Anatomy of a Geek - Part 3

The main difference between going off to college and my last big move was that I was armed with better skills at making friends and I was determined to do so. But luck plays a role in these things and I happened to hit the jackpot. My very first friend was my freshman roommate, Gyuss Baaltar. The next day we met our immediate next door neighbor, Pokiman. These two as well as others mentioned on this blog such as Monkeywrench, Braveheart, Urban Cowboy, and Eagle Scout all became a tightly knit group of fast friends for four of the most fabulous years of my life. But no meeting would be more infamous in the annals of geek lore than that of Cyber D and Dagromm.


It was the fall of 1992 and Gyuss had just returned from dinner in the cafeteria and mentioned that he was about to go down and play this board game called Talisman with a bunch of the other freshman on the second floor. I hadn't heard of the game but when I learned it was fantasy based I was in. Dagromm and I met playing that game and we learned about of shared interest in Dungeons & Dragons. Following the holiday break Dagromm and I returned to campus and embarked upon, what I can only describe, as the most ambitious, creative, detailed, comprehensive, endeavor of a two year Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It started simply enough by recruiting players for the game. There were a few no-brainers like Gyuss and Pokiman, who had played before. But the vast majority of our friendship circle had no idea what an RPG was yet they condescended to give it a try. Because we were dealing with so many rookie players we realized we had an opportunity to do something very different. It was an opportunity to break the mold of traditional style gaming and bring something fresh to the experience. Our idea was to instill a gritty realism to a fantasy world that is typically lacking in fantasy games. So often game-masters focus solely on the mechanics of a game that the experience gets boiled down to a goal oriented arms race of who can accumulate more power faster than anyone else. This style leaves out so much of what makes RPG's great.


Consequently we identified three overarching aspects to bring to every adventure. The first was fear. We wanted the players to feel that the world around them was not this homogenous, friendly, by-the-book environment. In every adventure they would encounter prejudice, ignorance, betrayal, and an impoverished feudal society where trust was a more precious commodity than gold. The second was the school of hard knocks. Realistically the life of an adventurer would be a hard and thankless life. Most people would see you as nothing more than a mercenary and mercenaries are never to be trusted. We wanted to convey to the party that there was a reason why all the people in the world around them chose to be bartenders and blacksmiths… because adventuring was not always profitable but more importantly it was dangerous and deadly. This brings us to our third aspect that we wanted to instill into our mythology – Death. We made a conscious decision to make no allowances for the luck of the dice. If a character died based on the rules we did not change the outcome. Consequently many players started from scratch over and over and few players ever saw their characters advance.


Reading this you might wonder if our games were fun at all but I believe that our players shared an experience like no other. Because though the characters didn’t often reap the benefits of their adventures, we always tried to reward the players with something extra. From the beginning we provided a back story to the world around them, with a detailed mythology of original deities, information on how each race of creatures viewed the other, and ongoing information guides about new cities and cultures as they traveled the land. But the pinnacle of innovation was without a doubt our weekly newsletter. This precursor to every adventure was peppered with references from the characters recent encounters as well as littered with information that could help guide them on their upcoming task. Each newsletter built upon the last, rewarding loyal attendance and readership the same way a serialized television show might reward an astute and regular viewer with details only they can appreciate.


The Divine Messages as they were known became one of the most anticipated aspects of a two year campaign. But what was perhaps more amazing then anything related to the game itself was how the game brought different people together. To this day I doubt I will ever experience a more diverse cross section of individuals working together as a team towards a common goal. Of the nine regular players we had a theater major, a football jock, a Hispanic player, an African American player. We had mostly men, but the women represented too. We had straight A students and we had a player that eventually flunked out of school. We had business majors, English majors, psychology majors, economics majors and more. We had people who had grown up in small towns and those that grew up in the big city. We saw friendships develop that would have never exhisted prior to that shared experience. We spent hours of game time together but many have since spent infinitely more time outside the game. Some of my longest standing and dearest friends come from that experience and from a personal standpoint - I share a leadership experience with Dagromm that I am as proud of as any professional accomplishment.

We didn’t manage to play Dungeons & Dragons for all four years of school. Ultimately the multitude of other demands placed on any college student pulled us in different directions, but we all remained fast friends. Dagromm, Gyuss, Pokiman, and I continued to get together for a variety of different geek-fest activities but my last and best foray into Dungeons & Dragons will always hold a very special place in my memory. So for all you geeks out there in blog country… I salute you!