A friend at work sent me a video about Dungeons & Dragons video about Dungeons & Dragons and true love. Having been a gamer since I was nine years old, I found this video extremely funny. I spent many a long day between the years of 9 and 15 in playing Dungeons & Dragons. I had a great time. The sad thing is that I tended to consider my gaming as a creative outlet. Here’s a quick story: I was around 12 years old at the time and my friends were 13. I was always a bit younger because of how my birthday fell. Most people are 18 or 19 when they graduate high school while I was 17. So here’s the setup for this story: Imagine three guys and a girl playing Dungeons & Dragons in my room. I was 12 years old. I was able to convince one of the girls I knew from grade school to come play a game of D&D with my group. I had really wanted to impress this girl by having all of my friends behave and us all having a great time. Sadly, it didn’t go that way.
In my room, we had two bunk beds set next to each other and two bureaus so the room was pretty full with furniture (my brother and I shared a room in growing up). I had my books and dice set up on the one bed and the rest of my friends were crammed on the next bed. I had the battle scenes and the adventure all planned out but chaos broke out. It seems that my friends couldn’t control themselves with a girl being in the room. I don’t remember who but one of the guys jumped up and turned the lights off and the guys started goofing off pretending they were fighting the monsters. This obviously didn’t impress my female friend (she wasn’t my girlfriend. Heck, I was 12 years old and didn’t get the gumption to ask a girl out for another 4 years!) who never came back to another game.
I think I can count on my one hand the amount of women I know who have played D&D. Typically, the girls would try the game because it’s what their boyfriend or fiancé wanted them to do. They’d try a few games and that would be the end of it. However, there are two women friends of mine who were really into the game and were great at playing the game. They were both really fun to play with. It’s sad though that the D&D gamer gets such a bad rap with being geeky and dorky. I haven’t played D&D since the mid ‘90s and I wonder if people still play. With the online world of virtual gaming being so popular (Everquest, etc.), I wonder if people just do that instead.
Still, there has to be something said about how fun it was to sit around with a group of friends and use one’s imagination. These days I play Magic: The Gathering because it’s easy to learn (yet complicated enough that the game doesn’t grow stale) and fun. It can be played in person or online. And with the limited amount of time I have these days, playing online is my best option. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that I’d really like to play some D&D with some friends from time to time. The problem now is that we’re all so far from each other and have families. It’s not easy to just pick up and play at someone’s house. It might be possible to play with Skype and conference everyone on the call, but it’s not the same thing.
I’m telling you: Sitting around the table, getting pizza delivered, having some soda, and just playing the game for a few hours is a heck of a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to get people together and play around Halloween, having a special one night event. But again, it’s not easy to get everyone together to play (there’s babysitters to hire, schedules to work out, etc.). It’s not impossible to organize but it comes down to: With so little free time available, how many people want to waste it on sitting around playing D&D? Not many. But I do miss those tournament games that I’d hold around Halloween. Basically, I’d tell the players to roll up their characters several weeks in advance and work with each person to clear their character. Then I’d set the game up so that one team had to fight and kill off the other team. Yes, it wasn’t very creative but I was 13 at the time! My friends and I loved it. It was like playing Quake or Doom but it was with paper, pencils, and dice. We had a great time finding cool treasures and just having a blast. That’s what we did back in the ‘80s. We didn’t have a lot of money and there weren’t too many place to go to so we played D&D. Seeing the Google video brought back some smiles for me!
In my room, we had two bunk beds set next to each other and two bureaus so the room was pretty full with furniture (my brother and I shared a room in growing up). I had my books and dice set up on the one bed and the rest of my friends were crammed on the next bed. I had the battle scenes and the adventure all planned out but chaos broke out. It seems that my friends couldn’t control themselves with a girl being in the room. I don’t remember who but one of the guys jumped up and turned the lights off and the guys started goofing off pretending they were fighting the monsters. This obviously didn’t impress my female friend (she wasn’t my girlfriend. Heck, I was 12 years old and didn’t get the gumption to ask a girl out for another 4 years!) who never came back to another game.
I think I can count on my one hand the amount of women I know who have played D&D. Typically, the girls would try the game because it’s what their boyfriend or fiancé wanted them to do. They’d try a few games and that would be the end of it. However, there are two women friends of mine who were really into the game and were great at playing the game. They were both really fun to play with. It’s sad though that the D&D gamer gets such a bad rap with being geeky and dorky. I haven’t played D&D since the mid ‘90s and I wonder if people still play. With the online world of virtual gaming being so popular (Everquest, etc.), I wonder if people just do that instead.
Still, there has to be something said about how fun it was to sit around with a group of friends and use one’s imagination. These days I play Magic: The Gathering because it’s easy to learn (yet complicated enough that the game doesn’t grow stale) and fun. It can be played in person or online. And with the limited amount of time I have these days, playing online is my best option. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that I’d really like to play some D&D with some friends from time to time. The problem now is that we’re all so far from each other and have families. It’s not easy to just pick up and play at someone’s house. It might be possible to play with Skype and conference everyone on the call, but it’s not the same thing.
I’m telling you: Sitting around the table, getting pizza delivered, having some soda, and just playing the game for a few hours is a heck of a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to get people together and play around Halloween, having a special one night event. But again, it’s not easy to get everyone together to play (there’s babysitters to hire, schedules to work out, etc.). It’s not impossible to organize but it comes down to: With so little free time available, how many people want to waste it on sitting around playing D&D? Not many. But I do miss those tournament games that I’d hold around Halloween. Basically, I’d tell the players to roll up their characters several weeks in advance and work with each person to clear their character. Then I’d set the game up so that one team had to fight and kill off the other team. Yes, it wasn’t very creative but I was 13 at the time! My friends and I loved it. It was like playing Quake or Doom but it was with paper, pencils, and dice. We had a great time finding cool treasures and just having a blast. That’s what we did back in the ‘80s. We didn’t have a lot of money and there weren’t too many place to go to so we played D&D. Seeing the Google video brought back some smiles for me!
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