Nerdination!

So, based on the acquisition of 4th edition D&D books, I've gotten back into D&D in a major way. I was always into it, and have been playing fairly regularly since I was about 14 or 15 years old. That's well over half my life, and just contemplating that is astounding to me. Very few other games have been such a mainstay for me. Super Mario Bros., perhaps, but I don't play that with anything near the fervor of a good D&D session.

I remember getting my first copy of a Player's Handbook (2nd edition) back one summer long ago. I was doing some corn detassling at the time, and invited four of my friends over after work to play some D&D. The first group ever consisted of my friend Corey as DM (because he'd played before), and Myself, Chad, Nate, and Mike as the players. I played a Halfling Thief (that's right, we called ourselves thieves back then, noobs, because Bards are Rogues as well!). Mike was a Dwarf Fighter, Chad was an Elf Mage, and Nate was a Human Cleric. You know, you just don't get a more vanilla group than that. And we had a lot of fun and played a LOT of D&D over the next several years.

Eventually the DM hat got passed in my direction, and I enjoyed the helm. I had a few stints as a player in college, but I knew that DMing was the place that I belonged. Still, I never felt like I could possibly know all of the rules. That hasn't changed to this day, but I figured out the secret of being a decent DM -- Use good judgment, make it up, and don't waste time looking up rules. If you really need it, the players all have PHBs, so they can look it up for you. That's it. Other than that, be as descriptive as possible and only as restrictive as necessary. OK, I could go on and on, but the truth of the matter is that as long as everyone is having fun, that's all that matters.

Back to the crux of the discussion: I now live farther from my friends than ever before, yet we play more D&D than we have since high school. It's a very social activity, and it's extremely awesome to have the excuse to get my friends to come over (or to go to their places) to sit down, have a few beers/mountain dews/whatever and immerse ourselves in an afternoon of slaying monsters and performing epic acrobatic maneuvers. After moving to a new town, this is pretty much the pinnacle of my social activity.

The game has grown considerably since my days in a 4-player party. So many of my friends play D&D now, and all of them want to be part of the action (which is awesome). This has resulted in a HUGE party of players. At the last session, we had 9 players. There were moments where the potential player turnout was somewhere around 14, but there's never been a time where everyone invited has showed up. I had a 9-player session in my basement in Robbinsdale back when we were playing 2nd edition, and it was utter chaos. There were actually several sessions back then where we only got through one fight. That's not the case anymore -- 4th edition moves a lot quicker for a number of reasons. First, you only roll initiative once. When we played 2nd edition (whether this was in the rules or not I don't rightly know) we rolled initiative every round. That adds up to taking a lot of time. Also, just figuring out whether you hit or not was more difficult.

This is getting to be a long blog, but I wanted to mention a couple more things. I totally skipped 3rd edition and 3.5, but was immensely pleased to find out that 4th edition relies heavily on miniatures. D&D started as a miniature game, but by the time 2nd edition rolled around they weren't nearly as necessary and in fact we didn't even play with miniatures until I became a DM. Even then they were only used for placement and facing, not for movement. That's right, we ignored movement rate (it was just too dang complicated). Now my 4 pewter miniatures have become 25 pewter miniatures, although I only actually own 4. My players tend to leave their minis with me. I've also assembled an army of monster miniatures, and crave more. The visual aspect that the miniatures adds to the game allows players to continue to be interested in the board and to strategize their next move even while it's not their turn. They stay engaged, and it's awesome. That helps a ton with 9-player groups.

However, miniatures are expensive. You can get some for under 1.00, but some are ridiculous (like the gelatinous cube that sells for $40 and is just a plastic cube. come on. Some of my dice sets have come inside perfectly good gelatinous cubes. LOL.) I'm so INTO the minis, though, that I've decided to try my hand at making my own, as soon as I can get my grubby mitts on some fimo. Also, crafting cool looking encounter grids has become an obsession/goal of mine, because it really brings the scene to life. So, in addition to the fimo, a woodburning kit might be on my list of stuff to get. Oh, and a tackle box for my minis. This stuff literally fills me with glee.

If you can't tell...I'm excited to play more D&D.