Well, yesterday, Lorraine and I went over to our friend Michael’s to play a game of D&D with his wife Beatrice and our friend Tom who is visiting Taiwan for a week or two. Long ago – twelve years ago, actually – Tom was our DM for a Dungeons and Dragons game we had going for a few years.

So . . . since none of us have picked up dice to roll the old bones and savings throws for a very long time (Tom’s been busy with life and family back in the US and those of us here drifted into Live RPGs and parenthood, not in that order), we decided to do a quick pickup game of D&D . . . specifically, Tom brought along the classic module Tomb of Horrors and Michael still had our old character sheets (yes, he still had the sheets for the characters we played twelve years ago – I still have a couple sheets from high school so don’t judge).

We were rusty but it all came back quickly enough and we had a blast. Beatrice was the only newbie but she did really well with her thiefly skills and didn’t seem to think her husband was insane for liking what must have seemed like a computer game with no computer. 🙂 Sure, she may think he’s insane for other reasons, but not that.

We didn’t come out with much treasure (a lousy +1 ring of protection) and the adventure cost us much more as we ended up running – not walking – with our tails between our legs at a very hastened pace – from a big encounter with a demon whose glyph of warding had knocked me out and carved into the party leaving Michael stone cold dead on the floor and Lorraine and Beatrice at the knock-knock-knocking side of death’s door. As soon as I came to and could gather my wits, we screamed for Beatrice and her barely three remaining hit points to run her ass out of there and I threw a Raise Dead on Michael so he was back up with a massive one hit point and very weak while Lorraine grabbed him and pulled him to safety as I stood between them and the oncoming demon . . . I used my last powerful prayer to mold the stone hallway into a wall . . . not enough to stop a demon like this but enough to slow him down as we ran our asses the fu*k out of there.

While it sounds like a disaster – and I suppose technically it was – we had a blast.

Ah, the memories.

Coincidentally, last weekend, Kaye had gotten out her old Chinese editions of the books for her friends to take a look at with curiosity and wonderment at these beautiful yet occultish looking tomes . . . methinks we’ll likely be running a game in Chinese for a group of high school kids very soon . . . after they finish their exams, that is.

– Brian