Adventures in Nerd-dom

Yesterday was international D&D Game Day down at Merlyn's, so me, Trev, Tom, and Jeff headed downtown to roll some dice and pwn some fools. It must be said that there are two types of D&D nerds: there are guys like us, who play regularly, but see the game as more of an outlet for one's fantasies, and have regular lives outside of the game; and then there are the dorks. You know the type: they do nothing but play RPGs, think of nothing but RPGs, and have generally neglected such things as taking a shower, or learning how to communicate with real human beings (rolling a diplomacy check does not count as having a conversation!), or avoiding the fanny pack. When we got into the store yesterday, there were quite a few of the dorks present. We might call them "Ultranurds" if we were so inclined (which, frankly, right now, I am). This worried us. We had 4 people to fill out a six-person group, which meant that we would end up with two others, and at that point, it looked to be just ultranurds present. When our turn finally came up, there was a bit of worry amongst our crew when we discovered that one of the guys at the table was just such a dork. However, we were saved by registration when it was realized that this guy had not actually signed up to play, so it was the four of us, plus two other guys who were basically just normal guys who could joke and have a good time. As a result, we rolled through the dungeon quite handily, with only one death (Tom, the halfling rogue), and managed to actually pull off "hold person" successfully not just once, but twice (those of you familiar with the game know that this spell is notorious for its low save to negate, and thus an otherwise powerful spell is quite the gamble). My ranger managed to get out of it all more or less unscathed, and managed to do some damage (not much, but some). Trev got to pull some handy turning abilities with his Dwarf priest, while Jeff got to fail to turn quite often as the human paladin. Meanwhile, our two pick-up guys managed to hold their own quite nicely as the human fighter and elven wizard, so yeah, it was a pretty good game, out of which we ended up getting some swag and the like. Would I do it again? Yes, with a few caveats, namely, bring a full six-person group, in order to avoid the risk of playing with the guys who smell bad and turn into insane rules lawyers; and that we arrive early so as to avoid having to wait for hours just to play.

P.S. Ninja devotees: play Ninja Burger. That is all.