Yeah, I game. What of it??

Possible copyright violation here

Okay, if you know anything about role-playing games (or "RPGs" as we insiders call them) you've probably heard of Dungeons & Dragons (and the various suicides it caused...and the various suicides the bad movies have caused.) Maybe you've even played it once or twice(high school's a time for "experimenting", right?) If you know a little more about role-playing (or "gaming" as we insiders call it), then you've probably heard that there are several-in fact many-different types of RPGs out there, with themes ranging from vampires to cyberpunk to espionage. And if you know a lot about gaming, you'll know what that comic strip above references, you have characters sitting around in folders for every single game you've ever played, your unique set of "dragon green" dice are worn down with sweat and endless rolling, and you've taken at least one stab at running/designing your own game. I don't game as much as I used to thanks to the fact that a) I'm an adult and b) I have a kid I'm trying not to corrupt with my dorkiness, but if you think I don't lay awake at night longing for the power I wielded as captain of the Enders back in that Warhammer campaign in fall of '92...you'd be wrong.

Despite the clear insanity of what I just wrote, I wouldn't say I or my friends were ever "hard-core" gamers. Yes, we've been to gaming conventions, yes we've done "all-night" gaming (complete with mandatory Doritos and sodas), but we've never dressed up as our characters, or dressed up as our characters to do an all-nighter at a gaming convention. In fact, because our gaming sessions were really more of a chance for us to get together and laugh at ourselves for being so witty and clever, our sessions usually looked more like this:

But, we didn't care. We had a good time, we killed hundreds or so of orcs/elfs/humans/gnomes and afterwards we usually had advanced a few levels, obtained some magical weaponry, and died once or twice.

That's all I have to say about gaming right now. Now that I think about it I've got quite a few ideas for more things to talk about, but I think I've embarassed myself enough for now.