Dungeons and Dragons comes out of the basement.

When you hear the words Dungeons & Dragons, your mind probably goes straight to something like this:

That’s what I thought of for the first 24 years of my life, so I can hardly fault you for it, but more recently I’ve learned the truth.

About a year ago Richard started nagging a bunch of us to try D&D with him.  He’d bought the new 4th Edition books and was itching to start a game.  He’d also just bought a house, so he had the perfect place to host it.  Eventually five of us agreed to give it a try and the adventuring party was born (I actually missed the first session, but was there for #2 and onwards).  One of the things that really helped build our enthusiasm was listening to the podcasts of the creators of the Penny Arcade and PvP webcomics playing D&D.  If you haven’t played before, they give an excellent idea of how the game works and are absolutely hilarious.

These days, seven of us meet at Rich’s house once a week, order pizza, consume beer and Elizabeth’s baked goods, and continue the adventure.  Richard started as the Dungeon Master, for taking the party from level one to four or so, where Justin took the reins and brought us to level seven.  Currently I am DMing the official “Pyramid of Shadows (Dungeons & Dragons, Adventure H3)” module that will bring the party into the paragon tier.

We use Lego minifigs instead of pewter miniatures to represent our characters and enemies. This allows for plenty of customization. Below is a group photo of the party as it stood when Justin was DMing. Today we have swapped several characters out, but this should give you an idea of how it works.  We also use a Chessex Megamat for RPGs and Miniature Figure Games (34 in x 48 in) for combat.  It’s nice because we can draw the terrain on with wet-erase markers and place the figures on it.  As you can see in the above photo, many of us use laptops instead of traditional paper character sheets (usually using iPlay4E, a very useful D&D webapp), and if you look in the back left corner of the table you can see the laptop that our buddy Tyler uses to play by Skype from his place in Omaha.

From left to right, the part is as follows.

Not pictured is Fortuno Velut Luna (elven ranger), played by Justin, who was DMing at the time. He is now back in action.

There will definitely be more to come on the subject of D&D, so make sure to check back for updates!