Experience Points

It was one of the sadder moments in my life when I discovered that Dungeons and Dragons and beer drinking do not mix, and when it was time to continue my journey… only one of them could come with me.

Ahh, but let us put this unfortunate epiphany on the shelf for a moment, and reflect back upon the good memories.  The good memories of pretzels, Diet Rite, and hours and hours of totally awesome role-playing.

I was maybe eight years old or so when my older brother Dre came home with the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Rules Set 1, a wondrous red box topped with an immortal image of a brazen warrior battling a ferocious gold dragon with nothing but a broad sword, a shield, and his wits.  Immediately I was stricken, and I watched, fascinated, as he lifted the box top, pulled out the folded cardboard module, the paper character sheets, and the handful of peculiar dice.  The diamond shaped eight-sided (d8), the odd triangular four-sided (d4), and of course, the almighty twenty-sided (d20).   He set up shop, pulled out a pencil to scratch out some notes, and morphed into his newly acquired role of Dungeon Master.  Immediately I was transported into a new world as Dre began to speak…

“The crumbling stone stairs lead down into the shallow archway of the cavern, where darkness awaits…”

This image of the stairs, the old broken, uneven trail of stones that led into that misty black, was burned into my eight year old brain, and it remains as vibrant and real a visual twenty six years later.  This introductory mission didn’t last long.  I’m quite certain we never even made it past the first conflict, which, if I recall, occurred when I stepped into that earth-crafted opening at the foot of the stairs and came face to face with my first goblin.  I don’t remember what happened next.  I want to say that we gave up on the game.  My young mind, unequipped to deal with this overload of imagination, likely just crapped out completely, and I got up and headed to the freezer for an otter pop, leaving my brother alone on the family room carpet, cross-legged, surrounded by his books, his papers, his pencil and his dice.

Our youthful attempt at Dungeons and Dragons was indeed a failure, and I do believe it was my brother’s first and final foray into fantasy.  But it left a deep and lasting impression on me.   So much so, that when I stepped into my 5th grade classroom years later and noticed two kids, two nerdy but friendly fellows, emphatically detailing their upcoming D&D game, I wanted in.   A dangerous decision, you see, because this was elementary school in Boulder, Colorado, and sports were a very large part of those childhood days.   Football, especially, was a requisite passion for any young man who wanted to remain relevant in the schoolyard social strata.  This was back when you didn’t actually have to be good at sports, or even remotely coordinated for that matter, you merely had to have popular friends to be considered one of the athletes.  The less popular kids would just let you win the game, hoping their gift to you would grant them a special seat at lunch.  This fact was not lost on me, but recess royalty quickly became an afterthought when I saw those two kids laying their twenty-sideds out on the desk.

They graciously let me into their clan, we recruited my buddy Gideon, and soon we had formed our group of fantasy land journeymen.  Warriors.  Adventurers.  The holy pursuit of gold, maidens, and goblin hides.   It didn’t take long for Dungeons and Dragons to become a passion for this group of pre-pubescents, and every day we’d race through our math problems and spelling tests, worrying little about whether or not the questions were answered correctly, only that they were complete.  Only that we could drop our assignments on the teachers desk and then race over to the far side of the classroom to begin a new module, a new journey.   It was the first and only time in my life where I didn’t agonize about getting perfect scores on tests, and I think I actually took home a couple of report cards with Cs on them.  On one of the report cards, the teacher had scrawled out a note for my parents – “Bones is putting too much focus on ‘free-time’ and not enough on his work.”

Bitch.

My first D&D character was an elf, and his name was Shorty.  He was 100 years old or so, and I illustrated him as an old wizened wizard.  I eventually learned that 100 was young for an elf, and so the old wizened elf transformed into a young, rambunctious playboy.  With mad spell-casting skills.  Shorty was a bad-ass.

My family moved to Georgia that summer after 5th grade.  My brothers introduced the neighborhood kids to skateboards.  I introduced them to D&D.   And I played a few missions with a kid down the street until his mom got all in his shit, saying “Is that all those new kids do?  Play Dungeons and Dragons?”

Bitch.

In 8th grade I made friends with the kid up the street, Cam, and his younger brother Max.  Both athletic fellows but also smart ones, and they too soon couldn’t resist the allure of this fascinating journey through the imagination.  I’d walk up to Cam’s house after school, where he’d usually be shooting baskets, and upon my arrival, we’d head up into his room, tune his radio to the local Top 40s station, and play Dungeons and Dragons. Younger brother Max was Dungeon Master, and a damn good one at that.  These role-playing sessions lasted a good couple of years, and sucked up easily 100s of hours of our youth.   Every minute of them well-spent.

On a side note, my buddy Sandman and I recently took a trip to Chicago and visited the former Dungeon Master Max, who was now a grown man.  Immediately we began to reminisce on the old D&D days, and after a couple of beers, even began talking trash to Sandman about it.

“Dude, if you had played with us, you’d have gotten your ass kicked!  Ha!  You’d be like a 2nd level cleric or something!  Ha ha.  With your pansy-ass mace and shit!  Ha ha ha!  Go ‘Feign Tree’, dork!  Ha ha ha!”

My character back then was named Jack.   He was a thief.  And he was a badass.

In high school I recruited a new group to play Dungeons and Dragons.   And this was when things started to get complicated.  See, we all loved D&D, but we were also starting to discover some of the more… material… aspects of life.  Girls and parties.   Midway through high-school, parents started to trust their sons with watching over the house as they went away for the weekend.  And, of course, the sons would promptly invite their friends over to raid the liquor cabinet.  This was the era of the epic high school parties.  Remember those?  When a kid would tell his closest buddies that his parents were going out of town and not to tell anybody, and his friends would immediately spread the word to the cheerleaders, who would then tell the dudes in the grades above, who would spread the word to the creepy Wooderson characters who may have graduated already but never really left high school, etc, etc, etc…  Soon, what was to be a simple night of old pals sipping on stolen bottles of Maddog would inevitably turn into a mad mad rager, with drunken teens spilling out into the front yard, into the street, into the neighbor’s front yard. All the while the kid who lived in the house that was being ceremoniously destroyed would cower in the corner of the kitchen, way too terrified and insecure to put a stop to the insanity.  Eventually the cops would show up, drunk kids would scatter, and well, you know how it goes…

Anyway, it was around this time where I discovered my love of the party.  A deep adulation for this strange new ritual of rebellion.  Of celebration.  And I discovered that I was good at it.  Oh but this is another story for another day.

These were the years where my friends and I began to understand the thrill of physical pursuits.  Of impressing the older kids.  Of making the pretty girls laugh.  Of making asses of ourselves for kicks.

All the while we continued to play Dungeons and Dragons.  And we reveled in the nerdiness of it all.  And we took great pride in recruiting others into our warped club.  We’d appeal to the inner nerd of all those around us -inducting a small sampling from the musicians, the hippies, the student council preps.  Even the occasional lady.

And sometimes the reality of high school passions would mix with the fantasy of battling cloud giants.  Like the time when one of the group, the one who stored the inventory of Dungeon Masters Guides, Players Handbooks, Fiend Folios, Monster Manuals, in his parents basement – yes, we played Dungeons and Dragons in the parents’ basement…  of course we did – went on a date.  The rest of us were cruising around town, bored, and likely bitter that our friend was on a date and we weren’t.   So we waited until he and his lady went back to his house and got comfortable in his basement… and we barged in.  Stormed past the couch were he and the girl were previously making out and were now jumping up in embarrassment, wide-eyes and wet mouths, and we yanked the box of Dungeons and Dragons materials out of the closet, scattered the books and dice and character sheets onto the floor, and began to play.  Our friend could only sit there in silence as his date watched in horror.

In my warped sense of values, I take immense pride in my foregone ability to play D&D all night Friday and raise hell at a house party on  the other side of town on Saturday.  Connecting two infinitely distant worlds by the scrawny arms of an awkward horny teen.

My character’s name was Darwick.  Darwick of the Night.  He was a thief.  And a leader.  A reluctant leader, yes, but isn’t that how the best leaders begin?   Darwick of the Night was a badass.

One night a friend’s parents were going to be out of town, and instead of throwing a party, we all decided that we would get together for a D&D session.   And it was going to be a killer session  A goth-themed module.  Dark.  Vampires.  Murder.  Mystery.  We were going to go all the way with this one.  The story began with our characters receiving a strange ticket to a play.  A performance with a curtain call drenched in blood. Oh yes.  Oh hell yes…  Back in reality, our Dungeon Master presented each of us with a ticket that he’d crafted out of construction paper, the names of our characters written on each in old English.  Back in reality, we were sitting in the family room, lights off, the room illuminated by candles.  It was going to be an awesome session.   Epic.

Except for one thing.

That case of beer in the fridge.

Someone had suggested that we should take advantage of the lack of parental supervision, and introduce some Miller Lites into the mix.

The mission was gearing up to be the best one yet.  The module was expertly planned out.  The mood was perfect.  It was going to be a great night.

And then we cracked open the beers.

A decade after my first introduction to Dungeons and Dragons, back when my young mind could not comprehend the unique complexities of role-playing, I was now experiencing the exact same sensation.  But this time it wasn’t youth that was affecting my game play.   And when I got up to head to the fridge and I left the Dungeon Master alone on the floor, surrounded by books and dice and characters sheets, it wasn’t an otter pop that I was gunning for.  It was a beer.

We didn’t finish the mission that night.   We finished off the case of beer.   And our lives changed.  We left that old life – the pursuit of the fair maiden at the top of the tower…  for a new life, and the pursuit of the maiden at the back of bar.

That was the last time we played Dungeons and Dragons.  The game had changed.

Godspeed Darwick.

Godspeed Jack.

Godspeed Shorty.

It was a good run, my old friends.