A friend of mine just brought to light the fact that the roleplaying game of Dungeons & Dragons has recently turned 30. I mention this because I've been a sporadic player myself for a little more than the past decade.
I have rather fond memories of my first years in university, waiting for the weekend to arrive, when a glut of engineering geeks would traverse the highway to the countryside outside of Edmonton at a friend's acreage near the township of Devon and, for an evening, transform one portion of the basement into a Forgotten Realm.
Let me preface this by saying that much of our weekend tomfoolery rapidly took on the aura of ritual and tradition. Friday (or Saturday, as the case may have been) night arrived, school was forgotten and we accoutred ourselves in gaming gear - in the form of character sheets, rule books, 20-sided dice and Mountain Dew.
At the time, Jeff and I were the only ones local to Edmonton, so he would drive from the north side and pick me up in the west end. There were two quick stops that were of great import prior to our departure for the acreage. The west end Superstore for our choice of junk food for the evening. This was quite often a cube (24 cans) of Coke accompanied by a bag of Cheezies and some bulk pistachio nuts. (There was one evening when Jason came with us that he experimented with President's Choice Chocolate Black Cherry Cola, but we have agreed never to speak of that episode again.) So girded with supplies, Jeff's mighty Honda Civic would then wend its way past the Taco Bell drive-thru, bringing on board a meal for each of us. Doubly supplied with sustenance, we made the trek further west and south.
Arrival at the acreage was rewarded with nothing more than perfunctory greetings as we rapidly descended to the basement. Each weekend, one corner of the floor would be dominated by a large, white, square coffee table, surrounded by sofas and Comfy Chairs. And yes, we were such geeks that there was normally assigned seating. Or at least, the 'usual' seats.
There was rarely a concerted effort at 'serious' gaming. I don't think it would have been nearly as appealing to me if that was the case. We all played our characters, rolled our dice, fought over inane trivialities, ate too much junk food and couldn't believe that it was already 3 in the morning and where the hell did the last 8 hours go?! It was a lot of fun.
THIS is a rather humourous satire of stereotypical game play. It's based on a skit originally done by the Dead Ale Wives. And the reason it's so humourous is how closely it treads to the truth...
If you want an actual demo of Dungeons & Dragons game play, you can try HERE.
Happy birthday, D&D.
UPDATE:
To answer Mark's question regarding being shut down by the CRTC, Lando Calrissian said it best in that, "We're a small enough operation such that we avoid any unwanted attention."
And Aaron, my brother, wondered where I found the time to write some of this stuff. You don't think I actually 'work' at work, do you?!
And have you recently made a deal that will keep the "Empire" out of here forever?
I remember my short foray into D&D during high school. Lessee, that would be about 25 years ago. As I recall, our gameplay spawned several useful sayings, like: "never turn your back on a pile of dirt," and, "don't look a gift unicorn in the mouth."
Posted by: Paul | Sunday, 24 October 2004 at 08:52 PM
Paul, you don't know how close I came to including that exact line.
Posted by: Simon | Monday, 25 October 2004 at 02:00 PM
I was actually very surprised you didn't.
Posted by: Paul | Friday, 29 October 2004 at 08:27 AM
Howdy!
I'm just a stranger who enjoys typing random stuff into google and seeing what I get Looks like I stumbled across you.
I hope you're enjoying life- it looks like it, given the happy family it seems you have.
Well, happy Saturday! Don't forget to have a good time and enjoy what you have!
Posted by: Paul from Seattle | Saturday, 05 March 2005 at 06:29 PM