I Roll 20's

It all started about 8 months ago. I was reading various video game related blogs (shocking) and came across a reference to something called “Penny Arcade”. I had heard about Penny Arcade sometime, somewhere, but had never checked it out. So I clicked over, and suddenly everything I thought I knew about life was shattered and then re-made. Well, maybe not everything. Anyway, Penny Arcade is a webcomic mostly satirizing video games and the game industry. Occasionally, though, they delve into even deeper (perhaps darker) sectors of nerd-dom. One such deviation is known as Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, I’m like most people. “Dungeons and Dragons?” I’d say, shaking my head. “Jesus, get a life.” The dice, the capes, the pizza stained “I Like Orcs” t-shirt, the parents’ basement; It’s a world I never thought I wanted to inhabit, if I thought about it at all. Sure, I play video games. I even dabble in the occasional role playing game, maybe even online. But D&D just seemed too…much. Too nerdy. Like going from drinking every now and then to shooting heroin into my eyeballs. Along came Gabe and Tycho, though, and I was shown the error of my ways. They posted a series of podcasts that basically just recorded them playing a new version of D&D, and I was fucking hooked. Couldn’t get enough. Listened to about 5 hours of people talking about rolling 20 sided dice. What was wrong with me? Did I need help?

The answer, of course, is yes. But more than help, I needed a game. Naturally, no one I know buys into this particular brand of entertainment, so I went on Craigslist to see if people were looking for new players. Such were the depths of my desire. After a while, though, I gave up. Couldn’t find anything, already dorky enough, blah blah blah. In a strange twist of irony, however, my girlfriend came to the rescue. One of her friends is an avid D&D player. All my problems evaporated, as though I rolled a natural 20.

The first order of business was to decide what type of character I wanted to be. I was tired of being a typical tank type character, so I decided to go with a ranger, who has both ranged attacks and interesting non-combat skills. After setting up Ajdan (in honor of my girlfriend’s contribution to my newfound interest) I jumped into an ongoing storyline with a couple of other people.

What I noticed first and foremost was that playing D&D isn’t really unlike playing a video game. Hit points, damage, turn based combat, roleplaying, all that shit. Really, it wasn’t much different than playing any type of board game. In the end, is there really a huge gulf between playing a game like Cranium and playing D&D? I submit there is not. Ok, fine, you act like your character. But, honestly, that’s about it. In some ways, I think D&D is actually superior to a video game. While the story is presented to you, the way you can perceive of it in your mind is nearly limitless. You are also afforded flexibility and originality that simply doesn’t exist in the video game sphere. The actions you can take are not bound by pre-set dialogue options or linear level design. For example, one of the plot points in the dungeon we played through was that NPC characters had been bound into paintings, and we could choose to either release or ignore them. In a video game, those would be your only options. However, we decided to take one of the paintings with us, and eventually used the character inside to defeat a monster. The Dungeon Master hadn’t even remotely conceived of this possibility, but had to shift the game to accommodate our choice. It is that kind of freedom that I always long for in video games but am never able to get (mostly because of the inherent restrictions of the medium). It got my mind racing as to all the things I could be doing in the future. I’ll be honest, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

In short, I loved it. Can’t wait to play again. God bless Gabe and Tycho.