The Gaming Experience

There is just something about the sound of dice as they bounce across the table, and decide the fate of you characters. It just plain cool to open your dice-bag and see the multi-colored pieces of plastic (although the Flagons have lately acquired metal dice too) spill randomly out on the table as you and your buddies prepare to embark on the night's adventure. In fact, the process of preparing to game is damn near as much fun as the actual gaming.

If you are running the game that evening you are setting up your GMs screen, putting markers in all the right pages of the books your are using, taking down adventuring parties marching order and other vital statistics, and getting ready to put on a good show. As you are doing all of this, you set the tone for the gaming session and, hopefully, getting your brain ready to immerse itself in whatever gaming world you are playing in that night.

If you are one of the players, you are making sure your character sheets are up to date, going over your lists of spells, equipment, and special abilities in order to get the most of out you characters. If you are artistically inclined, you may be perfecting those character drawings that help make your character come alive in your mind and, if possible in the minds of the GM and the other players.

Then the session gets started. The GM sets the scene, perhaps giving a brief recounting the events of the last session, and then unleashes his fiendish imagination on you characters. In your mind's eye, steel clashes against steel, arrows fly, and killing magic crackles through their air leaving ruin in its wake. When it is over, some of your characters may be dead; some will be better than they were before, and some will be laden with hard won, but precious imaginary treasure. It is imaginary adventure yes, but also quite real.

Imaginary events become great memories in real life. Things like getting just the right die-roll at just the right time, the stupid idea that actually worked, or one that failed in spectacularly hilarious fashion and caused an equally spectacular death of a character. All of these occurrences make memories that can be relived and enjoyed for many years.

What I am saying here sometimes the experience of gaming is worth more than the experience points earned by the characters. Like my point in last week's post, gaming is about people, and an experience shared by people. This thought struck me over the holidays because I realized that most of my most treasured memories stem from gaming with the Foaming Flagons, not the "It’s a Wonderful life" type memories that are supposed to stem from the holidays. I have a few of those, and they a great, but the memories that make me smile over the years involve gaming; imaginary adventures; real memories.