DnD'er? Almost. And it was so right.

Let me try to paint an appropriate picture for you of how I spent two hours of my Sunday evening. Say it was raining and say I was baking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (because it was and I was). Say some guys called me up to come to a games night. And perhaps when I walked into their house they were playing a wicked game of Halo, complete with a running commentary from all the males in the room. The apartment was of the cinder block assortment, of the two-scruffy-couches-and-card-table-and-massive-shiny-new-TV variety. Somehow it managed to combine every guy's apartment I ever went to in my undergraduate days. It had that college apartment smell too--some highly engineered scent involving old popcorn, pizza, wet socks, and cinnamon (from the scented candles trying to mask the odor). Props for the candles, I have to admit.



It looked like Halo would never end but somehow--miraculously--it did. Rather suddenly. In equally abrupt movements games were rejected, mulled over, then finally decided upon. The games had names that did not match any of the game names in my personal library. There was no Scrabble, no LIFE, no Uncle Wiggly (a most excellent game). No, these were games with sassy, glittery names like "CHAOS!" and "BETRAYAL!" For inexplicable reasons, Betrayal (at the House on the Hill) was deemed highly appropriate for the occasion.



This is what the box looks like:



Awesome, right?



From the minute my friend put this configuration down, I knew I was in for a treat. When he started organizing stacks of cards into neat piles the whole thing started to look suspiciously like the fantasy role playing games kids used to play in the library during lunch when the rest of us played kickball or tore willow branches down to whack people with. "Oh no," I thought. "I have inadvertently signed up to play some crazy DnD game."



But then I met Heather. I tried not to like her, I tried to be aloof. But look at how sporting and sporty she looks! I had to love her chutzpah. Who else could rock the sports bra/Spandex combo while going on monster adventures in a haunted house? What had felt a lot like mortification from a few seconds before suddenly morphed into something like excitement.



The game went on. And on. And on. At one point we looked a lot like these guys, if you squinted: 





And that's when it hit me. I--though not even half as cool--was having a Daniel from Freaks & Geeks moment. And, just like Daniel, I was LOVING it. I mean, at one point we had to create an elaborate scheme to kill all of our evil doppelgängers. I kid you not--we had to KILL our DOPPELGANGERS! It was exactly as awesome as it sounds.



So Sunday night goes to you, Daniel:





Wizards of the Coast, I salute you!