This music video is hilarious even if you aren’t a fan of the MMORPG thing. Also? Felicia Day rules.

(For any of you who have heard the song “Sunscreen” … This was found circling the internet a while back. We’ve dusted it off and here it is for you to enjoy. Thanks to Owain ap Maredudd who seems to have written this gem.)

Wear Armour

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, armour would be it. The long-term benefits of armour have been proven by Dukes, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your sword. Oh, never mind.. You will not understand the power and beauty of your sword until it’s mushed into a broom. But, trust me, in twenty rounds you’ll look back at pictures of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to block a Duke’s axe by screaming in fear. The real blows that ends the fight will are apt to be the things that you never saw, the kind that blind side you around your shield.

Do one thing in every bout that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s ribcages. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

“Light.”

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The bout is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself and with that guy trying to cave your skull in.

Remember the compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old helms. Throw away your old swords.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know how to fight your opponent. The most interesting Counts are still surprised they won. The very most interesting Dukes didn’t know how to fight all their opponents either.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll win, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll be coronated, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll get knocked out in the first round, maybe you’ll be in finals. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. You blows are half chance. So are everyone else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but on your fallen opponent.

Read the rules of the list, even if you are illiterate.

Do not read the Order of Precedence. It will only make you feel outclassed.

Get to know your Crown. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your Barons. They’re your best link to your Crown.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because, as Crown, you’ll have see more geography and lifestyles than you ever imagined.

Live in Atlantia once, but leave before it makes you invulnerable to normal blows.

Live in the Northern Outlands once, but leave before you start accepting near misses as killing shots.

Accept some inalienable truths: Tournaments always run longer than expected. Feasts will be late. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, tournaments were reasonable, feasts were on time, and children respected the Crown.

Respect your Crown.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a squire. Maybe you have a consort. But it’s you standing on the list field.

Don’t mess too much with your helm or by the time you’re 40, it will be 40 gauge.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the armour.

– Owain ap Maredudd

This video is seriously wrong and, dare we say, sacrilegious. It is also really funny. What happens when your three wise men are Live Action Role Players? Well, a Nativity Scene that you never expected to see. Enjoy “IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR”…if you can. Then…repent at leisure.

(A Hat Tip to Matt for telling us about this one.)

So, you know those dances that they have in World of Warcraft? Well, animpinabox over at YouTube has managed to find out where several of them came from. Some of the sources are just plain silly. Especially when you add the animation in along with the original. (A Hat Tip to Matt for pointing this video out to us.)

World of Warcraft, animpinabox, YouTube

(This one requires a bit of set up. Once upon a time there was a humor list known as “Ravnoshumor,” and one of the team here at Silliness.org was a member of that list. She loved this post *so much* that it has been kicking around in her e-mail since February 2000. In this way it’s sort of…vintage. Anyway, a hat tip to Tifaine for originally sending it to her. And now we are sharing it with you. Enjoy!)

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A GAMER IF…

• Losing your dice bag would be a serious financial blow.
• You’ve been gaming for more than half of your life.
• You own your own weight in gaming books.
• You took geology, sociology, psychology, kendo, archery and horseback riding in college, so you could build a realistic game world.
• You keep having dreams where you are your character…and you think it is neat, rather than consulting a professional.
• All your cannon-fodder NPC’s are named after people who have ticked you off at work.
• You have a heated debate about how your paladin could beat the alien in Predator 2
• You have a heated debate about how your mage could beat the paladin that could beat the alien in Predator 2
• You actually know the name of the Predator species (Yautja.)
• You could paper your bathroom in character sheets.
• You could paper your bathroom in different versions of just ONE character.
• You are unable to walk past the latest game supplement without leafing through it, even though you know it’s going to be bad.
• You have more entertaining “No-shit,-there-I-was-in-a-game” stories than you do anecdotes about your family.
• You talk about your characters as if they are real people.
• You alternate between referring to your characters in the first and the third person … and none of your friends gets confused.
• You’ve ever spent a significant fraction of your life modifying game rules that you didn’t like … and, as soon as the system worked to your satisfaction, discarded it.
• You’ve ever seen the old AD&D TV series.
• You keep old characters around just in case someone might run that system again. (Never mind that it’s TS: SI) … You knew what was meant by TS:SI
• You have a Ph.D. in manipulating point systems to the best effect, even though you failed high school geometry.
• You’re still reading this list.
• You can consume your body weight in junk food in one gaming session.
• You consider Altoids, ranch-flavored Doritos, Oreos, Coca-Cola and pepperoni and onion pizza a balanced diet (or even an acceptable combination).
• You have been known to drive to far away places where you paid enormous amounts of money for the privilege of sleeping on floors, eating crap, buying little pewter statues of Gandalf, and meeting dozens of psychopathic members of the alternate (or similar) sex who will follow you around for months, merely for the pleasure of playing with gamers you don’t know in small enclosed spaces permeated with the smell of sweat.
• …and then signed up en masse with all of your friends to play in games with game masters who you’ve known since high school.
• The owners of local hobby stores take your checks without ID because they know where you live.
• You have a random NPC genenator, written in BASIC, designed to run on the Trash-80 or the Commodore 64.
• You’ve ever designed your own character sheets.
• You can be more than three NPCs at the same time without generating more than reasonable confusion in your players.
• You’ve ever discovered that you like your significant other’s character better than you like your significant other.
• You’ve discovered that spare dice make good beanbag filler.
• You knew that that last question was a ringer: who has more dice than they can use?
• You’ve been known to have in-depth conversations about the relative merits of Champions, V&V, Marvel, and DC heroes … ignoring the fact that all superhero systems are intrinsically sucky…you like one of the above systems enough that you yelped when they were called, “sucky.”
• You’ve thought of four or five additions to this list
• You actually wear that little ankh that comes in the Vampire Live-Action box…in everyday life.
• You’ve actually paid to have custom fangs made.
• You wear these fangs in everyday life (not to mention Renaissance festivals).
• You saw “Kindred, the Embraced” and kept yelling they got it all wrong.
• You have a dozen wishes in mind for when you come across a magic lamp.
• You’ve bought a game even though you didn’t like the genre or the rules, so that you could fix the rules and convert them to a different genre.
• Your most important criteria for a mate is that they’re a gamer, too.
• You remember when all games referred to characters as “he”.
• You take notes from books for character histories.
• You’ve written character histories that are longer than most novels…
• You’ve ever argued against a combat rule based on your experience in the SCA, the military, or the police or your degree in medieval history.
• You watch war documentaries with GURPS Vehicles so you can tell how much damage the 4-inch naval gun using an APX shell does.
• You collect building plans (viewed from above) to use as site maps for games
• You have examples of weapons from your games in the house — “so the players can’t argue about how heavy/long/clumsy/etc they are…”
• You buy CDs of specific music (or sounds) just to use as background atmosphere for gaming
• You’ve ever found yourself associating with people who you’d otherwise avoid in public – because they were gamers
• You have a place where the paraphernalia of your gaming youth is displayed for the curious as a sort of shrine to “the good old days”
• You have three or more dice-boxes (one in use, the others retired, holding seldom-used, antique, or faithful) dice, or doing duty on the Gaming Shrine
• You tried gaming outside, for that “natural, woodland atmosphere.”
• You’re STILL reading this list!
• You’ve ever spent more time in a single gaming session than a Jerry Lewis Marathon. … and you do this regularly
• You feel guilty if you have more than one character at a time.
• Your character gets more mail than you do.
• Trekkies look down their noses at you.
• You’ve actually played an RPG online.
• You compulsively mail or ship things to people (sometimes at great expense) because whatever it is reminds you of their character.
• You STILL watch Excalibur every time it comes on.
• You’ve ever seen the solid brass d6’s … and HAD to have them so that they made more noise than everyone else’s when you rolled them.
• You think to yourself upon seeing d100 … why not just use percentile dice?
• You’ve said, “Roll initiative” more times than you’ve sung your countries’ national anthem.

Ravnoshumor, Silliness.org, GAMER

The gang here at the Silliness Lair first encountered this video back in 2004 when it was floating around the net as a Bink Video. We were glad to discover that it is now on YouTube (as it is easier to link to this blog). The creator (Volution, Inc.?) took the hilarious Dungeons and Dragons sketch done by The Dead Alewives (and played on the Doctor Demento Show) and added animation from the game Summoner (by Volution, Inc.) to create pure silliness. Enjoy.

Volution, Inc., Dungeons and Dragons, The Dead Alewives, Doctor Demento, Summoner