A moment with Meg: This playa’s got game

Meg McCormick takes time from her busy editing schedule to interview one of our own employees, long-time grammar and punctuation nerd, William Morris.

What is LAG?
We are the Luther Association of Gamers, specifically tabletop Role-Playing/War Games and Card Games. Sorry, no Halo. And while I’m at it, I’m going to use your column for a free advertisement space: if you want on the LAG mailing list, e-mail me at morrwi01 or our beloved president at nowobr01. Come to the Dark Side; we have brownies!

How did it start?
We had a group of friends playing Dungeons and Dragons, and almost every week someone would ask us, “Hey, do you guys have room for another player?” Each time we had to say, “No, we really don’t.” What we realized is that if this many people want to start playing, what we needed was some sort of forum for people to find each other and start their own games. We started LAG last spring as a way for everyone to get their inner nerds together and have some fun.

What kinds of games do you play?
At the big gamer nights (every other month or so) I’ve enjoyed trying out some new games like GURPS (don’t ask what it stands for) and Munchkin. There’s still plenty that I have yet to try, though.

What is your favorite game and why?
I’m still a D&D guy. I am one who believes that the real world is severely lacking in awesome things like Dragons (and Dungeons). Hanging out with friends and smiting the bejeesus out of fictional evil-doers never really gets old, and I highly recommend that anyone having a bad day try smiting a fictional evil-doer and observing the uplifting effects upon your psyche.

Do you have any nicknames for each other, like “The Destroyer?”
I suppose character names might count as nicknames, since technically each of us is pretending to be a fictional person. One of the characters in my D&D game is named Tom Cruise, which results in just as many odd jokes as one might imagine.

Describe the perfect gaming date.
Any social event that combines the designation “gaming” with “date” has already met and surpassed the limits of perfection. I’m not going to be picky about it.

Does gaming affect your love life?
Short answer: What love life? Long answer: I don’t think so. Luther is blessed with an abundance of females who are smart, attractive and nerdy. I’m sure that there are girls who are put off by nerdy things like D&D, but hey, I don’t want to date them anyway, so nyah.

If you could be one character from one game what would you be?
I once played as an ex-pirate who kept having his boat stolen. That game ended with the many boating mishaps never being fully and satisfactorily resolved. There will be a reckoning; I vow it.

If you were playing D&D against Ashton Kutcher, who do you think would win? Why?
So far as I know Kutcher doesn’t play D&D or any other tabletop game, so I would win by default (although I must admit that my operative knowledge of Ashton Kutcher is insufficient to even spell his last name correctly on a consistent basis). I do know of some other celebs who are big D&D players; Vin Diesel is one, Robin Williams is another. If I played with or against Robin Williams, that would more or less be the ultimate expression of unearthly awesome. Truth.

How did you personally get involved in gaming?
I randomly tried D&D out during high school, but it wasn’t until I got here and started playing with more serious players that I realized how much of a nerd I was really meant to be.

Are you a Pokemon guy or a Digimon guy?
Tough one. I’m going to say, since Digimon gets made more powerful every season and Pokemon only when a new hand-held generation comes out, that given an equal amount of time to mature the Digimon will win every time.