A Night of ADVENTURE

I've been involved with role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons for a long time now. Sometimes I have to explain what playing D&D is like.

Well, last night, it was like this:

• The guy at Subway is surprisingly interested in my t-shirt, which says "Nerd-famous." "It's not... 'nerd'" he says in somewhat fractured English, "It's more like 'knowledge.'" I nod amiably, even though I'm not sure what he's talking about or why. "But," he says, "You have to share the knowledge... It's about sharing." Sounds better than what I have on my t-shirt. We need to get that guy out of Subway and into public office. Or maybe into plumbing.
• Dinner in hand, it turns out everybody at the game got haircuts but me.
• The fan on my laptop makes more noise than a Fokker biplane.
• It's 7:15 and I can't believe we're gaming already. Idle chit-chat usually lasts til 7:30 at least. Sometimes 8:00, depending on where we order food.
• The players spend three minutes trying to remember the assigned meta-plot goals, then make up their own.
• Another three minutes is spent discussing what sort of pornography the sexless magical dragon-people have.
• The answer: none.
• Seems like a self-evident conclusion.
• The players encounter an elevator. My prediction: this encounter will take half an hour.
• One failed Disable Device check later and the party decides to make camp for the night.
• Figuring out how to best heal the various members of the party requires a degree in Dungeon Accounting.
• It's a little like working the pit at a commodities market. "Whaddya need? Five? -Done! You down 16? Got it! You need 31!? I'm giving you 22. How about you? -SIXTY! Whaddya been doing you need SIXTY!?"
• It is decided that, when guarding the camp, the middle watches are the worst. Nothing happens the first hour or the last hour.
• Of course, saying that out loud pretty much ensures something will happen the first hour or the last hour.
• The druid wants to know why he doesn't have any spells that hurt plants.
• Again: the conclusion seems self-evident.
• The thief is infatuated with explosives: "I should invent LANDMINES!!!"
• Two of the guys made the mistake of watching the Dungeon Seige movie just because it was on cable.
• "Dungeon Seige! High-five!"
• The only time that movie has EVER gotten a high-five.
• The players' hope springs eternal: "Okay, we make camp and the rest of the night passes uneventfully."
• A DM's job is to feed that hope, so even though you know a spy is going to try to sneak in and disrupt their camp, you roll some dice to make it seem like a random encounter.
• After the spy gets away from the party and escapes down the elevator, we discuss the merits of pouring milk on cake.
• It is also posited that it's only incest if the two partners can get each other pregnant.
• It's morning, the party has rested, spells have been recovered, and now... back to that damn elevator.
• You know you are scraping the bottom of the clue barrel when you consider setting a trap for the janitor.
• We pause momentarily to discuss whether 1) I sharpen my canines on purpose, 2) vampire chicks dig me, and 3) whether it's easier for me to eat steak.
• I'm pretty sure the answer to all three of these questions is "No."
• To be fair, it's been a while since I've had a steak.
• One hour, three combat rites, and two 4th level spells later, the elevator encounter is over. The party has defeated a metal door.
• If you put an elevator in your scenario, expect a lot of "Shaft" references for the rest of the night.
• Yes, I can dig it.
• If you give the thief a bag of holding, he will trick it out with more tools than the handyman aisle at an Ace Hardware store.
• Notable contents of the bag of holding: three pounds of nails, a block and tackle, and a 12-foot ladder covered in poop.
• When you traipse around the sewers as much as this group does, pretty much everything is covered in poop.
• On a separate note, the only thing louder than the fan on my laptop is the fan in the bathroom.
• Someone brings up Winger. And shortly thereafter discusses how attractive Geddy Lee is. As a DM, I take this for the hint that it is. Combat begins.
• Initiative: it's a race to the bottom.
• When the party concludes that the copious amounts of halon being pumped into the room should suppress fire damage, it's your job as the DM to agree.
• In the midst of combat, everyone is surprised that Rush has had several multi-platinum albums.
• About round three of the skirmish, an impromptu arm-wrestling match breaks out. One guy almost has an aneurysm.
• You know a combat is dragging when your players argue with you about whether halon is visible or not.
• If you have a choice between ending combat quickly and dragging it out, err on the side of fewer halon-related arguments and/or aneurysms.
• The relationship between a DM and his players is best defined thusly: the DM draws the battle map, while the players take cell phone pictures of his ass.
• The mosting interesting thing in any room is not the weird magical vacuum-tube device, or the case of wicked looking inhalers, or the chair with all the wires and electrodes attached to it. It's the glass tank full of brains.
• "Is there any way we DON'T want brains?"
• Five brains later, the bag of holding just got a little weirder.
• If you give the party a rack of surface-to-surface missiles, it's kind of a bummer when they can't solve the deactivation code to keep them all from self-destructing.
• On the other hand, it's kind of cool when they can cast a spell and sit in the corner while the rest of the room gets completely incinerated.
• If they actually take the extra time to figure out the rest of the puzzle despite their highly-explosive and catastrophic failure, you kind of have to give them SOMETHING. So in the next room they find a giant armor-plated drilling machine with three missiles attached to it.
• In D&D parlance, these are known as "pity missiles."
• The relationship between a DM and his players is best defined thusly:
  "Ok, you search the cab of the giant drilling machine and find the fire mechanism for the missiles, the drive system, the boring controls..."
  "-So we can control this campaign?"

-Tom, who's off to go find some vampire chicks. Or some steak.