This Past Geek-end

Sorry for the gap in posting. I spent this weekend in College Station catching up with the ex-roommate and some old friends. A couple of months ago when I pitched this idea to Abe I expressed my desire for it to be a weekend of geekery and I am happy to report that it lived up to my expectations. We played a couple of games of Star Fleet Battle Force, a card game adaptation of the classic Star Fleet Battles which I am pretty good at, old school Battletech, Chez Guevara, the latest entry in SJG's Chez Geek line-up, Chrononauts, and finally an off-the-cuff game of Dungeons & Dragons.

I had forgotten how awesome and fun playing D&D with a group of friends could be. I know that this is going to cement my dork-hood in some eyes and I do not really care. There is a kind of magical joy in rolling the die and seeing it come up at just the number you need to hit the enemy with your attack and a schoolboy-like giddiness fills me when that die roll is a 19 or 20. This means you have potentially scored a critical hit which doubles the damage you do. You have to roll the die again, hoping for a second hit which will confirm the critical. I always get nervous when I have to do this. It feels as though there is so much at stake when I pick up the die and prepare to cast it one more time, hoping for that magic number. I almost could not watch as the die skipped across the table, like a kid at a horror film wanting to see the monster but too terrified to look directly at the screen, and then it comes up with the number you need. You know you are about to "do unto" whatever you are fighting, in my case it was three Wyverns, as you collect the appropriate dice to roll the damage. A quick prayer to whatever god of gaming or luck you prefer before you cast the dice again to find out how much damage you have unleashed upon the luckless creature at the other end of your sword. The shining moment though is when the DM realizes that you have managed to take more than half of the creature's hit points with that single blow. The DM reaches for a die, rolling to see if the creature is able to survive such a mighty thwacking and he looks a little crestfallen when he does not succeed and the creature keels over dead.

It is a feeling I had not had in a LONG time and I was glad I was able to recapture it, even if only for a weekend. I am really looking forward to arranging another geek-end in the near future.