19th Level

Grok means "to understand," of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, "to drink" and "a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. 'Grok' means all of these. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate'—proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you—then you can hate it. By hating yourself. By this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate—and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste.  Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land  introduces the term "grok" which is a bit difficult to understand - I've always viewed it as a full and total understandi...

Back in the 1980's I remember seeing FASA's Doctor Who RPG at my local Waldenbooks. Being a boxed set I couldn't flip through it but I remember being intrigued by the back cover text: The Master has stolen a weapon that will give him ultimate control of the universe and of time itself. The Daleks are invading Earth. The Cybermen are terrorizing the space lanes. And the Sontarans and the Rutans are battling to see who wins the galaxy. Only YOU, the Time Lords and Companions of the Celestial Intervention Agency, can stop these villains from changing the course of history. Your weapons are your wits and your TARDIS. To join the Doctor in his adventures to defeat the foes of the universe, you only need your imagination, a pencil, some paper, and this game.  I wasn't familiar with the television show but my father would sometimes watch it on our local PBS station, WEDW Channel 49. I eventually picked up the game and was pleased to discover the rules were remarkabl...

It really isn't my fault that I'm a Trekkie. When I was a preschooler in the suburbs of Syracuse back in the early 1970s my mother would put WPIX Star Trek reruns (all the way from NYC, there was cable tv awfully early in that area) on for me while she made dinner every weeknight at 6 PM. I liked the funny guy with the pointy ears. My uncle and godfather was the family Trekkie. He took me to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 . Truth be told my 8-year old self found it a bit boring. However in 1982 I absolutely loved Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That was a movie an 10-year old (almost 11 that summer) could appreciate it. Though seeing ear-worms on a giant drive-in movie screen was incredibly gross. By that time I had my first official D&D group. We used to meet in the Howard Whittemore Library in Naugatuck, CT. One winter I was hanging outside the library waiting for for my parents to pick me up after our game was complete when I ran into the GM of anoth...