and Words
I can see
When you stay low, nothing happens
Does it feel right?
Late at night
Things I thought I’d put behind me
Haunt my mind
I just know there’s no escape now
Once it sets its eyes on you
But I won’t run, have to stare it in the eyes
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On a typical Florida day, I wander to the courtyard in my high school. Friends and I meet on a familiar table near the boy’s locker room. Our group of misfit geeks gather on one table among a sea of cement that separate us from others; there are both young men and women among our group. I met most of these friends in middle school, though some I met in this first year of high school. We’re here to adventure and slay monsters.
We gather with paper, pencils, and thumbnail-sized (and mostly regular) polyhedrons. The latter have numbers scribed on each side, and we use them as dice. They come in varying shapes and have 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20 faces. We use different dice to determine success on different tasks. For instance, if you only have a 1 in 20 chance to successfully accomplish a task, rolling a 20 on that d20 (shorthand for 20-sided dice) indicates success; anything else is failure.
Most are familiar with this game, if only by name, or more accurately by reputation. Of course, the game is ‘Dungeons and Dragons’. It’s what is better known as a Role-Playing Game (or RPG). Each player constructs a character, adopts a few rules for that character, and then we go off in our own adventure.
The game is deeply statistical, which is likely why it appealed mostly to geeks. We needed to be good at math. Odds determined your success at an array of different activities. How likely are you to successfully strike a foe with your sword? Will you hit the bull’s eye at an archery contest? How effectively do you cast a certain spell? All these outcomes are mathematical and are all determined by the roll of the dice.
The game requires imagination. Each day during our lunches on that courtyard, we embarked on our adventures. Our group consisted of different classes (or occupations). We had a warrior, a healer, a wizard, and a martial artist. We each had our own set of skills and our roles to play; I played the martial artist (monk). I remember those adventures vividly. On one such session, we faced a vampire, and my character was turned. I continued playing him for a bit as a lawful-evil, monk vampire.
As I grew older, my interest for the game persisted. Having graduated high school, I stopped playing with those set of friends, though I occasionally met them in a local gamers club. However, I mostly stopped playing during college, finding little time between 17-credit semesters and waiting on tables every weekend. Eventually, I graduated college and landed a job at Microsoft; this is where I met a new set of gaming friends.
Our friendship and sessions persisted for literally decades; we met regularly. If you looked carefully, you may see us huddled in a conference room. Together we’d play into the night, each with our respective characters. Stacks of books, inches thick, opened soda cans, and remnants of food often covered the long wooden table. We carried our natural tools of the game, character sheets with minute details on statistics and equipment. We rolled polyhedron dice similar to the ones we rolled when we all first started playing. I carried my gaming equipment in a messenger bag cleverly marketed as a “Bag of Holding”, though this one lacked the magical properties of the one from lore.
And across all those years, those conference rooms scarcely contained the joy, laughter, wit, and affection between those friends. It didn’t matter how crappy work or home life had become; we’d always have that slot of time when those issues evaporated. Seated around those elongated wooden tables, we embarked upon adventures to far-off lands or deep into the catacombs of unfamiliar dungeons. It was years before I realized that it wasn’t as much about the game as it was about the friendships.
Those gaming sessions spanned decades. Over that time, I nurtured characters from their respective infancy into legends in their domains. I’ll recall a few scattered details about them:
- Monk (martial artist): My first character. He started as human but later turned into vampire (and changed alignment to lawful-evil). Eventually he was restored back to human and wielded a magical spear named Icetooth.
- Female cleric, named Hope. Was naturally the healer of the party.
- Female monk, named Faith. Wore two magical rings. One ring was of vampiric regeneration; the other ring was of giant strength (and with a berserker curse). She was wildly effective in combat but unable to retreat.
- Blood Magus (Bard), named Rock. Although he didn’t qualify for the prestige class until he was slain and subsequently brought back to life by way of a Raise Dead spell. Though I always wanted to try both the Awaken Blood and Bloodwalk abilities, I never got the chance.
Naturally, I played many other characters over the years, but those remain the most memorable. Naturally, their descriptions lack depth without mentioning the collection of misfits in their party and their adventures. I could fill an entire blog on just these campaigns.
Many years ago, I discovered Within Temptation while listening to music through my Zune Pass. The words to this particular song, “Stand my Ground”, haunted me. Verses like, “but I won’t run, there’s no turning back from here” and “if I don’t make it, someone else will stand my ground” paint vivid images of battle. Mentally, I imagine the “Battle of the Bastards” scene from Game of Thrones. The music paints the setting of an epic battle, quiet at first, then powerful and overwhelming. Sharon den Adel’s voice inspires you to battle.
As I listen to this song, I envision myself as that hero. Sometimes, I don that armor and wield that sword. Occasionally, I cast a magical spell that saves us. At times, I sing a mesmerizing song that inspires my cohorts. We each have a role to play in our adventure, even if it’s mere fantasy. The sentiment still holds, “if I don’t make it, someone else will stand my ground.” Over the years, we have encountered all kinds of wondrous creatures… yes, even dragons. Mostly the dragons were our foes; occasionally they were our allies.
A few years ago, I met an old friend from Microsoft for lunch. He is the only officemate I ever had; that was over 30 years ago. He’s among the set of friends with whom I gamed so avidly. We catch up. He’s met someone after his divorce, and they have hit it off.
We barely talk about our adventures in our fantasy world. We instead spend time talking about his health struggles. He, a lifetime non-smoker, developed a persistent cough. After weeks of misdiagnosis and investigations, doctors finally gave him a definitive diagnosis. It’s lung cancer, and it’s late stage. His demeanor remained optimistic, even in the face of such grim news. That’s the last time I saw him face-to-face. I see the news of his death, posted by his daughter.
We had another friend among our collection of cohorts who was diagnosed with cancer years before. It was Non-Hodkin’s lymphoma, and he went into remission. I can’t help but to draw the parallels of our fantasy battles and real-life struggles. Cancer was their dragon, and it’s not always a battle which you choose. Much like our fantasy games, the outcomes are seemingly determined by the roll of the dice. There are instances where we battle and slay that dragon, times when we narrowly escape, and still others when the dragon defeats us.