Old Friends

Last night, I attended Josh's 50th birthday bash.

Damn. Who's Josh? some folks are asking. Well, waaaaay back at the start of last decade (i.e. 2010), Josh was one of my regular Thursday Night gaming group down at the Baranof in Greenwood. Even though it's been a decade plus since that group ended (I moved to Paraguay in 2014, remember?) I've kept in touch with Josh...even been out to see his bar band a couple times in the last year. Our family exchanges Christmas cards. He's good people.

ANYway...for his birthday he had an "adult pizza party" (i.e. they rented out a loft of a nearby pizza parlor and served a lot of beer...). Like Josh himself, the affair was low-key and causal: no cake, candles, or singing, and the invitees were an assortment of work buddies, band members, and old friends plus a few wives/girlfriends. A fairly small gathering all told...maybe a couple dozen people?

But several of those people were the old gaming crew: Matthew was there with his wife, and Matt, and also Randy (the youngest of our original group, now turned 40). Guys I haven't see in over a decade for the most part. 

And, man, it was good to see and talk to them. Yeah, we're all looking older now: fatter, grayer (or straight-up bald). But damn, at least everyone was positive. Stress levels seem fairly low, attitudes were pretty upbeat. Maybe it was the festive atmosphere, or the reason we'd gathered, or just that folks felt the same as me...just good to catch up with old friends in a casual environment. Or maybe, it's just that Josh attracts "good people" as friends. 

Or maybe it has something to do with us all leaving our kids at home. I do hang out with adults...often!...at various events, but they almost always involve a passel of kids (school, sports, a funeral I attended Friday, etc.) And around kids (our own or other folks) we always seem to be slightly on edge and/or uptight. We have to watch what we're saying; we have to model proper behavior, etc. It's not that Josh's party saw a lot of people cutting loose and getting crazy...as I said it was low-key and dignified. But still: that slight stress of little eyes watching and little ears listening and little minds learning...that stress was lifted. And that was nice.

SO, funny enough, there ended up being a LOT of D&D talk at the gathering. Not just with the old crew, but with new people I'd never met. Apparently, even though I don't hang with those guys anymore, they still talk about me. And about our old games. And so I got introduced around as the old Dungeon Master guy and they wanted to know what I was up to and yadda-yadda-yadda.  Spent quite a bit of time in four different conversations explaining 1st edition AD&D and how and why I run my games the way I do.

[just so folks know, I did spend time in OTHER conversations, too: about kids and school and weather and soccer and Paraguay and politics and earthquakes and bands and food and all that other 'casual party conversation' jazz...I'm not a TOTAL nerd, even if (these days) I am an unrepentant one]

One guy, slightly older than me, was talking about his newfound love of DMing (he boldly stated that when he retires, DMing is the main thing he plans on doing). He runs all sorts of games, but goes more for the "rules light" stuff these days (he talked about enjoying his Mothership game). Me being ntroduced to the guy as a "good DM" by Josh, he wanted to pick my brain for my thoughts on why people consider my games "good" or (I assume) enjoyable. I was not trying to convert the guy over to "my side" or anything (that kind of preachy-ness is something I reserve for the blog), but even so, I think I might have changed his perspective a little bit. Here's a guy who's been running regular games with regular (adult) people for the last four years, and all of a sudden I could see him opening his eyes (or, rather, his mind) to the possibility of running D&D as a true game, rather than as this role-playing thing (which he's not as big into anyway).

Randy and Matt and Matthew also, it turns out, are still gaming together, doing a regular Thursday night thing along with another old Baranof crony, Heron (aka the Iron Goat). They are running 5E these days, but I didn't give them a hard time about it...instead we talked about the various things they liked (playing D&D with good friends, generally) and the things they didn't (differences in play styles, min-maxing versus role-playing, lack of player agency because of story based rewards, length/complication of combat encounters, etc.). Again...and this is important!...I did NOT make any attempt to criticize or rain on their parade with eulogies about "what they're doing wrong" or anything like that; I save that kind of dickishness for Ye Old Blog. I just wanted to listen and explained my own, current, perspective on the D&D game (short version: I've found the robustness of 1E to be more conducive to long-term campaign play, and focus more on the world building than previously).  It would seem that currently their characters are around 9th level and they are getting ready to take on a god and so (perhaps) they're campaign is starting to wind down a bit(?). "Sounds like you're having a good time," is about all I said to that.

But I did offer some of my perspective on the "min-maxer" v. "role-player" thing. Matt was the one being offered up as the example of the former (he complained to me a bit...in a side conversation...about how his character, a rogue, has become an "advantage junkie," needing to gain his backstab bonus damage just to feel like he's contributing to the group; meanwhile, Matthew was the one being roasted for his penchant for "role-playing," making sub-optimal decisions or getting caught up in tangential ideas. Having DMed both these guys before, my labels for them would be a little different: Matt is more task focused and Matthew enjoys the escapism of a fantasy world. The fix for both players is pretty much the same...run a 1E game...but I didn't say that (well, not exactly or explicitly). But I did try to share how world building and offering players more agency in how they interact with the world  could assuage or mitigate these tendencies (currently viewed as idiosyncratic if not problematic). 

Or, at least, that's what I tried to do. It's fine; they're having fun. Matt said he even 'bit the bullet' and purchased/downloaded the new 2024 PHB (though I didn't hear a whole lot of enthusiasm for One D&D...). As I said, I really was NOT trying to convert anyone to anything.

There will come a time, in the not-so-distant future, when I will finally get off my ass and start running a regular game for adults again (I've even picked out the bar I want to run at and, no, it is NOT the Baranof). Even then, when that happens, I don't plan on being some sort of evangelist preaching the "Gospel of AD&D." I'm jut going to run the game. Having seen the power of 1E in action, I expect the players will end up converting themselves into "true believers" (as often happens).  To which I'll strive to give the proper response: I just run the game. I'm only using this ruleset because it works for the kind of game I want to run...The End. 

Anyhoo. It was nice seeing the boys again. It was nice talking D&D shop with nerds my age. It was nice that Randy expressed his appreciation for me introducing him to the game (a game he's now been DMing for 10 years). It was nice to be remembered fondly. Hell, it was nice Josh's drummer invited me to karaoke to show off my vocal chops (I politely declined). It was just a nice evening.

After a long Saturday of soccer games and running around with the family it was nice to have a break. I'm really glad I went.