Dragons and the Questing thereof

So in the last week or so I have developed an unhealthy obsession with Dragon Quest IX. I couldn't really say why, since Japanese RPGs have never really been my cup of tea in the past.

I am, at present, a level 32 mintrel locked in battle with a couple a skeleton soldiers and a "Sluggernaut," wielding the fabled sword Dragonsbane. At my side are my faithful companions Krono, a priest who looks like Chrono from Chrono Trigger, Kerry, a dark skinned, green haired mage, and Lili a blond martial artist with drills for hands.

All this dragon related questing has inspired me to take the initiative in scratching a persistent itch, the itch to finally play Dungeons and Dragons. At present I have a friend getting a group together, and if all goes as planned, I'll be playing my first game of D&D this Sunday night.

The first time I ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons was when my mother, disturbed by stories of a D&D related suicide near her childhood home, made my brother and I promise we would never play the game. For the first twenty years of my life, I have abided by that promise, but now my curiosity has finally got the better of me.

Like the Ouja Board, D&D is a harmless commercial product disliked by the church and plagued by accusations of paganism and devil worship. Unlike the Ouji Board, D&D makes no explicit promise of communication with the dead and may be entertaining for more than five minutes.

Depictions of table top role playing in pop culture, when they aren't alarmist propaganda like Mazes and Monsters or Dark Dungeons, have always seemed appealing. From the opening shot of E.T to the hilarious Dexter's Lab episode where Dee Dee ruins Dexter's game to any of the myriad webcomics that feature tabletop roleplaying, the image of a group of friends gathered around a table, eating pizza, chugging cokes, and rolling dice, is one that has been burned into my mind as something to aspire to.

My Dragon Questing could, perhaps, be a subconscious attempt to fill a role-playing need, one that I lack the necessary materials to fill with pen-and-paper games. Sitting on my desk, behind the MacBook I'm currently operating, are two d20s (20 sided dice for the uninitiated). Relics from my Magic: The Gathering days.

I stopped playing Magic before even entering high school, and yet the dice and the cards remain, taking up space and reminding me of epic battles between my middle school friends and me. I can still recall, with perfect clarity, the time I was down to one hitpoint, my opponent retained all twenty, but I managed to recover and win the day with the aid of the creature card Leviathan. At that point, I had never heard of the Biblical leviathan, so perhaps the card game played a role in my religious education.

Like the works of H.P Lovecraft, or Labyrinth, or for that matter, Dragon Quest, Dungeons and Dragons is a touchstone of nerdy pop culture that I've somehow been able to avoid for my first two decades, despite the fact that, as a general rule, I immerse myself in all things nerdy. Hopefully I won't come away disappointed.