Grown Ups Play Pretend

Do you remember when you were a kid and you would tie your blanket around your neck, grab a stick from the yard and spend the entire afternoon fighting monsters, discovering far away lands and having amazing adventures until the sun began to sink and your Mom told you it was time to come inside? If you had siblings or other kids in the neighborhood, the adventures were usually a shared story with every kid bringing something unique to the story. Then we all hit puberty and found out that make believe was no longer considered "cool" and put our blankets back on the bed.

I Recently discovered a great way to capture the wonderful group storytelling experience that is great for anyone old enough to roll a dice and add and subtract some numbers...Tabletop Role Playing Games. We are living in an amazing era of TRPG innovation that appeals to the little kid in all of us. From Classic d20 systems Like Pathfinder, GURPs and Dungeons and Dragons to the new d6 systems like the Adventure Game Engine that is the backbone of Wil Wheaton's new web series Titansgrave to even looser story driven games like Fiasco, Dread, and Baron Munchausen; if you have ever wanted to get a group of friends together to fight monsters, and tell a great story there has never been a better time.

Earlier this year when Geek and Sundry launched their Twitch programming I tuned in to check out their D&D show called Critical Role. The show stars nine voice actors who agreed to share their weekly D&D campaign with the world. Previous to this I had only had one experience with the game. I was in high school and I had sat in on the campaign that my boyfriend was playing in. They gave me a name, race and a class, no character sheet, no dice. I was basically and NPC controlled by a person, it was not very fun. But the Crit Role crew had fun even though their shows ran for 2-3 hours and they were "performing" for thousands of geeks on the internet. I wondered what the would be like to sit down with friends and tell a winding neverending story. My normal tabletop group didn't even like video game rpgs and had no interest in looking into the tabletop version. So I went onto the wizards of the coast website and found a local game shop that hosted weekly game sessions.

That first night I was so nervous, I remembered my previous session and how all the people there had been mean about my lack of game knowledge and condescending when they had to explain "simple" game rules to me. What if that happened tonight? Oh well, I said to that nagging inner voice, trying and failing was far better than never trying. As it turned out my fears were completely unnecessary. I walked in and was warmly greeted by the clerk behind the counter,a positive sign. I told him I was there for D&D and that I had no idea what I was doing. He took me over to a game table and introduced me to a Dungeon Master. John, the DM, patiently helped me build a character while other party members began to filter in. He suggested since I was a fan of video game RPGs that I build a character similar to the type I liked to play on my Xbox. I built a dual wielding Wood Elf Rogue and named her Kethry after my favorite Mercedes Lackey character. Then it was time to play.

That night I drew first blood for my party against some enemy lizardfolk. I met Boomer a Wizard very obsessed with fire, to the point of burning most of the enemies and the tavern above the basement we were fighting in. I also met Squid, the cleric of Gond who tried to convert enemies in the middle of battle. Over the next few weeks I got to know the rest of my adventuring companions: Imotech the warforged (robot) wizard with delusions of being a Necron (Warhammer 40K), SnapJaw the NPC lizardfolk that served as our guide through marshes and was Boomer's familiar/apprentice, Falae the ex-dragon cult druid with and axe to grind with Cult we were hunting (she changed into a drake during battle), Mira the Catfolk thief, Daveth Bouey the self important Elf Bard, and lastly Faram a half Elf Druid played my own Marco who joined the game a few weeks after I did.

Over the course of the next two and half months we fought slavers, a black acid dragon, tracked the cult of the Dragon to one of their bases, incited a riot among the cult's Lizardfolk serfs (thank you SnapJaw). And performed a myriad of shenanigans along the way. Mira made of with a bag of holding with 500,000 platinum. Falea left the party with her new drake pet to live free in the wild. And Daveth attacked the party in a fit of pique that resulted in his own death. Boomer also burned down a couple of barracks and stables. We were joined by another warforged, a cleric named Altrumeada. She was joined by a bird folk named Brock (who hated birds and did not realize he was one). We continued to track the Cult and made a tenuous alliance with a rebellious cult member. We met a Tiefling Barbarian who liked to hit things and decided to join us since we seemed to like to hit things. Boomer burned down another tavern. We arrived at a Cloud Giant's Castle and fought the Cult Leader we had been tracking. The Cloud Giant was so impressed with our skills he asked for our help in defeating the white ice dragon in his basement. As the dragon fell at the end of the battle, the DM closed his reference book "...and that is the end of this adventure, you are all level 8...the next adventure begins in the city of Waterdeep."

As I leveled my character and looked into what new skills I would learn and thought on how Kethry would spend her cut of the dragon's hoard, my eyes settled on the 5th edition Starter Set I had purchased to start my dungeon master studies. My thoughts wandered to my original story telling companions. 5 of the most imaginative minds I have ever met and whose stories I never tire of hearing. I am going home this year for Christmas and I desperately want to introduce my siblings to this beautiful story telling game that has led me to many new friends and amazing amounts of fun. I even found an online tabletop interface that would allow us to continue playing after I return home. 

So what do you think sibs and sibs adjacent should we roll initiative and put our story caps back on?