First, a short history

I'm a gamer, alright? Shut up.

I'd never referred to it like that, gaming, as a verb. "You want to game?" Never. "You want to play D&D?" Always.

My brother was a gamer too. He played Dungeons & Dragon, in the old red box, and he supplemented it with various 1st Edition books--a Monster Manual II here, a Greyhawk boxed set there. My friends and I, in 5th Grade, created an abbreviated version of the game based on the idea that none of us actually wanted to read all of the rules. We knew how to create the characters, and the rest was rolling dice and winging it.

I was the only one digging the game enough to pine for it after the others grew tired of sitting in a circle and talking about dragons. In high school I fell in the with D&D crowd, the older kids. When they graduated and moved to far-off realms with foreign names like Toledo or Athens (Ohio) I recruited new players. Instead of the new guy I was now the seasoned veteran. Ah, the circle of life!

Those groups were fluid. It was mostly myself and one other friend, with a rotating cast of friends and neighbors from high school through (my first try at) college. The games were mostly disappointing from college on, or rather the players were mostly boring. The groups drifted apart, Adrian and I began to miss role-playing and assemble a new group, we would get frustrated and disband it, then start to miss playing again. Eventually we grew tired of the pattern, when not even talking about old games could make us want to play new ones. Dice were packed away, books were sold on eBay, and gaming (playing D&D) was over and done with.

The problem was, I still saw it as a potentially interesting endeavor, one that simply lacked the proper mix of players. I thought of an adult role-playing group as existing in the same world as a general election presidential candidate I could be excited about.

During my second (so far so good) attempt at college I got to know a dude in one of my classes. We discovered we were both recovering gamers, and one evening we discussed role-playing philosophy.

(. . .)