Adventures in Geekiness!

Hello. I've returned. I hope you haven't missed me too much (well, okay, I hope you missed me somewhat).

I've been sharing geeky stories of my past, so I might as well continue that trend until I have something more current to share. My memories are kinda neat, because I didn't, at the time, realize that each new geeky experience I had was another link in the long, long chain that is the girly-geekdom I wear today.

When I first heard about Dungeons & Dragons secondhand from my brother, who had just started playing, I was fascinated. As a child and young teenager, I spent most of my free time playing around in my backyard in an imaginary kingdom, full of fantastical creatures, gallant knights, and evil sorcerers. So when I first heard about D&D, I was amazed. There was actually a REAL GAME with REAL RULES for what I'd been doing all along? What fun! So naturally, I became the whiny, clingy younger sister all high-school age boys HATE having around, and I started bugging my poor brother until he let me meet his gaming friends and one of them was kind enough (or took enough pity on me) to start a small campaign with just him, my brother, and me. I was elated. I wrote a list of potential names, races, and classes of my future character, and started counting the days until I finally got to play.

I chose a fighter-mage-thief, high elf (I think we were playing Greyhawk), blonde, purple eyes... and she HAD to be pretty.

Of course, when I was just playing by myself in my backyard and my imagination, there weren't any real rules, and weren't any real restrictions, except the ones that existed in my brain and limited the ideas I could come up with. I didn't have a clear sense of exactly what I was doing, and I admit I wasn't fully prepared for the reality of the game (if there is such a thing). I wanted a sword with jewels in it, and was regretfully informed by the DM that it would cost all my gold and I would basically be running around naked, unshod, with no equipment whatsoever, but I would have a really pretty and basically useless sword.

One 10-minute pout later, and assurance from the ever patient DM that when I acquired enough loot to buy said jeweled sword, I could, I settled in with my boring-sword-wielding character and announced myself at the front gate of the city I was trying to enter to start my glorious career of adventuring.

Upon being asked by the watch at the gate who I was, what I did, and what I was entering the city for, I, having absolutely NO SENSE of the environment of the D&D world (and having a marked lack of grasp of reality in general), my 13-year-old self puffed up and announced, "My name is Karynna (Yeah, yeah, so what? I was 13), I come to your town in search of adventure, and I am a thief!" See? No grasp of the in-game reality, or reality in general. WHO THE CRAP WOULD ANNOUNCE THEMSELVES AS A THIEF AT THE CITY GATES?! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My poor harried DM took it in stride, however. Other than that, I have very little in the way of memories about that game. I don't think it lasted all that long. Shortly thereafter, however, I had gained a little more footing in the world of D&D, and joined the rest of the group, spending Friday and Saturday nights from about 9pm to about 4am playing various games in various TSR universes. I remember the 8-hour Drow of the Underdark binges. I remember playing a 7-foot-tall elven gladiator in the Dark Sun universe. I played almost every D&D universe out there, but my favorite was Forgotten Realms. I played SO MANY games set in Forgotten Realms.

I loved Forgotten Realms. So many nifty gods and goddesses to worship, to be clergy of. 9 times out of 10, if I was playing a Forgotten Realms game, I was a priestess of some god or another. You got neat powers!

I even played a Spelljammer game a few times. NEVER EVER EVER have a Spelljamming ship powered by a wild mage. Bad, bad news. And never use a Wand of Wonder in ship-to-ship combat. Just never give a wild mage a Wand of Wonder. Ever.

My favorite alignment was always chaotic neutral (or chaotic convenient, I always called it). You could get away with anything if you were CN. I had my good characters, I had my evil characters. Only play an all-evil campaign if you've got a lot of time to kill and don't mind getting next to nothing done. You're too busy plotting to kill the other members of your party to actually focus on the goal of the adventure itself.

My husband, along with some other friends of mine, are always talking about starting another D&D game up. I'm all for it, though I'll have to re-familiarize myself with 3rd Edition rules. I miss gaming, I won't lie... but character creation always takes so long with me; I can never decide what I want to be. Maybe I'll just take the shortcut and do a random-roll character.

...Nah. I'm too much of a control freak for that kind of crap.