A Role of the Dice

In case there was ever any question - I am a giant nerd.  But I never thought of myself as the top tier of nerd.  There was always one really specific aspect of nerdom that was missing from my life.

Until this weekend.

Aww yissss

So, there's a really common conversation that I have with people that I steadily become more comfortable with:

-Them: "Did you ever play DnD/Magic/Halo/Insert-social-game-of-choice in grade school?"

-Me:  "No, I wasn't cool enough."

-Them:  "W... what?"

"... W...what?"

I know - let that sink in for a moment.  "I wasn't cool enough to be invited to DnD campaigns or LAN parties."

But it's true.  I didn't have an excessive number of friends back then, even fewer who were of the true nerd flavor.  The group of friends who met up regularly did play games, but things like man hunt and poker, and truth be told, I always felt sort of on the fringe.  Anyway, blah blah blah, not a sob story, but I was never invited to any sort of roleplaying game.  In hindsight, this is an overwhelming travesty, because constantly-looking-for-an-escape-high-school-Vicky probably would have loved DnD, as I recently discovered.

One of DGs friends, SS who will be from this point forward only ever referred to as Iron Champ, had the above conversation with me a couple of weeks ago.  DG, who also had never really played DnD but really wanted to try, and Iron Champ thought it might be fun to start a campaign.  So, Iron Champ and his fiancée, Warhammer, hosted our party of four.

So it begins -- with delicious noms.

Guys.  I recognize that a lot of you aren't going to be very interested in this.  In order to make this a more entertaining post, I was going to attempt to spend the entire first night of the campaign totally blitzed and live-tweeting from my phone.  Armed with my good friends, Bad Decisions and No Regrets, I thought this plan would be foolproof. 

Pictured L to R:  No Regrets, Bad Decisions

I tried really hard, but despite drinking caramel moonshine, I spent the night entirely sober.  This was bad news for two reasons.  One, of course, being that I had less fodder for my post tonight.  Two, setting up a character for an RPG is an effing lot of work.  Seriously.  I thought you just rolled some dice and became a mage.  Wrong-o.  Shit, son.  I wish I had been drunk. Then, it wouldn't have taken me half an hour to decide between a paladin and a druid.

It probably didn't help that DG and I were completely new to this and were slowing down the process with our indecisiveness.  All told, it was probably an hour before the game actually started.  Kudos to our DM, the Iron Champ himself, who clearly spent a lot of time creating the world, and even created voices for NPCs.  I mean, dang.  That's dedication.

Again, though.  Kind of wish I was drunk for the experience.   Choosing paths in a decision tree while alone is hard enough - try doing it with three conflicting personalities.  Furthermore, thanks in large part to an incredibly over-analytical 11th grade English Literature class, I have the magical and useless power of smelling Chekov's smoking gun from a mile away (thanks, Ms. Ajemian.  You'll never know how many twist movies you ruined for me.)  It largely manifested itself that night as extreme paranoia:

Every five minutes.

Really.

But it's ok, because I was later vindicated.  By which I mean - we killed said werewolf (told you so, guys.)

All in all, really - it was great fun.  Creating fantasy worlds to dive headlong into?  Building up pretend arcane powers?  Pretending I'm a character of the opposite gender???  That's my jam, dude.  Here's to more nights to come.

Until the next.

P.S.  Here's a fun little shower thought for you:

Fantasy Sports are just tabletop RPGs for athletes.