Dungeons & Dragons

I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) in about 1978 by my good friend Dennis and his older brother Ronnie. I played off and on for a few years (until about 1985), collecting books (which I still have) and enjoying the Basic, Expert, and Advanced sets.

In High School, a few of the crew got back together and picked it up again, playing at lunch time and sometimes after school. This lasted from 1987-88 until shortly after High School, maybe 1991.

In 1995, my buddy, Chris, and I picked it back up with a new friend we made at a company we both worked for. We have played steadily since then, going from AD&D, to 3.0 to 3.5, with some diversions into EarthDawn and other games along the way.

Over the last 11 years of playing, a lot has changed. The group has grown and shrunk and grown again. Everyone else in the group has gained a girlfriend, and then a wife (well, Chris is working on the wife part). The gfs/wives played for awhile, but then children started to be born, and they put aside their gaming in favor of time spent with children.

Now even I have gained a girlfriend, finally, and see my own time for the game diminishing as other things move higher on the priority list. It is certainly no fault of my girlfriend, as she understands the enjoyment I get out of gaming with my friends. It is true that, with her in my life and with the time and distance issue she and I already face, I need to make more time for her than for my friends or for gaming. And then there is the strong possibility of relocating.

I have been blessed to game longer than most gamers, even excluding the breaks mentioned previously. I have been the Game Master many times, and enjoy that. I have been a player often and enjoyed that (anyone need an elf fighter/mage?). I have had an incredible group of people with whom to game, each of whom brought intelligence, passion, and a devotion to gaming that made nearly every session I played in or GMed fun.

When we first started the group in 1995, we gamed often. At one time, we played every Friday night after work, often going well past midnight in our pursuit of an Orcs head or a dragon’s tooth. As life intruded, we shifted to a monthly schedule and set aside the third Saturday of every month to the “gaming gods.” We play all day, having lunch and dinner together and still the games often took us past midnight.

Now, however, with everyone else’s lives filled with wives, mortgages, careers, and children, and my own life filling up quickly, it looks like our gaming group’s steady play may finally be coming to a close. I have been one of the primary standard bearers for the group for awhile, as the only remaining single guy who had the time available for gaming, and I helped to coordinate our sessions and keep things going. With life changes making me pick other priorities ahead of gaming, I’m not sure the rest of the group will have the same passionate desire to game as before.

It feels like the end of an era.

However, and I know it sounds cliché, but once a gamer, always a gamer. I have a feeling that it will only be a few year’s time before I’m dusting off the books again, writing up a simple dungeon crawl, or rolling up a new character with a new group of people. I know that if I move back east, there is a gaming group ready made and enthusiastic about having a potential new person entering their fray. If I stay here, then at some point the old gang, and maybe some new faces, will get together again “for old time’s sake.” Next thing you know, we’ll be playing regularly again and wondering why we every stopped.

Gaming just gets in your blood. It’s fun to pretend to be a big strong warrior with a great axe, cleaving his way through a horde of Orcs. Or to be the wily thief, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. It is fun to roll those dice and pray for that miracle 20 that you need to hit the dragon or be toasted by its breath in the next round. Its fun to let loose of your cares from the week of work and deadlines and be someone else with strange magical powers who is beholden to no one. Even if it is just for a few hours on weekend.

Even if that never happens, even if the gang never gets together again and I don’t ever dust off the books with a new crew, I have wonderful memories of the fun times we’ve shared.

“Yes, I’m trespassing!” said by my character to two imposing figures protecting a dragon’s lair. Never say you are trespassing from something powerful enough to protect a dragon’s lair!

“I leap into the bush.”
“Roll your damage using a d4.”
“23! I’m unconscious!”
“From a rose bush!!!??” (this was in EarthDawn, where you rerolled any die you maxed until you didn’t max it—the player maxed it a few times)

“Map is NOT TO SCALE, dammit!”

“George moves forward and touches the light.”
“Nooooooo!!!!!!”
“Where the hell are we?”
“Er, I don’t know. Give me a moment.” Said by the DM after a really funny move that took our level 1 characters MUCH deeper into the dungeon than they should have gone.

Backed up by 50 Trolls, the Troll leader demands, “Lay down your weapons.”
“No.”
Serious battle ensues. The five of us defeat the entire enclave of Trolls. To the leader, “Now, you were saying?”

“Does it have a bowl?” one of the players, who seemed obsessed with getting a bowl for her character.

The time we set the clock back 3 hours because one of our friends has a well-known penchant for getting tired if he can see the clock. All night long, he didn’t realize.
“I know it’s only 4 o’clock, but I’m really hungry. Can we order dinner soon?”

“Run!”
“Elisa, you’re fully healed, these things can’t hit you, you have a full quiver of arrows, and we’re doing okay, why should we run?”
“Because it looks scary!”