So... Last night I had a dream that my father was a True Fae (C:tL style). It amounted to a several hour long chase with him using everything from Dogs to Hounds to try to kill me for some undisclosed reason. I was returning the favor and often giving as good as I got.  At the end it was me staring him down and walking into a hail of gunfire (not pleasant when you can feel your dreams). His aim sucked which is justifiable as his job was to lay or disarm landmines not so much shoot people. He reloaded his M4 just as I got to him and I took a bullet in the chest as I removed his mag. For some reason this completely defeated him and my friends were safe.

What’s that you say, I didn’t mention my friends before this... Yeah, neither did the dream. Apparently they were next.

I collapsed to the ground and bled to death slowly. As the light faded I woke up with a start...

My only thought? “Man, I’ve gotta pee.” So I went downstairs and did.

I’ve found myself spoiled over the last decade or so. I haven’t had to deal with cheese monkeys. I haven’t had to deal with Munchkins. I haven’t had to deal with rules lawyers. I certainly haven’t had to deal with kids trying to “Win D&D.”

I had to deal with that this weekend. For the first time in 4 years I DMed a game with a bunch of high school friends. We’re all older now and we all brought significant others. I brought Crystal, Jake brought Sarah, Mike brought his wife Casey, Daria (Mike’s older sister and the player of the immortal Wizbang) brought Robert. Kevin, as is often the case, was single. Also along for the ride was Daria’s friend Mykal (renamed after Joe McCarthy’s PC from High School*, just incase slander/libel becomes an issue), who no one there other than she and Robert had met before.

I don’t restrict my players much. I really don’t. I asked that anyone playing a non-standard race run it by me. I asked that anyone playing a non-standard class run it by me. I said no Evil PCs. Mykal showed up with a Minotaur Fighter/Mage. It’s something I would have allowed (with party consent) had he asked. After some talk about this being his pet PC, I let it in. I didn’t even think to check his Alignment. I said in every message sent out no evil PCs. Turns out he was an Evil PC.

By Saturday evening (about halfway through the first day of gaming) two players had pulled me aside and asked where the hell this guy had come from. I explained he was a friend of Daria’s and he’d not be showing up again if I had anything to say about it. He’d claimed to have killed the Dragon. He tried to steal the party’s loot. He was an ass to the nth degree.

One piece of treasure that I tossed in there was the Deck of Many Things. For those that don’t play AD&D, the deck of many things is a magic item with a lot of random effects. Half of those effects are good, half bad. Everyone took their turns drawing cards. Everyone laughed when the half-orc lost 3 points of Int. Everyone watched as the Paladin fought Death and won. Eventually it came to Minotaur Boy’s turn.

In an effort to screw other PCs out of loot, he put on a ring earlier. The ring was cursed. Next he found a book and immediately read the book, to stake his claim. As he was doing this he said “there’d never be 2 cursed Items in one treasure...” Right, cause I’m a nice DM. The book was a cursed book of bad advice... Or at least time consuming advice. No matter what he had to read the book and search it’s pages to advise him on the best course of action. This took 1d8 turns for quick actions and 1d4 days for longer actions.

He announced he was pulling 5 cards. 2 of those cards were the Donjon and the Void. I’d said those would be redrawn until new bad cards were drawn (those two involve entire quests to undo). Afterwards he ended up with 7 cards, 2 of which were good. He tried to argue that he’d said 7 originally. Everyone at the table immediately refuted this. I chose which of his 5 good ones he kept (trust me, I didn’t pick the best cards). Then he realized that he had to fight Death.

He cracked his fingers and prepared to show everyone how a real player kills death. He looked up at hearing a die roll. “You have to consult the book for 6 turns to see the best way to face death.” His face melted. It was beautiful. He died a very clean death to Death.

He did his damnedest to ruin the rest of the night for everyone, including making an int 4 PC named “Brian Westbrook.” I don’t follow sports. If I did, and I realized he was poking fun at one of the Eagles star players, when the entire rest of the table is Eagles fans, I’d have sent him home. As it stood when we wrapped for the night, he and his SO went home. Everyone prayed that he not come back the next day.

Secret gatherings were had all over. We tried to figure out how to tell Daria that her friend was a tool. 

As we gathered around the table the next morning, Daria looked at us all and said, “Hey guys, I just wanted to apologize for Mykal last night...” Everyone heaved a sigh of relief and “Thank God”s passed around the table. We resumed game and he never showed up again.

All in all it was a good weekend. Everyone had a lot of fun, even with that puts.

*Mykal Starcatcher was the name of Joey McCarthy’s Minotaur Fighter/Mage back in high school. The play style of this schmuck and Joe was extremely similar.

P.S. - Heat's out at my work.

So, I’m venting in a good way. I’m putting an abridged list of reasons I love Crystal. I’m probably missing obvious ones because that’s what happens when you make lists like this. If important ones come to me, I’ll add them. I’m putting it behind a cut because some people hate this stuff, or at least don’t want to read it.

Bold what you've read, italicize what you've started but haven't finished, underline what you'd recommend!

1 Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
2 Alice series - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3 The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier
4 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
5 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
6 Scary Stories - Alvin Schwartz
7 Fallen Angels - Walter Dean Myers
8 It’s Perfectly Normal - Robie Harris
9 And Tango Makes Three - Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
10 Captain Underpants - Dav Pilkey
11 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
12 The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
13 Forever - Judy Blume
14 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
15 The Perks of Being A Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
16 Killing Mr. Griffin - Lois Duncan
17 Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
18 King and King - Linda de Haan
19 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
20 Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson
21 The Giver - Lois Lowry
22 We All Fall Down - Robert Cormier
23 To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee`
24 Beloved - Toni Morrison
25 The Face on the Milk Carton - Caroline Cooney
26 Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
27 My Brother Sam Is Dead - James Lincoln Collier
28 In the Night Kitchen - Maurice Sendak
29 His Dark Materials series - Philip Pullman
30 Gossip Girl series - Cecily von Ziegesar
31 What My Mother Doesn’t Know - Sonya Sones
32 Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging - Louise Rennison
33 It’s So Amazing - Robie Harris
34 Arming America - Michael Bellasiles
35 Kaffir Boy - Mark Mathabane
36 Blubber - Judy Blume
37 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
38 Athletic Shorts - Chris Crutcher
39 Bless Me, Ultima - Rudolfo Anaya
40 Life is Funny - E.R. Frank
41 Daughters of Eve - Lois Duncan
42 Crazy Lady - Jane Leslie Conly
43 The Great Gilly Hopkins - Katherine Paterson
44 You Hear Me - Betsy Franco
45 Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
46 Whale Talk - Chris Crutcher
47 The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby - Dav Pilkey
48 The Facts Speak for Themselves - Brock Cole
49 The Terrorist - Caroline Cooney
50 Mick Harte Was Here - Barbara Park
51 Summer of My German Soldier - Bette Green
52 The Upstairs Room - Johanna Reiss
53 When Dad Killed Mom - Julius Lester
54 Blood and Chocolate - Annette Curtis Klause
55 The Fighting Ground - Avi
56 The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
57 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Mildred Taylor
58 Fat Kid Rules the World - K.L. Going
59 The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things - Carolyn Mackler
60 A Time To Kill - John Grisham
61 Rainbow Boys - Alex Sanchez
62 Olive’s Ocean - Kevin Henkes
63 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey
64 A Day No Pigs Would Die - Robert Newton Peck
65 Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
66 Always Running - Luis Rodriguez
67 Black Boy - Richard Wright
68 Julie of the Wolves - Jean Craighead George
69 Deal With It! - Esther Drill
70 Detour for Emmy - Marilyn Reynolds
71 Draw Me A Star - Eric Carle
72 Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
73 Harris and Me - Gary Paulsen
74 Junie B. Jones series - Barbara Park
75 So Far From the Bamboo Grove - Yoko Watkins
76 Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
77 Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes - Chris Crutcher
78 What’s Happening to My Body Book - Lynda Madaras
79 The Boy Who Lost His Face - Louis Sachar
80 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
81 Anastasia Again! - Lois Lowry
82 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
83 Bumps In the Night - Harry Allard
84 Goosebumps series - R.L. Stine
85 Shade’s Children - Garth Nix
86 Cut - Patricia McCormick
87 Grendel - John Gardner
88 The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
89 I Saw Esau - Iona Opte
90 Ironman - Chris Crutcher
91 The Stupids series - Harry Allard
92 Taming the Star Runner - S.E. Hinton
93 Then Again, Maybe I Won’t - Judy Blume
94 Tiger Eyes - Judy Blume
95 Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
96 Nathan’s Run - John Gilstrap
97 Pinkerton, Behave! - Steven Kellog
98 Freaky Friday - Mary Rodgers
99 Halloween ABC - Eve Merriam
100 Heather Has Two Mommies - Leslea Newman

How many of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books in 2000-2007 have you read? : 30.

I feel like I’ve read others of these.  I just can’t recall.  I often recall reading a book by seeing it’s cover.

It’s been a Hell of a day.

OK, up until 5:45 it wasn’t really anything.  After that it got interesting.

Minimally interesting: EZ Pass didn’t work on the Turn Pike.  Had to Weave through traffic after pulling over to get a ticket.

Pretty interesting:  As I said to Justin via text, “It’s good to be home, if only for the weekend.”  Spent the evening in Mt. Hope.  Celtic Fling has begun with a band.  Awesome performance by Scythian.  I missed a bit of it while buying my tickets.  Gaelic Storm was absolutely fantastic.  They didn’t play “Johnny Jump Up,” the first song of theirs I’d heard, but no biggy.

Unusual:  As I was driving down the TP on the way home I saw a car with it’s four-ways on, pulled over.  I mentally shrugged and made to drive by until I saw a woman in a summery/sundress type thing with a nearly panicked look in her eyes.  By the time I pulled over, reversed a half mile or so (I was doing 80 or so and slowed down as quickly as sane(ish)) and got out of the car, she was near tears.  I told her to calm down, which I’m assuming the person on the other end of her cell phone conversation was doing as well.  When she got off the phone she appraised me of the situation, I introduced myself and got to work.  About halfway through all the work she said something like “I don’t have a head for names, what was yours again.”  I gave it again and she smiled.  I returned the smile and told her she’d given hers when an 18 wheeler was passing by and I’d no idea what it was.

She was Althea.  Interesting name, not one you hear that often these days.  She was a horse groomer.  Her friend just got married.  She’s lived in “Jersey town I don’t know,” “Other Jersey town I don’t know,” “A third Jersey town I don’t know” and so on for about ten towns.  She has a bad habit of moving in with boyfriends which annoys her father.  He’s good with cars.  She wished he’d been there so he could have saved me the trouble (“No trouble at all, ma’am, just being courteous.  Remember to pass it along some day.”).  Did I go to the Celtic Fling?  What was it like?  Am I Scottish?  Did I mention she was chatty?

It took me about half an hour to replace the tire and get her on her way.  I let her know the best service stations and the stops between there and Jersey that I knew of and sent her on her way.

Entertaining: Apparently, when a cop asks you, “Sir, have you had anything to drink tonight?” the correct answer is not “Yes.”

I had a dream of the Apocalypse last night.  Crystal and I were backpacking with Andrew and his date in Northern Washington.  It was Autumn and it was beautiful.  As we were hiking we encountered a pack of zombies.  With weapons like sticks and a shovel we defeated them and returned to our SUV (SUV?!?). 

Andrew and I looked at each other and one asked the other, “You know what we’ve got to do, right?”

“North?”

“North.”

We returned to the city and saw to liquidating everything we had (I guess we moved out that way at some point).  With a damn hefty bit of cash we set out to buy property in Alaska, far enough away from the coast that it wasn’t a concern.  We bought a ton of supplies and took off.  Andrew’s date used connections to get us come kind of money from the government as well.  Something about pioneering or living on the frontier.

We used that to get more supplies and, especially, gear.  Rifles, coal, chemicals for treating hides, supplies to repair the cabin.  You name it, we got it.

We spent years shacked up in the Alaskan Wilderness.  We heard reports of what everyone else went through.  If you’ve not read World War Z, do so.  It fairly accurately describes what we went through.  The Zombies never made it that far North.  We were generally safe from them.  By the time people realized there was a problem it was winter.  They also never made it that far North.

Spring.  Not months later but a year and a half later.

We were contacted by the government to help sort things out.  We agreed.  As we left the cabin, I awoke.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sounds the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

This has always been one of my favourite poems.  It has never been hard for me to sort out why; I can easily identify with the narrator.  He stands on a precipice.  He looks out, into the woods and sees many things that others may not.  Chiefly he sees a place that is not the village.  I often feel that I sit upon the same precipice.

In English 101 or 104 (whichever one he taught), Mr. Wood glared at me as I, for once, spoke during class.  It wasn’t as rare as I make it sound, but I often made fairly useless contributions to that class on interpreting hidden meanings in literature.  I often said things along the lines of, “What if they were just eyes?”  When he broke out Frost, I astonished everyone. 

I’m sure that you, dear reader, have at some point had an English/lit course that broke down Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”  Most people have at some point or another.  I spoke out soon after he read the poem to the class and asked our opinions.  I spoke about how the reader was considering civilized life versus the freedoms that come without.  I talked about his desires to be free and how, in some small way, he’d like to run into them never to return.  The woods don’t need to be the dark, snowy scene we’re reading about.  They need to not be the village, where their owner sits away from them.

I put my thoughts more eloquently then than I am now.  I had more time to prepare (not that I’m rushed).  Mr. Wood went through phases as I sat or stood (I do that sometimes) and talked all about this poem.  Unlike most other times we spoke about some poem or another, he didn’t ask questions.  He just listened.  I said earlier that he glared, and at one point he did.  He also gaped, smiled and stared at various points.  I stole the class that day.

Mr. Wood always appreciated my input when I had more to say that “What if they were just eyes?”  Even if I didn’t really feel that the image he was painting was the image of the author I could play along.  This time he knew something was different.  As the class wound down and people started to file out he asked me where all of that came from.  Where did I pull all of this from.  “Well, the man looking into the woods is me,”  I said with a half-hearted smile.  He told me later (well after the semester had ended) that I had secured my A in the class that day.

I meant what I said, then and now.  I’ve always felt like I’m on a precipice.  I stand at the edge of society, ready to run away and hide, ready to strike out and rebel.  I don’t often feel like I fit in.  I don’t often fit in at all.  Friends and family make it worthwhile, and as the story says.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep

Gary Gygax died yesterday.  Most of you are gamers and therefore already know this.  I feel like this has hit me harder than most deaths.  In truth, he’s had a pretty significant impact on my life.  He, along with David Arneson, created Dungeons & Dragons.  I started my Role Playing career with D&D.  My first character was an Elven Thief name Fletch Oakling.  One of my first memories (and probably most clear) is creating that character.  You all know I’ve got a shit memory so me remembering that is saying something.  I can still remember asking Stan, “What’s the feathery stuff on an arrow called?” and it all was downhill from there.

To put this in perspective I was probably hit harder by the death of Gary than I would be by the death of my own father.  Actually that doesn’t put much in perspective, I’d be hit harder by the death of my cat than the death of my Dad.

As others have said before me in the last 24 hours.  RIP Gary, may you be rolling 20s in Heaven.

Thanks Tessama