Last night, while we made dinner, Anne said, "I don’t speak geek, but I wanted to ask you . . . did you have fun at D&D?"
I stopped chopping onions and said, "Oh yeah! It was so awesome. It was a pretty classic hack and slash dungeon crawl that could have been straight out of The Keep on the Borderlands, and –"
She held up her hand. "Wait. Wait. Wait. You’re speaking geek."
"Sorry." I thought for a moment and added, "okay, there was one thing that happened that I think you can appreciate."
"Okay."
"Well, you know how gamers are really weird about our dice?"
She stirred a pot of rice on the stove, and covered it.
"Yes, like when you freaked out at Ryan for touching your ‘forbidden dice.’" She made little air quotes around the appropriate words.
"Exactly," I said. "So I played with some very experienced gamers. There were people in my party who have been playing longer than me, like back when it first came out."
She nodded, and pointed at the cutting board.
"What? Oh. Sorry." I went back to chopping onions.
"So we all brought our own dice, obviously."
"Obviously," she said.
"And at one point in our second encounter –" I finished chopping, and swept the onions into a dish with the knife. "Would you turn on that pan for me? So, an encounter is what we call it when we’re playing an adventure, and we deal with monsters or something like that."
"Mmmm," she said.
"Uh-oh, I’m losing her." I thought. "I’d better speed this up and get to the point."
I stabbed the top of a Tofu pouch and drained its water into the sink. I dumped the tofu block out into my hand, and set it on the cutting board. While I sliced it in half, I said, "Anyway, in our second encounter, I had to roll a d20 for something, and while I was shaking it, it hopped out over the top of my hand, rolled across the table to my left, and came to rest against this other guy’s stack of dice."
The pan warmed, and I dumped curry powder into the rapidly heating oil.
"It was like time stopped for a second, and the only thing any of us could see was my d20 resting against his d4 — that’s the one that looks like a pyramid."
"Oh, the one that’s so fun to step on," she said.
"I said I was sorry about that," I said. I stirred the curry around, and put my tofu into the pan. It sizzled, and a delicious cloud of curry-flavored steam billowed into the kitchen.
"So while the other end of the table continued resolving their combat, he looked at me and said, very seriously, ‘Uh, your dice are touching my dice.’"
"Oh no!" She said.
"Yeah, and he was totally serious."
"What did you do?" She started chopping tomatoes.
"I said, ‘Sorry, it hopped out of my hand while I was getting ready to make my listen check.’ I picked it up, careful to not touch his dice with my hand."
"Like Operation!" She said.
I laughed. "Exactly like Operation."
"Was he mad?" She said.
I flipped my tofu over. "I don’t think he was. It was more of a breach of etiquette than anything else. Can I have some of those tomatoes?"
She brought the cutting board over to me, and I pushed a few chunks into the simmering curry. It turned from bright yellow to a deep reddish brown.
"Goddamn, dude," Anne said, "that smells so good!"
I put on my best Teen Girl Squad Voice: "So good!"
"Uh, anyway," I said, "shortly after that happened, it was his turn to roll. He picked up his d20 — which I’m pretty sure was new in 1980 — and when he rolled it, it went right off the table, bounced off my thigh, and landed on the floor between us."
I turned my tofu one last time, and switched off the burner.
"I looked up at him and I said, ‘Dude. Your dice touched me.’" I laughed, "it was pretty funny."
"Why are you people so weird about your dice?" Anne said.
"That’s just how we roll," I said.
She looked at me. "Did you just . . ."
"Yes." I said. "Yes I did."
She suppressed a smile, and shook her head.
"Nolan!" She called over her shoulder," dinner is ready!"
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Nice story! I remember a similar conversation with my wife when I was first introducing her to gaming (slowly…). This story sounds like it could be a precursor to yet another longtime-gamer-quirk, the Dice Purification Ritual!!!!
You know it when it happens… You turn to the old trusty d20 for the critical roll. This is the one that doesn’t match anything else in your bag. It probably came with someone’s basic set back in the day, and you inherited it when they gave it up. It doesn’t have any color in the numbers, may never have had. It has single handedly saved the life of your level 18 monk more times than you can count.
You give it the standard shake… once, twice, quick thrice…. and let fly. Critical Failure! You fall on your own sword, which breaks… no, shatters actually, sending shrapnel flying across the room hitting the mage in the process of casting fireball… and well, the rest is charred history.
You know, you think you may have seen someone touch your die earlier in the session. You were pouring another dew, and can’t be sure, but maybe…. just maybe, it’s now cursed!
Enter the Dice Purification Ritual. I’ve heard of some strange ones, but they generally involve things like boiling water, some blood (the gamers’ own, usually…), small sacrifices of gaming material, being vacuum sealed in a container with Gygax penned material for a month, buried on the north side of a tree for a full moon cycle. You name it. Sound familiar anyone?
Saith Wil: Yep, tofu. I’m a vegetarian, so tofu and I are totally BFF.
Wil, I had no idea! As if you weren’t groovy enough, now I think you’re even groovier! 🙂 I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years this December, and vegan for the last 11 (so’s my hubby.) I am now officially doing a happy dance! Yay, Wil! 🙂
BTW, got THDOOL, haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’m really looking forward to it.
-Alicia
[email protected]
http://www.thewagband.com
Wil,
Have to say it was a fine read. Kitchen conversations are always the best – especially when in the middle of making food.
I have a lot of fond memories of dice – I have them in the aforementioned CR sack. They are a mixture of dice from my Basic D&D set- long before AD&D, as well as a good collection of “lucky dice”. I even have a d100 (percentile) and a strange d30 – which oddly is orange…
My only real memory of good old fashioned luck was when as a Senior (Grade 12 to all you Canadians who read), our province had a Scholarship Exam which gave you the chance for some good entrance money to University. Every one knew it was a crap shoot “all the smart kids would get the scholarships anyway” so we weren’t all that bothered to really try hard. So a bunch of us wrote the multiple choice exams with a d4 and a wax crayon in hand – mine was purple.
None of us got a dime from the government. I wonder why? 😉
Great story – write more of them…more often. I like the way you roll.
my boy just started playing d&d with a group of his friends, and every time he leaves a session he calls me (we’re currently long distance) and tells me about the crazy stuff that happens during the game and how intense everyone is! i have to send him this story 😉
http://web.mac.com/erposner1/iWeb/MDC/Metal%20Devil%20Cokes.html
This link has the lyrics to MDC’s ‘tofu spaghetti’. Glad to hear you’ve gone fully veg, if that’s a new thing – I think the earlier tofu blogs indicated you were only semi-veg.
arbitrary aardvark
Thanks! A fun read. 🙂
I don’t speak geek.
Mutantenkram mal wieder, aber es ist ja auch schon länger her.Herr Wheaton, bekannterweise bekennender Geek, schreibt in seinem (ich wiederhole mich da gerne und häufig) sehr lesbaren und empfehlenswerten blog dieses Gespräch mit seiner Lebensgefährtin au
First, I have to say that this was an enjoyable post to read. I could “see” everything that was going on. Nicely done!
I have recently gotten married. Probably one of the best things that was said to my husband was “Man, you got one of the rarest women of all: a gamer wife!”. I have my own dice bag and everything. But there was a time before “The Time That Is” that I would have wondered just what in the hell a d20 is and what HP stands for. My husband brought me into the World of Table Top when we first met, and I have been happily fighting Gelatinous Cubes and Beholders for the past seven years. And yes…we have both stepped on each others d4. Ouchie!
Tremendously enjoying people’s dice stories, as a non-D&D-er. I tried it once briefly in college, as all my friends were into it — wow, does that ever sound like I’m talking about something else entirely — but I was the only woman in the group and it got a little irritating getting cast in certain roles, as it were (sorry I don’t remember terminology to explain better what I mean).
A couple of years ago while teaching middle school Spanish in an affluent suburb, I bought a little packet of different dice (think a d20 was among them) just for kicks. The kids LOVED for me to get them out for little things like picking which interview question they’d have to answer, etc. It was cute how fascinated such pampered and technology-savvy beings could get with a simple dice stack.
BTW – I’m also going to look for a way to share this story and the comments in my English class, as I’ve been emphasizing using sensory details to enhance the narrative and keep the reader engaged! Most of my urban high-school students read at an elementary-school level and have little exposure to people who write without being made to.
okay, this one has to go in the next book. This is the kind of story you hope to hear from a friend over a drink, but seldom do.
My favorite is still when our DM decided that his d20 wasn’t behaving…
He took it outside, and smashed it with a hammer. But… before he did that, he transported all of his other dice outside and lined them up… so they could watch.
Far and away the best story you’ve posted in a long time. Great story, and great telling.
I came across WWdN totally by accident, and I sure glad I did! This post reminds me of so many conversations I’ve had with my fiance! (For some reason, she still doesn’t really seem to understand me.)
My own dice-related story: I’ve never really believed in luck (although that may slowly be changing). But I do have my lucky D4. She’s a rather plain girl, powder blue with stamped-but-not-painted numbers. And she helped me pass my grade 12 provincial physics exam.
1988: My physics class had been… how shall we say… less than stellar. I had 49% going into exams, and needed 51% just to pass the class. I looked at the practical questions, and blanked. Totally. Of 7 questions, I answered 1, and I think I did it wrong. On to the multiple choice.
You got it. I blanked. Until I realized that all the multiple choice questions had 4 answers. I slipped my D4 out of my bag and started rolling.
Need I spell it out what my final grade was? (51%, for those who aren’t following along.) 🙂
Wil, I’m really looking forward to reading The Happiest Days of Our Lives!
My own dice story happened yesterday when my dad started to play snakes and ladders with my d20. At first he was so elated that his piece was moving so fast on the board. Then he discovered that hitting the finishing square with a d20 was nigh impossible.
I found your site by accident, I am ashamed to say. So glad I did! This was the first posting I read and now I am hooked! Thanks for giving me one more reason to sit and stare at this darn computer.
Loved it!