Thanks Russ, what an excellent article, I really enjoyed reading it. Quite an emotional read as well, as it reminded me of a similar experience I had two summers ago.
I was in Japan teaching English, and quite early on I made a friend who turned out to be as big a geek as I am (and he was just as proud of it). We got together with his flatmate and another friend on a muggy summer night in the Osaka suburbs, a gathering of geeky English teachers with the core rulebooks, a couple of bags of dice, and plenty of Kirin. I don't remember why I brought my dice bag to Japan - a rustic old Blue Mountain coffee bag that had sat in a drawer for years - but I was very glad that I did.
I'd only played 2nd Edition about 10 years beforehand, but I'd played it a lot, and I knew a bit about the 3rd Edition rules from Neverwinter Nights, so I was pretty much OK. I can imagine that playing with people you've never met before would be quite nerve-racking to begin with, but thankfully these were people I knew fairly well so we were all excited to get going. I was the elven wizard, and we also had a ranger, a thief, and a cleric, all humans.
We played every week for a couple of months, all through the summer. It was a real challenge at times as we didn't even have air conditioning, and if you've ever been in Japan during the summer months, you know that can be a nightmare. We didn't finish our "campaign", but we got a couple of adventures done and had an amazing time. We had to abandon it due to a couple of the guys having commitments elsewhere, but it was a truly memorable experience while it lasted. My dice are now lying dormant - I wonder when they will roll again!
I was in Japan teaching English, and quite early on I made a friend who turned out to be as big a geek as I am (and he was just as proud of it). We got together with his flatmate and another friend on a muggy summer night in the Osaka suburbs, a gathering of geeky English teachers with the core rulebooks, a couple of bags of dice, and plenty of Kirin. I don't remember why I brought my dice bag to Japan - a rustic old Blue Mountain coffee bag that had sat in a drawer for years - but I was very glad that I did.
I'd only played 2nd Edition about 10 years beforehand, but I'd played it a lot, and I knew a bit about the 3rd Edition rules from Neverwinter Nights, so I was pretty much OK. I can imagine that playing with people you've never met before would be quite nerve-racking to begin with, but thankfully these were people I knew fairly well so we were all excited to get going. I was the elven wizard, and we also had a ranger, a thief, and a cleric, all humans.
We played every week for a couple of months, all through the summer. It was a real challenge at times as we didn't even have air conditioning, and if you've ever been in Japan during the summer months, you know that can be a nightmare. We didn't finish our "campaign", but we got a couple of adventures done and had an amazing time. We had to abandon it due to a couple of the guys having commitments elsewhere, but it was a truly memorable experience while it lasted. My dice are now lying dormant - I wonder when they will roll again!