I had always heard about the game Dungeons and Dragons prior to starting college. I liked the idea of playing a role in a medieval quest. However, no one I knew in Artesia played it.
So I was aware that I would run into people who played in college. I was able to track some down and gave it a shot. These were all complete strangers and I was kind of okay with the experience. For me, the main problem was anytime we encountered some foe, we had to wait about five minutes for each person to figure out what attack they were going to use, roll the dice and wait for the Dungeonmaster to look up the number to determine the outcome. We had to do this several times for the same foe. Then we would walk a few feet, and another foe would suddenly appear and we had to go through the entire process again. I left after a couple of hours.
Knowing that I might not have had a good first experience, I was hoping to find another group to play with. I found it with some theatre students. We gathered at the apartment of one of the other students after a morning of rehearsal for "How the Other Half Loves." There were about ten of us involved.
This game was a lot more lively than the other one. We didn't come up against monsters in every room. There was treasure and individual encounters with other characters taking place. This game was certainly a lot more engaging and we spent 10 solid hours playing.
However, I had a number of issues that I didn't encounter the first time. The first was that the Dungeonmaster permitted the particpants to pass him notes about things they were doing that they didn't want others to know. A few times, those notes involved taking items out of my bag, so that when I reached in to use a weapon, I would find that it was missing. Another was that the other particpants had a tendency to loudly argue with me about things that were happening in the game. They kept saying they were yelling at me in character, but I actually felt like they were getting mad because I really didn't know how to play. I guess I should also mention that some of them were drinking during the game. As the game wore on, they got more beligerent.
I also felt like the Dungeonmaster was picking on me and subjecting me to all sorts of cruel outcomes. He also would not let me deal the finishing blows on the foes, which reduced my chances for earning experience points and moving up levels. Everybody else playing got those points. The strange thing is, outside the game, this guy was actually one of the better friends I had in the Theatre department (although I am not writing a post about him).
So, I never really got into the game even though it's normally played by people who are known for being nerds and geeks. Interestingly enough, Loyd got sucked into it that year. He actually found friends from Artesia High School to play with. The Dungeonmaster he knew came up with a quest that was supposed to take a year to complete. However, Loyd was going to go to the New Mexico Military Institute for the spring 1983 semester and tried to get his friend to tear through that quest in the two weeks before he was supposed to show up for classes. I don't know if they ever made it.
I got more into the Dungeons and Dragons-style games when the video game versions came out. At the very least, I feel like, when I'm playing it, everyone is following the rules.
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