Daring Deeds and Dashing D...heroes...

So, about a month ago some of my fellow anthro people (who shall remain nameless, to protect the innocent...or something) and I took our steps into a dark and treacherous place. You see, I'm a nerd. I'm not ashamed of that, and in fact I've grown to embrace it as time goes on. Let's face it...my entire scholastic/professional track is based on this nerd-ish tendency. I love Star Wars, have read LOTR multiple times, I play computer games, and can speak lolcat.

However, one thing I have never done is play Dungeons and Dragons. There's no particular reason for it, I wasn't really exposed to people who played it regularly, and those I did encounter were the "scary" D&Ders... I'm not one to profile people, so I'll just leave that there (and no, that's not me or any of my nameless companions to the left).

But I'm an adult now (hah), and my friends are all adults, and I can trust them to be responsible and mature (hah). Anyhow, I felt it was a safe environment, we'll leave it at that.

So I mentioned that it really was a sort of affront to my nerddom that I had never played D&D. I know most of the jokes, I understand the hilarity of casting magic missile at the darkness, and I know the difference between an epic fail and an epic flail. But, much to my shame, I've never rolled a D4 hoping against hope to drop an area attack and send kobolds and goblins fleeing my arcane powers.

Hi. My name is Marcus...and I...I'm a nerd poser.

Anyhow, at my admission, several others came clean, who despite their seemingly impressive nerd credentials were also unfamiliar with rolling polyhedrons. So, together, we decided to take the plunge.

Books were read, dice bought, and at least two pewter figurines were painted.

We've assembled quite the motley crew...our half-demon warlord Avyx, our half elf rogue (who does an incredible impression of a tree) Mairwen, the highly flammable halfling warlock Ember, Clanky and Cranky...our human paladin and dwarf cleric (Peredu and Norge), and the sometimes conscious wizard Jon bon Jonne. The role of DM (at least for the time being) has been filled by yours truly. Not because I'm any good at the game, or have any deep understanding of the mechanics...I don't. But because I volunteered, and figured it would be the best way to learn, since I'd have to. Yeah, that's right...I'm playing D&D trying to learn stuff. It's kind of weird.

Anyhow, faced with the concept of learning a new game, and how to run it what was I to do. I read what I could of the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master book...but despite my experience learning things from books those weren't the most helpful. I've had to go a little further afield. I dredged deep into my nerd bones and found:

The folks at Penny-Arcade and PVP Dungeon Crawl podcast
and
Critical Hit podcast
(just go to itunes to subscribe to either of them, or muddle around on the internet to figure out how to do it that way...I'm not entirely sure)

So armed with listening in on how campaigns are run, a rough idea of how the rules worked, I cobbled together an adventure, with the story...well, not quite improvised as I went along, but definitely "in flux" as the weeks advanced. We just finished the first "adventure" (or whatever you want to call it) and despite some rough patches went pretty well I think. Took 3 nights to make it through, but I'd say...success? Maybe I'll issue a play-by-play...cuz again...I'm a nerd (and so are you).