“Dungeons & Dragons” — The Hypnotic Side

When Dave Arne­son showed Gary Gygax the new game he and his friends were play­ing, it prob­a­bly did­n’t occurr to either that they were on the brink of cre­at­ing not only a new game but an entire­ly new type of game, result­ing in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new gam­ing industry.

Dave Arne­son took the tra­di­tion­al minia­ture game, where minia­tures rep­re­sent­ed groups of indi­vid­u­als and start­ed using them to rep­re­sent indi­vid­u­als. He also added the ele­ments of char­ac­ter class­es and expe­ri­ence lev­els, allow­ing for char­ac­ter spe­cial­iza­tion and growith. This was a rev­o­lu­tion, in that play­ers could project them­selves into the char­ac­ter, devel­op­ing them over time and play. Since both he and Gary Gygax were avid mina­ture ship game play­ers, he shjowed Gary his game and togeth­er they cre­at­ed Dun­geons & Drag­ons.

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The “Lensman” Series by ‘Doc’ E E Smith

[amtap book:isbn=1568658044]

[amtap book:isbn=0739402625]

Descrip­tion: The “Lens­man” series by ‘Doc’ E E Smith is one of the clas­sics of the pulp era of sci­ence fic­tion. A bat­tle between Impos­si­ble oppo­sites, with whole civ­i­liza­tions as pawns and coun­ters in the game. There are bat­tles in space between fleets so large they dwarf whole solar sys­tems, weapons so immense as to stag­ger the imag­i­na­tion, and crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cies that cov­ered galaxies.

Yet at the cen­ter of the series was the bat­tle between the sup­port­ive men­tal giants of the plan­et Arisia and the con­quer­ing Eddo­ri­ans from anoth­er uni­verse. The Arisians find the Eddo­ri­ans too tough to take on them­selves, but find their relent­less phi­los­o­phy of con­quest unpalat­i­ble, and resolve to oppose them. To that end, the Arisians began a slow, mil­lions of years long project to pro­duce the men­tal pow­er need­ed to final­ly elim­i­nate the Eddorians.That tale, told in var­i­ous stages, makes up the sto­ry line.

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“The Hypnotist” by Jack Kahler (1966)

John Mered­ith Swift was only 14 years old and he was quite impressed by the hyp­no­tist he’d seen. It was­n’t sur­pris­ing that he tried to imi­tate the man, but, as he dis­cov­ered with young Nan­cy next door, he had to give his voice time to mature a little.

He nev­er lost his fas­ci­na­tion for the art, how­ev­er, and much lat­er … in his last year at col­lege, he had the oppor­tu­ni­ty for an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment. One which caused a young vir­gin to turn up preg­nant, almost cost­ing her life and san­i­ty … and John’s as well …

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“MM!”

Prac­ti­cal­ly every­one in this show has some kind of men­tal hangup, and that’s the focus of the series.

For the three main char­ac­ters, they all have full-grown psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders that con­flict and coop­er­ate at the same time. The male lead Tarou is a masochist, but only when women do the dam­age; Mio is a sadist and, in clas­sic ani­me style, is self-con­scious about her flat breasts; and Arashiko of the abun­dant breasts can­not stand being touched or even being around men and will even attack them if they get too close. There­fore, Tarou is in ecsta­sy when Mio or Arashiko hit him, and they do, a lot, as Mio gets inor­di­nate plea­sure from doing so where­as Arashiko does so when flus­tered or by acci­dent and is imme­di­ate­ly sorry.

Its also the run­ning joke, that Mio is always try­ing to find ways to ‘cure’ Tarou’s masochism (includ­ing an can­dle-lit exor­cism) that always wind up rein­forc­ing his masochism instead of cur­ing it. Of course, one of those ways involves hypnosis.

The rest of the cast all have their hangups as well: Tarou’s moth­er and teen-aged sis­ter are extreme­ly over­ly affec­tion­ate toward him (both want to mar­ry him) and even com­pete with each oth­er (and his girl­friends) for his affec­tions; Tarou’s friend Tat­su­kichi is a cross-dress­er (and quite good at it) and seems to have an alter­nate per­son­al­i­ty emerge when dress­ing as a woman; Noa, a senior, although her appear­ance is still that of a younger girl, is a genius who nev­er had a child­hood as she had to study all the time, and who always refers to her­self in third-per­son; Noa’s assis­tant Yuki­no­jō is a major loli­con (fan of pre­pu­bes­cent girls) and joined the Inven­tor’s Club to be clos­er to Noa; and school nurse Michiru knows all about every­one’s hangups, pos­sess­es an appar­ent­ly unlim­it­ed sup­ply of cos­play cos­tumes and loves to take pic­tures of the stu­dents in them.

Need­less to say, the entire series is NSFW.

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“Emily and the Werewolf” by Herbie Brennan

[amtap book:isbn=9780689505935]

Is Emi­ly’s neigh­bor Farmer Osboro real­ly a werewolf?

Well, Emi­ly cer­tain­ly thinks he is, the way his face turns hairy and his teeth turn into fangs and his hands become claws and his eyes get red, but no one else does, and she’s cer­tain that he knows that she knows his secret. So what is a young girl sup­posed to do to defend herself?

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‘Looking for Something’ by Frank Herbert

Aliens that only one per­son can see, as the rest of human­i­ty is under a hyp­not­ic illu­sion of nor­mal­cy. Aliens with hyp­not­ic pow­ers. Aliens who see human­i­ty as only a food source.

Its a com­mon enough sto­ry line. ”Look­ing for Some­thing’ by Frank Her­bert is a short sto­ry of stage hyp­no­tist who dis­cov­ers that he shares an unusu­al vision with one of his sub­jects and inves­ti­gates it.

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