Hey! Hi! How's it going? Hello! H word!

I was originally going to use this space to write about Darksiders. I'm not because Darksiders was kinda “eh” and I would much rather write about an 18 year old boy being in a room with nine sweaty, 40 something guys for 13 hours straight. If that sounds like a bad porno then shut the fuck up because that would be an awesome porno! But it was neither; it was actually...

Dungeons and Dragons!

Dice! Minis! Squares and sweat! Pizza and wings! Devils and vampires! Nine grown men playing with miniature wizards for the chance to win the ultimate prize!

It's been a while since the last time I played, and that was with some chucklefucks from school. This was a 4E tournament and I had only played 3.5 before. Mix that with level 15 characters from the start and I had no idea what the HELL I was doing. There are three players handbooks, at least 20 specialized books, 900 issues of Dragon Magazine overruling those books, and another 8942 issues overruling those.

Thankfully, the character builder on Wizards's website has all the info up to date, and it only took me a few days to build my character. The actual process of going through the builder was simple; it was figuring out what the fuck to do with the character that was hard. There are so many powers and feats to choose from and I had no idea how useful any of them were. I also had to be a special little snowflake and make a bard, so I couldn't fall back my favorite “hit the guy” strategy when out of ideas. It wasn't too bad, the community on Wizards's DnD site is great. Or at least the optimization board is, by which I mean the in depth guides were awesome for separating the worthwile from the shit. I didn't know how to effectively use the good stuff, but that's what the 13 hours was for.

An Epic Quest!

The game itself was long. I was not kidding about the 13 hours; we went from 10AM to 11PM. We squeezed in three encounters, about 3-5 rounds each. Do not be misled, those battles were far longer than they sound. Each involved at least 10 enemies, one time 20, and we were 10 guys. The rounds took between one and three hours. Each. The enemies themselves weren't that difficult. Actually, they were piss easy. I had to heal maybe three guys, and myself once. The problem was that Ravenloft, the module we were using, is built for parties of 4-5 guys. Not 10. The result was a clusterfun on balance issues that left us mostly unbloodied throughout the night.

But it was still fun, and the guys I was playing with were great. Really funny. I think one of them used to work as an editor for DC. It was a pretty casual group/game, so little to no role play. Like I said, we were playing a very abbreviated version of the second edition Castle Ravenloft campaign. While maintaining the illusion of “cooperation,” we were competing against each other. Winner was decided on voting at the end of each round for who gets a point. Most points wins.

10-way tie with everyone at 1 point by the end.

There Can Only Be One!

So who broke the tie, you ask? Who brought everything to a close, a head, a climax? Who dealt the killing blow to the final boss, Count Straad? Who used his bardric powers to make the dead dance and the vampire sing? Who typed this build up for what was an immediately obvious answer? Who could it have been?

The one and only, motherfuckers. The one and only! Check out my trophy!

So yeah, I had a great time! Wish I could do it again; now that's I've gotten a taste, I have the itch again. But I'm going away to college soon so I wouldn't get anything consistent going. Maybe I'll rope my room mate into it.