Gaming's "Killer" Pastime...

Death finds us all, and I sometimes wonder why I'm still here. But tabletop gaming is quite possibly the most doom-laden enterprise short of kicking a sleeping badger, even when completely imaginary. If it were real, old-school gamers would be knee-deep in traumatizing death. Vietnam on steroids (I've seen some things, man). Well I have seen some things, imaginary, and funny in retrospect. I've kicked it many ways...

In the first room of the first dungeon from the first successful attack against me. The DM worried this would impact my future participation. Safe to say it didn't.

Picking an old man's pocket. I failed. The old man was a 12th-level magic-user, and I was immediately reduced to a halfling-sized heap of searing ashes.

Casting Fireball. The chamber was wide open. And flooded with natural gas. Boom! That one felt arbitrary; but in all fairness, I ignored the DM's (not-exactly-subtle) warnings.

I'd been rolling low all day. Just 4 HP left. My DM, ever the charitable friend, let me roll the monster's damage, banking on my trend to continue. I got a 12. Whoops.

Warriors throughout history, from Samauri to Vikings, sought a good death. Surviving was best, but to die well was everything. Fortunately, gaming deaths are imaginary, the pain physically theoretical. But since our characters are extensions of ourselves, the wish to die well remains stubbornly intact. Short of this (especially since it's imaginary), a humorous death remembered decades after the fact just might be the best of all possible ends...

Weiner Jokes and Rule One...

The very first adventure I personally ran was B2 The Keep on the Borderlands back in December 1980. I'd just gotten Holmes Basic and was eager to test my high-fantasy chops with my brother and indulgent mother. Oh, the serious adventures I planned. What I got instead, all objections aside, was my brother's Didlo the Cleric (really; his hasty sketch was nightmarish and retrospectively hilarious) and my mother's The Great Flirt, a magic-user glad to seduce her way through every male NPC within the game's eponymous Keep...

C'mon Eddie, be serious I'd say. How can I be serious when I'm Dildo the Cleric, he'd reply, unassailable reasoning beyond mortal power to debate. Their initial parlay at the Keep's gatehouse was an endless stream of penis jokes at odds with the seriousness I thought this first session required. I got over myself, thankfully, learning to appreciate the gonzo of the earliest hobby. But in this moment I craved seriousness, at least until I decided to throw in the towel and embrace the whimsy. My pretensions gone, gameplay emerged.

So at the Keep's inn Dildo met two devotees: Dick Headley and Elmer Pudd, both bearing a large cock (rooster) on their shields. They were looking for a cleric of their kind to aid in spreading the questionable faith, and it was off to the races. Meanwhile, The Great Flirt Cast Charm Person (successfully) on a local ruffian, and this, combined with her 16 charisma, made me appreciate her character's concept as more than mere silliness. Armed with these companions, they made their way into the wilderness in search of high adventure...

What they got was the mound of the lizard men, an encounter I watered down for fear of dropping the curtain too fast. The success of the game was a reflection on me, and it stung a bit that it still wasn't taken as seriosuly as I'd hoped for. But boy did that change once the imaginary blood began to spill. Once they realized their characters could die, they dropped the act and hustled to keep themselves alive. They'd grown attached to their characters because I let them have fun and be themselves, even meeting them halfway...

And that ended the session. They asconded with the treasure and returned to the Keep, planning a future expedition supported by henchmen that never materialized. I found other friends to game with and the rest is history. Good times though, and a swift education in campaigning etiquette. First off, while your players deserve a well-crafted setting, it doesn't exist solely to pump your creative ego. Second, it never hurts to meet the players where they presently reside, reading the room while remembering rule number one: to have fun.