Let's roll...for your Savings Throw vs. Nostalgia

Posted by Matt StaggsThis weekend marks the official release date of the new fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons and if you're as big a geek as I am, doubtless even now in as you find yourself in the deepest darkest dungeon of all - adulthood - you can't help to feel just a little bit excited. It's like a vestigial reflex, a visceral gut reaction to the rebirth of the Great Ur-Father of an entire hobby.Maybe you don't game anymore. Maybe your Crown Royal bag full of dice was lost a move or two ago, or was passed on to a younger brother or cousin. Maybe you threw them out yourself along with all of those natty old books and reams of graph paper and chewed number two pencils. But no matter how far you go, no matter how much you grow, the gamer inside never dies. It remembers all too well the feel of those clattering dice, the taste of stale soda and cold pizza, the fights over who gets the +3 Vorpal Sword from the Mezzodaemon's horde, and most of all the camaraderie: the joking and excitement and feeling of having bested a greater threat with your valiant comrades-at-arms, even if all of you had to get up early for a math test in the morning.It's that gamer inside me that thrilled to the sight of the new Dungeons & Dragons books that were being unpacked at the hobby store tonight for the big sale tomorrow. It surprised me that same part of me that used to pace a rut in the ground waiting for the funny smelling game shop to open up and sell me my brand new Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book - the Fiend Folio or Oriental Adventures or whatever over two decades ago was still there, and still excited to see those books.Maybe it's the age at which I was first exposed to the hobby. I was right at the cusp of adolescence, and only too painfully aware of the rigid social class system that was evolving at school around me. I was always the "weird kid" prone to daydreaming and drawing. The boy who preferred fiction to football; the one who wasn't experienced enough yet in the ways of the world to not share his interests with other people - especially the popular crowd. I felt alone, gangly and awkward. Then the day came when a classmate brought to school a funny purple box full of thin books and even funnier looking dice. It was a new kind of game called Dungeons & Dragons. His mother had gotten it for him by saving Green Stamps, and now he wanted to learn how to play. We figured it out together, he and I, and after a few months of playing during homeroom and lunch time I knew what I wanted for Christmas: my very own Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set.This game of make-believe turned out to be something that I was good at. My flights of fancy served me well in my newfound role as Dungeon Master. Me, the strange kid, the boy who haunted library stacks like an unwanted ghost and lived to watch "Doctor Who" and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" on public television, suddenly found myself with a new set of friends: gamers. My clique of scruffy misfits and oddballs like those things too, and what's more, opened my eyes to other peculiar pursuits: Ralph Bakshi cartoons, comic books, heavy metal music, the list could go on forever. From that moment on, my life was never the same.Over the years, other games wooed me away from Dungeons & Dragons - Paranoia, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, there were hundreds back then - but I always returned to it after a while. I played through high school and college, and some of my best memories can still be evoked by the sound of a handful of clattering dice or a whiff of musty old books.Even now, as a grown man with a mortgage and a wife and a dog and a car, a man with a career, a real big boy now - I see those shiny new Dungeons & Dragons books and feel the call to adventure. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to the dungeons of my youth again, but the gamer is still there, and he remembers. I wonder if I’m the only one?