Glen Atwell
Shaun InguanzoDungeons & Dragons
December 5th 2006 22:00
During my Internetworking class at the beginning of the year, I met this incredibly arrogant guy. I had finished the practical early (making Category 5 straight-through cables) and was sitting around waiting for my friends to finish. He came up to me and started off the conversation in an accusing tone:
Him: You haven't finished the practical, have you?
Me: Yes, I have finished it. (thinking: Great, yet another guy who thinks women are useless with computers.)
Him: *scoffs* You're lying. If you had then you wouldn't be here.
Me: Well, I'm waiting for these two. *indicating the two male friends I was waiting for, who this guy happens to know*
Him: *to them* Hey. Has she finished the prac?
Friend #1: Yeah, I'd think so.
Friend #2: Of course she has! She always finishes before us...
End of that story.
I had a few more run-ins with him where I happened to best his expectations (beating him in (almost?) every exam, not reacting how he thought I'd react) before he cut the asshole act. We're now friends and I've discovered that he can be very considerate as well as incredibly annoying as he was in the beginning.
Cutting a long story short, in May he said I had to play Dungeons and Dragons with him during the semester break (mid-June to the start of August). That fell through due to forgetting about it and leading busy lives, but the moment the semester began, he started pestering me about it more (mostly towards the end of it in November).
I agreed to play the game. He said we needed a few more people, so I brought along my significant other as well as one of my other friends, while he brought along one of his.
Seeing how I've never played a pen and paper RPG before, I thought it'd be an interesting game to try. Still, I didn't expect the Player's Handbook to be so big (roughly 300 pages). I have a rather blurry .pdf version of it (until our ordered copy comes in in a week or two) as well as a "Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies" pdf which is about 400 pages, but with much clearer text. That took a while to read and learn.
On Sunday, we'd all finished creating our characters and had a trial adventure. It was pretty interesting even though we fumbled pretty badly while getting used to how things work. We'll be starting properly this Friday, so I might end up writing about some of our D&
sessions.
For ease of reference, I'll probably be referring to each of the people later by their role in the game:
Dungeon Master (or DM) - The arrogant guy in my Internetworking class (by the way, he prides himself on his arrogance so I don't feel the least bit bad calling him so =p). He'll be running the game as well as all the monster actions.
Rogue - What I'll be playing. I plan to pick up the Two-Weapon Fighting (can get up to 6 attacks per round) feats and be the second melee character as well as other stealth/scouting tasks.
Bard - What my significant other is playing. He plans to be the diplomat in the party and supportive character in battle.
Barbarian – What my friend will be playing. He pretty much got stuck with either the barbarian or fighter since the rest of us had already chosen, though at the time my significant other and I were pretty sure he'd go with the barbarian as he has some odd fascination with violence and would like to hit hard.
Wizard - The arrogant guy's friend. I'm not sure exactly what he's doing with his character, since his wizard has 11HP at Level 1, which is phenomenal. Normally they have 1-4HP to begin with. For a comparison, my rogue has 6HP. I forget the barbarian's starting HP, but I think it was only slightly higher than the wizard's.
As for the guy himself, I was rather surprised to see that he didn't react at all to my being part of the game. Generally upon first meeting in any game situation, the reaction is surprise followed by ignoring or increased attention or, now that my significant other is here (he only moved to Cairns this year), they assume I'm just his girlfriend along for the ride and address him first and for anything involving me. It's quite irksome when I've introduced him to most of the people he knows here.
The arrogant guy's friend doesn't treat me any different to how he treats everyone else at the table so far, and it's fantastic. It probably has something to do with the arrogant guy telling him about knowing me first, but hey, any equality is good equality. The lack of singling out (either positively or negatively) is what makes a great game/gathering to me.
This should be fun.
Him: You haven't finished the practical, have you?
Me: Yes, I have finished it. (thinking: Great, yet another guy who thinks women are useless with computers.)
Him: *scoffs* You're lying. If you had then you wouldn't be here.
Me: Well, I'm waiting for these two. *indicating the two male friends I was waiting for, who this guy happens to know*
Friend #1: Yeah, I'd think so.
Friend #2: Of course she has! She always finishes before us...
End of that story.
I had a few more run-ins with him where I happened to best his expectations (beating him in (almost?) every exam, not reacting how he thought I'd react) before he cut the asshole act. We're now friends and I've discovered that he can be very considerate as well as incredibly annoying as he was in the beginning.
Cutting a long story short, in May he said I had to play Dungeons and Dragons with him during the semester break (mid-June to the start of August). That fell through due to forgetting about it and leading busy lives, but the moment the semester began, he started pestering me about it more (mostly towards the end of it in November).
I agreed to play the game. He said we needed a few more people, so I brought along my significant other as well as one of my other friends, while he brought along one of his.
Seeing how I've never played a pen and paper RPG before, I thought it'd be an interesting game to try. Still, I didn't expect the Player's Handbook to be so big (roughly 300 pages). I have a rather blurry .pdf version of it (until our ordered copy comes in in a week or two) as well as a "Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies" pdf which is about 400 pages, but with much clearer text. That took a while to read and learn.
On Sunday, we'd all finished creating our characters and had a trial adventure. It was pretty interesting even though we fumbled pretty badly while getting used to how things work. We'll be starting properly this Friday, so I might end up writing about some of our D&
sessions.For ease of reference, I'll probably be referring to each of the people later by their role in the game:
Dungeon Master (or DM) - The arrogant guy in my Internetworking class (by the way, he prides himself on his arrogance so I don't feel the least bit bad calling him so =p). He'll be running the game as well as all the monster actions.
Rogue - What I'll be playing. I plan to pick up the Two-Weapon Fighting (can get up to 6 attacks per round) feats and be the second melee character as well as other stealth/scouting tasks.
Bard - What my significant other is playing. He plans to be the diplomat in the party and supportive character in battle.
Barbarian – What my friend will be playing. He pretty much got stuck with either the barbarian or fighter since the rest of us had already chosen, though at the time my significant other and I were pretty sure he'd go with the barbarian as he has some odd fascination with violence and would like to hit hard.
Wizard - The arrogant guy's friend. I'm not sure exactly what he's doing with his character, since his wizard has 11HP at Level 1, which is phenomenal. Normally they have 1-4HP to begin with. For a comparison, my rogue has 6HP. I forget the barbarian's starting HP, but I think it was only slightly higher than the wizard's.
As for the guy himself, I was rather surprised to see that he didn't react at all to my being part of the game. Generally upon first meeting in any game situation, the reaction is surprise followed by ignoring or increased attention or, now that my significant other is here (he only moved to Cairns this year), they assume I'm just his girlfriend along for the ride and address him first and for anything involving me. It's quite irksome when I've introduced him to most of the people he knows here.
The arrogant guy's friend doesn't treat me any different to how he treats everyone else at the table so far, and it's fantastic. It probably has something to do with the arrogant guy telling him about knowing me first, but hey, any equality is good equality. The lack of singling out (either positively or negatively) is what makes a great game/gathering to me.
This should be fun.
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Comment by Ragin Cajun
Observer's Post
Death By Myopia
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
I had a roommate once that was huge into D&
Comment by Ahmed
techy.Bytes
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
Qwerk
Cinema Three
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
I've never played Neverwinter Nights, though I heard it was good. I also heard Baldur's Gate was good, which I played for a while and got extremely bored of it. It was fun creating my character at the start, but the game itself was pretty dull. The characters and quests were just monotone. So you can say that I haven't really enjoyed any of the electronic D&
Cibby: I'd agree that it'd be painfully boring hearing about someone rave on about their character and character background (I didn't even write a background for mine, because well, I'm not that creative enough and I was already sick of messing around with stuff). Reading even the dummie.pdf was painful, not enjoyable reading at all and took me a few days, but since I'd agreed to it, I wasn't going to back out. I've barely touched the actual Player's Handbook since it's incredibly monotonous and very like studying (I just finished exams recently, so bugger that).
Seriously, if it wasn't with who I'm playing with, I probably wouldn't have bothered. However, I can say that the test session wasn't too bad. The pen and paper D&
But since it is, I'm enjoying myself so far. Actually, it doesn't differ much from our other gatherings for movies, games, or watching some show together. Just another venue of sorts.
Comment by Ahmed
techy.Bytes
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
Qwerk
Cinema Three
I don't really subscribe to the idea 'you do this, then you're that' because if that is it then I am, by my own description, a loser, nerd, geek, and every other demeaning thing you can think of, save for a D&
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
And yeah... That's a new one to me. Maybe D&
As for the movies... I've seen one. "The Gamers". That was incredibly bad. Almost as bad as that Lifetime movie "Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life" which I was given on the basis of "It's so bad that it's actually entertaining".
I'd only think of it negatively if that's all the person ever talked about. D&
But then... crapping on about something incessantly is bad in any case. Like World of Warcraft. Oh how I despise hearing people talk about it 24/7, for over a year and not have anything else to say. Oddly enough, I've never thought of them as nerds.