Dungeons & Dragons

We played D&D last Friday night, and it was an epochal event, a landmark! Off my socks were knocked! Or, at least I feel a little relief at the end of long-running, very mild tension.

 

Back around March of 2004, we all played together--Karen, Keith, Brent, David, Paul, Ed, and me--in the D&D campaign that I run. David's character was killed. After that night, my game went on hiatus, as I put other things higher up on my list or priorities. We played Keith's Shadowrun game a little, and David's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for a while.

 

Finally, after more than three years, I re-started my game last Autumn. It's been slow going; we've only met a few times, and last Friday was the first time all of us have been back together at the same time (minus Ed, who dropped out, and plus Aaron, who has joined). When we first started back up last year, the playing group was divided because their characters were divided, and the division continued for a while due to circumstances within the game. Some characters were temporarily dead, some were turned to stone, and the two groups were working towards reunion. At last, at the end of Friday's game, all of the characters were in the same spot at the same time. It was the first time in-game (that is, by the characters' reckoning) that they had been together in more than two months; outside of the game, in players' reckoning, it had been just over four years. That's a really long time in a game where other hardcore geek players conduct on-the-ball marathon game sessions in which their characters go through whole earth-shaking adventures in one game night.

 

I had a nice time on Friday, and I feel like the game went pretty smoothly; the bulk of the evening consisted of a tavern brawl, which sort of bogged down towards the end (my fault), but it could have been worse. The hard part, now, is capitalizing on this little bit of momentum to make sure we can play again soon. If I include the three-year hiatus, this is the longest-running game I've ever been involved in, stretching over about seven years*.  I've occasionally thought about just dropping the whole DM thing, but then I've thought, "Shoot, I've put way too much time into putting this stuff together and just messing around with it to just put it down and not pick it back up. And besides, I enjoy it, regardless of how unproductive it is."

 

My goal now is to play more consistently. If we can get together at least once a month, that would be good, and it's a somewhat realistic goal.

 

 

 

 

 

*Although if I went solely by most game-hours played, the "longest-running game" would probably be Keith's 'Fugs' campaign, played from about 1989-1992, which frequently saw us up until 4, 5, or 6 a.m. multiple times per month.