frag

"from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake"

But, eh, we should recognize the actual origin here. "Frag" is short for fragmentation grenade. It's the kind of grenade that kills by shooting splinters of hot metal--fragments--in all directions. As opposed to, say, phosphor grenades. (These kill by extreme heat and fire, which they are uniquely engineered to distribute. I had a teacher once, of Lithuanian origin, who bore huge scars on his legs...told me a live phosphor grenade he found on a beach not far from his home as a child was responsible. This was in the '40s. He called it Adolph's gift.)

But frag, as a verb, came into popular usage during the Vietnam War. As in Charlie Sheen's line from Platoon: "I say we frag that fucker tonight!" He meant murder his commanding sergeant. As in kill him with a fragmentation grenade, a readily available weapon.

frag n.,v.

[from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake] 1. To kill another player's avatar in a multiuser game. "I hold the office Quake record with 40 frags." 2. To completely ruin something. "Forget that power supply, the lightning strike fragged it. See also gib.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

Yes, that's right; if you remove all that pesky hyper-fun action from Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, then combine the result with a dice and card-based role playing game minus any story or character whatsoever, you've got FRAG.

Even Magic: The Gathering has a diegesis, however weak.

Players do start the game by creating a character. This character has about as much depth as you get by choosing your armor color and skin in Unreal Tournament. Players are given a ration of points to distribute between various murderdeathkill attributes, and away they go. An extremely large number of 1d6s are necessary to decide your fate, along with the cards; weapons, bonuses, etc.

Using the dice and cards, players... run around and kill each other. A lot. When you're killed, you "respawn" on your next turn. The game ends when a player achieves three frags.

Whooptie-goddamn-doo.

On the plus side, there are some interesting details to the game. The point is not to simply simulate a Quake-like game, but to evoke playing such a game on a computer and over a network. Players can draw cards with names such as Lag, No Carrier, and Game Hack: Insubstantial which mimics "no clipping" game cheats and allows players to walk through walls. It's also quite open to player modification, allowing you the ability to create your own maps (again, not unlike an actual FPS computer game).

I suppose Frag is an alternative for that subset of gorehounds who are afflicted with motion sickness by high-speed digital 3D environments. Perhaps this game is merely a public service. Perhaps it's solace for the poor kids who entirely lack reflexes.

If you simply can't get enough, fear not: there are expansion sets. There are, in fact, three expansion sets:

• Death Match, which has team-play rules
• Fire Zone, which features BOILING LAVA! and a couple of new rules
• Frag Deadlands, which is an integration with the Deadlands game and introduces magic and the wild west into the "world" of Frag.

Philip Reed did the world the favor of conceptualizing and designing this game. Russell Godwin tossed in some of his own ideas. Mr. Steve Jackson himself developed and edited the rules, and Alex Fernandez fed himself by creating the artwork for the cards and covers.