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 Monday, August 5, 2002
As Kevin points out, we played
some bad ass Dungeons &
Dragons Saturday night. Neverwinter
Nights has been so much fun that we decided it was time to give the D&D
Third Edition rules a pen&paper road test, and, well, totally geek out.
And geek out we did. After dinner, we went over to Dragon's Lair to fawn over D&D
paraphernalia (and for me to obtain the obligatory copy of the Player's
Guide and to resist -- for now -- getting a copy of the Forgotten
Realms source book). Then we retired to Fortress SK for character creation
and a little hack 'n' slash.
There's a great deal of immediacy when you're just starting out your first
level characters... especially since mine was a wizard. First level wizards
in D&D are pretty vulnerable; they can't wear armor, and they can only
memorize a small number of spells. Recharging your spells requires a good
eight hours of sleep, which can be difficult to obtain in the midst of adventuring.
The most epic moment of the evening happened when we were infiltrating the
lair of the kidnappers. We had snuck up on a pair of orcs, and I surprised
them with Chromatic Orb, knocking them unconscious. We tied them up and performed
some interrogation to find out where they were holding the kidnapped kids,
and to find out what their defenses were like. Unfortunately, one of them
let out a yowl, and an ogre came wandering down to see what was going on.
By this point, I'd used my most useful spell going after the orcs. I fired
off a Magic Missle and did some damage, and Michael's fighter danced a few
rounds with the ogre while I tried to play backup. And then the ogre managed
to connect, and Michael was knocked out and bleeding.
At this point, we pretty much figured the game was over, but we bravely soldiered
on. After all, I had no more spells left and no armor, and no strength advantages
for doing damage. I rolled, I missed. Then Kevin rolled, and the ogre missed.
And the weird thing was, that this lasted for about four rounds. And then
I rolled a critical hit, and against all hope, I managed to kill the ogre.
I don't feel my words are adequately capturing the excitement of this encounter,
but it was a truly epic experience. No rolls were fudged, and there was no
reason to expect we would win, and yet we did. It was enthralling and epic.
It was geek-tastic. And it captured perfectly why we love to play these games.
12:40:35 PM () 
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