The Morning After

Michael gives a little grin and says, in the way only a New England priest can, “Well, we’ve both been known to play the odd video game from time to time.”

He quickly moves away to make the rounds of his new flock.

It was a tentative beginning, but I could feel the hook setting. In the forty years, I’ve met exactly five card-carrying, game-playing nerds my small town. One I grew up with. The other three I met only in the past 7 or 8 years, largely through the expansive reach of the Gamers With Jobs Conference Call. So finding a potential new nerdling within walking distance – or better yet, a mated pair – was astonishing. It was as if, after years of traipsing the globe hunting for a glimpse of anything magical, I’d come home to find two unicorns hanging out in front of my garage.


Months go by. The new couple settles into the rectory and church life, and, like a good parishioner, I drop an invitation to dinner. After a lovely meal, I suggest a light after-dinner game. Dixit – a game in which players use dream-like images on heavy, beautifully painted cards to communicate – seems to fit the bill.

It’s glorious. There is laughter, and a few Manhattans, and some lively story telling. And of course, the conversation turns to role playing games – all exactly according to my plan.

“You know,” I mention, oh-so-casually, “The playtest for D&D Next just came out, and it looks really cool. I know a few folks working on it. You ever play?”

Of course he has. But like most of us, it’s been years. The real world had collapsed on us and, like countless nerds before us, we’d adopted 1 Corinthians 13:11 just a little too literally. (1)

“Funny you should ask,” says Michael. “I’ve never DMd before, and was thinking about it the other day. Do you know anyone who might be interested?”

Thus began the third great campaign of my life, a three-year adventure, which ended Wednesday.

Which made Thursday one of the most depressing days of my life.


Any roleplaying campaign is ultimately about the players, not about the game. The three big, multi-year campaigns I’ve played have all been in different systems: a homebrew Arms Law knockoff, Ars Magica, and now, D&D Fifth Edition. While they all had their charms, I mostly remember the players and the stories.

Michael had never been behind the screen, but fortunately the playtest packets we started out with forced us into the broadest of brushstrokes. By focusing on the four corners of the playtest, we four players were essentially forced into Wizard, Fighter, Rogue and Cleric, and Michael created a classic high-fantasy storyline in a world of his own design. We were as stereotypical as could be: the elvish rogue on the run, the Dwarven fighter from a disgraced – but of course royal – bloodline, the tentative human priest, and me, a high-charisma Wizard always in way over his head.

But perhaps more importantly, the players meshed. If we hadn’t, I doubt we would have lasted 5 sessions. I will admit: In those first few evenings, none of us knew each other as people. I’d never been actual friends with a priest before. I didn’t know the protocol. Did he drink? (Yes.) Swear? (Yes.) Make inappropriate jokes? (Maybe not quite as bad as mine.) Of our two Jesses, one is a psychiatrist, the other a theater teacher at a boarding school. Me? Well, I just write about stuff. And Annie our wayward elf? She’s an artist, trying to figure out how to be that while still being a mom and, yes, a pastor’s wife in an excruciatingly small town.

I won’t bore you with the “… and then we conned the black dragon into leaving the castle” stories. It was 3 years of high adventure, with enormous setpieces, props, physical puzzles, thousand-person mass combats, and disturbing quantity of cocktails. We had a dozen guest-players, ranging from my wife to most of the folks who’ve ever been on the GWJ Conference Call. It was, in the actual literal meaning of the word, epic.
And then, just like that, we sat down this past Wednesday night, knowing we were near the end of our enormous story arc, and Michael kicked us all in the emotional nuts. He read us his perspective on each of us over the course of the game. As characters, sure. But perhaps more. Click here if you want to read it …

Spoiler:

Exiled from her temple for the offense of casting magic … now Cora is a champion. Each head of her hammer is a horse's head: one white with bright blue sapphires for eyes, the other recently turned black, with red rubies for eyes. The hammer of Epona, straddling life and death.

Wade, who once scratched out a meager life as a child on the streets, now crackles with living power. Always looking to put on a show, Wade found that he could do things others could not. After a bar fight where a certain patron’s balls got more than a little tickle, Wade needed to get out of town. Now Wade has traded in his dusty travelers clothes for rich, flowing robes.

The Elf Mari walks like a shadow. Fleeing her mother and the criminal underground of Midlgate, Still struggling to find her place in the world and in the party, she wonders how and why she ended up here. Her black armor and black bow seem to shift. One hand is on her bow, arrow already knocked. Her other hand holds a stone pig. And lately her trances have been filled with visions of fields and the image of a white stag on the run.

The Dwarf Kundar walks with his head held high. Once he was an outcast, stripped of even his own name. Now he is not just the head of his tribe: he has taken the name of the founder: Kundar of Clan Kundarkin. He bears the Hammer of Kundar, forged in the heart of Silverhold, his clan’s ancient home, and he is the King of All Dwarves – Braemer and Gurandor – ready to save his people, and his friends, from any threat – or die trying.

Is it cheese? Of course it is. To you, constant reader, the words above must seem like the worst kind of “tell me about your character” nonsense, and honestly, to even capture our individual 3-year arcs would take a dozen pages. But to quote the wise-despite-the-haircut Shawn Andrich, “Nobody actually wants to hear about your dream last night, even if you saw God.”

But to me? I wept openly at hearing those words.

Here’s the thing:

While I try to be a good father, and a good husband, and a good friend, the truth is, I’m never actually very convinced I’m any of those things. Every morning, I wake up and I want to stay in bed. Every evening, I want to have a cocktail and stay up watching crappy TV or playing LoL. In between, I want to do as little work as possible.

Thankfully, the “I WANT” fades into the background most of the time, and I get out of bed, and I don’t stay up till 2AM, and I actually put in a day’s work, my kids eat, and my wife doesn’t leave me.

But that person who struggles to overcome “I WANT” is not who I was every Wednesday night for the last few years. I was Wade. And honestly, despite his goofiness and his constant flirtation with near-death experiences, Wade was just better. And Cora was better. And Kundar and Mari. The incredible gift of the last few years is that for those brief few hours, I got to try on being a better, more powerful, more noble, more selfless version of myself.

I know it’s not really an end – we’ll move on and play new things and have new adventures. But today … today I’m in mourning for the imaginary people we almost were, and now really, truly aren’t any more.


(1) "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (King James Version)

Comments

Thank you for sharing. It is a good way to start the morning.

Endings are tricky. Sad because they are a change and when you have been enjoying the ride it is sad when it stops. They are also wonderful because they give a new perspective and closure.
Have a good day enjoying the memories. I'm sure you'll find some way to get the band of heroes back together for drinks someday.

Sounds like it was a truly amazing campaign and experience. Thanks for sharing.

Congratulations on your adventure! I cheer for people who manage to find enjoyable groups of people that actually want to game. Our inner Wade's need that time out of the box.

Thank you. I loved this, and I completely understand.

While I try to be a good father, and a good husband, and a good friend, the truth is, I’m never actually very convinced I’m any of those things. Every morning, I wake up and I want to stay in bed. Every evening, I want to have a cocktail and stay up watching crappy TV or playing LoL. In between, I want to do as little work as possible.

Thankfully, the “I WANT” fades into the background most of the time, and I get out of bed, and I don’t stay up till 2AM, and I actually put in a day’s work, my kids eat, and my wife doesn’t leave me.

Wow. Get out of my head.

Glad to find you found such a great, consistent escape (or maybe path forward?) over those years. Thanks for sharing.

The band isn't breaking up -- we're just changing Genres. I start TimeWatch for the group tomorrow night.

I start TimeWatch for the group tomorrow night.

That will have been sounding like a beautiful night.

wordsmythe wrote:
I start TimeWatch for the group tomorrow night.

That will have been sounding like a beautiful night.

I see what you did there.

Congrats on finishing a full 3 year campaign and thank you for sharing some of it with us. I hope the next story is just as memorable, moving, and amazing!

rabbit wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
I start TimeWatch for the group tomorrow night.

That will have been sounding like a beautiful night.

I see what you did there.

The future sounds perfect. I hope it is continuous.

Great story Julian, sounds like an awesome experience.

I'm tired of adulting. I want to go back to being a high-school or college student and play D&D with my friends.