on the diligent investigation of the law firm, the fog shrouded in Molitor's manslaughter case gradually dissipated, and the figure hidden behind it began to emerge. Only then did Zhang Lexing know that his real opponent was actually an organization called BADD.

The full name of BADD is Bothered-About-Dungeons-and-Dragons (Dragon and Dungeon Trouble), which is an organization founded by an American woman named Patricia Prine, which specializes in D&D games.In fact, the prejudice against games has been around for a long time. The first time it was related to the D&D game (the game in this period was still a pure RPG on paper), it was because of the suspected disappearance in Dallas in 1979.A student named Dallas fled the school after leaving a vague note, but was later recovered by a private investigator.However, due to the false reports of some media sensationalists during Dallas' disappearance, many people believed that D&D games were responsible for Dallas' disappearance.Many media who are keen to report on the relationship between D&D games and disappearances actually don't really know about D&D games, or even played them at all, just because this incident happened to be a hot topic and the interests dictated it.In order to increase sales, some media also deliberately made alarmist statements. Without any investigation, they labeled D&D games as dangerous, excessively addicted to mental health, and easily affecting children at home.Fortunately, heavyweights in the RPG industry on paper quickly stood up for interviews. Relying on these positive and objective reports, the previous negative public opinion gradually dissipated.

Patricia Pullin, who founded BADD, was actually just an ordinary American housewife before 1982, but something happened in the summer of that year that transformed her into a radical anti-D&D fighter.In June of that year, her son Owen committed suicide at home with a pistol that Patricia had bought for self-defense.Patricia was deeply irritated by this incident, and she was unwilling to accept the conclusion that her son committed suicide because of mental instability, so the hapless D&D game became the best scapegoat.With Patricia's instigation and persuasion, her family and some of her son's friends accepted her view that the D&D game was the culprit for Owen's suicide.

Patricia first targeted those who had played paper RPGs with her son. In her opinion, something must have happened during the game that caused Owen to fluctuate. For example, someone "cursed" Owen ’, before that unfortunate thing happened.Such groundless and absurd claims will never be accepted by the court, and Patricia's lawsuit was dismissed before it even started.Affected by this, Patricia did not back down. She believed that the reason why she failed was only because her strength was too weak. For this reason, she organized and established the BADD club, and attracted a large number of people who were dissatisfied with D&D games to join.In order to expand its influence, Patricia led her team members to distribute leaflets and pamphlets criticizing the D&D game everywhere, and continued to attend various radio and TV programs to publicly denounce the RPG game on paper.

"It's been two years, and I don't know that my son is playing Dungeons and Dragons..." Patricia said in an interview with a newspaper reporter.

"Besides monsters, still monsters... Except bloody killings, still bloody killings... This game can only bring people a sense of horror." A certain BADD member said when he participated in the famous TV talk show Geraldo.

"D&D games are evil... Playing them is addictive, a waste of money and time..." reads the BADD brochure.

……

These familiar arguments made Zhang Lexing feel like traveling through time and space. Unexpectedly, in the United States in the 80s, someone would have a deep understanding of the essence of electronic opium and electronic heroin theory a few years later. If Ms. Pat could meet Tao Banana, she would have Two people who share a lot of common language will definitely be able to have a good chat. Maybe the world’s first D&D game concentration camp will be born in the United States. Of course, the fee should also keep pace with the times and be changed to 4800 US dollars per person. And Ms. Pat herself might be able to win the title of "Quit D&D Game No. 1".

Jamie Rhodes, head of Rhodes Law Firm, took a document from his bag and put it in front of Zhang Lexing, and then said: "Mr. Zhang, this case was originally very simple. The relationship between Molitor and the victim There was no obvious conflict of interest, and nothing special happened to the two of them before the incident, so based on the superficial evidence, it should be manslaughter."

Zhang Lexing read the materials while listening, and the legal terminology in the whole article made people dizzy, but fortunately, the conclusion was still understandable.

"Mr. Zhang, in this matter, Patricia's BADD was very active. In order to get involved with the D&D game, they even brought in a group of so-called D&D experts to testify and issued a bunch of incomprehensible , The so-called far-fetched evidence is unprofessional at first glance." Jamie Rhodes continued: "Of course, the court ignored such a situation, and the matter would have ended here. But in a subsequent court hearing, Molitor suddenly changed his mind, claiming that the behavior at the time of the incident was influenced by the D&D game. Recently, an article signed by Molitor appeared in the promotional materials distributed by BADD. In the article, Molitor pushed all his crimes to D&D In the game, BADD also supported Molitor in many public occasions. As a result, Blue Dragon Studio was implicated in this way.”

"Is there any good way?" Zhang Lexing was very confused, never thought that playing a game would be so dangerous.

"The key to this case is Molitor. According to our analysis, I suspect that the reason why he changed his confession may be influenced by BADD. We plan to work hard in this regard. Send someone to investigate Molitor and BADD The relationship between the two, especially whether the two had contact before Molitor changed his confession, I believe that we should be able to gain something from this aspect." Jamie Lord briefly introduced his countermeasures.

"That's great. Let your firm handle this matter with full authority. I believe you will win." Zhang Lexing was a little relieved.

(End of this chapter)