Pathfinder

"Wanna come watch Pathfinder... with the nerdlings tonight?"

Thus began my descent into the subculture world of table top gaming.  My ideas of this group of people centered around socially inept, sweaty obese men who live in the basement of their mom's house and only lead lives through the internet.  And through Dungeons and Dragons.  Maybe I also pictured capes.  You know, the ones with hoods and maybe a leaf clasp the held it together across your chest?  Lastly, I fully expected for this to be one of those things where people live out their secret fantasies that will never happen in real life because dragons aren't real and it's socially unacceptable to run around carrying gold coins and a sword strapped across your back.

Monday night I joined Kyle, Jerianne, Matthew, Melissa and Dave for what can only be described as an eye opening experience.  We sat at a kitchen table and not in a basement.  If you exclude me, as an observer, the male to female ratio was pretty good.  I wouldn't describe anyone there as a "sweaty obese man."  Or socially inept, for that matter.  Instead, we ate dinner with Melissa and Dave's family and while they were putting the kids down for bed, we watched funny Youtube videos.  Then, with someone shouting, "get your nerd on," things started rolling (this is a pun, as there is a lot of rolling in table top gaming).

A dry erase sheet with squares on it was rolled out on the table.  Then everyone brought out their dice collections.  Seriously.  I've never seen that many dice in one place in my entire life.  There are 5, 6, 10 and 20 sided die.  Each player has multiple of each.  And if you're really serious, the dice match your personality.  Matthew, the game master (GM) for the night, had dice that looked like stone.  Jerianne's dice were stone, purple and green with leaves.  According to my research, serious players carry their dice around with them.  Kyle assures me that he has never met anyone that has done so.  Next people started telling me about their characters.  There was Colette, a short tempered, coquettish thief.  There was another player with a weird name that was a priestess who prayed to a female deity and would also throw fireballs.  There was Bowen, who I took to be brooding, introverted and kind of boring, who had a bow with flame throwing arrows.  And there was another guy who said he was over 6 foot but had a character piece of a dwarf and was able to turn himself into animals.  There were no dragons involved.  While all of this was a bit out of my comfort zone, things got weird when the GM announced, "we call each other by our character names while we play."  For the record, I abstained from this practice.

The group has been playing this story line for awhile.  When they started back up they had been walking across spiderwebs to find the spider crone that a witch had led them to.  And then they were attacked by something that looked like a spider.  This is where I got lost.  The group started battling which involved a lot of dice rolling.  The GM was behind his little wall rolling away to determine the success of each move of the group.  WHAT WERE THE DICE SAYING AND HOW DID THEY KNOW?!?!?!  Seriously the most confusing part of the game.  I still don't understand how the dice reading works.  It's like tarot cards or tea leaves.  It's a complete mystery.

Eventually the group finds out that they're fighting an enchanted piece of armor, and after a valiant and entertaining fight, they are led to the spider crone.  Colette tries to steal some things but the priestess forbids her.  So she tries to buy some of the spider crone's woven items, but the spider crone refuses.  Instead, she gets offended and starts saying weird things about how they're destroying the forest.  The best part of this is that the GM is playing the part of the spider crone (and all other non group characters) and has this weird, mysterious voice to go along with it.  The spider crone demands that the group give her 3000 pieces of gold for some valuable information that she has.  Colette, perturbed at having to part with her gold, throws her gold at the feet of the crone.  Which surprised everyone, including the GM.  Apparently she had 12,000 pieces of gold in her handy sack or something, which amounts to about 180 pounds.  It didn't appear like the GM even expected this bill to be paid so quickly.  And at some point in all of this, Dave starts some weird, very in character speech about the forest and equality that escapes me right now, because instead of listening to what he was saying, I was too busy being awed at what was transforming in front of my very eyes.  And this is where the game ended for the night.

To summarize, it took 2 hours for the game to progress an infinitesimal amount.  There were some weird things (calling each other by character names, Dave's speech) but also... it was just like playing Final Fantasy or any other RPG video game.  There's a set story line and you choose what your character does.  That's it.  That part is not so weird.  It's more structure than I had imagined, as the GM tells you everything that is happening around you.  You just play your part.  It's also kind of like those choose your own adventure books, where if you choose one option you go to one page, and if you choose another option you flip to a different page.  It's really not that crazy or out there.  EXCEPT FOR THE DICE.  The dice are crazy.  No idea how anyone understands them.  I guess it would be kind of an interesting experience to create a character.  Like, how do they get certain traits?  Also, there's talk of training and going to school.  How does that play in to the game?  And the timing of the game is weird, too.  Like certain spells last for 8 minutes or 8 hours, but how is time determined in the game?  Because there's no way the game's plot line lasted two hours while the group played for two hours.

Basically I expected to go, sit on a couch behind everyone doing their thing, get bored really fast, start reading for a bit while loosely paying attention, and then leave.  Also I expected this to go well into the night (we left at like, 9pm).  But instead, it was pretty entertaining.  As an observer I was able to just watch the game unfold like I was reading a book (or, more like listening to an audio book).  It was The Hobbit all over again.  No one treated me like I was an idiot for asking questions.  It was nice.  And I'd happily watch again.  It was cheaper than the movies and just as entertaining.  Would I play?  Eh... I don't know about that.  There were certainly parts where I wanted to be like, "Jerianne, don't say that, you'll upset the spider crone," or "ATTACK!" (as that was always what I would choose to do during Super Mario RPG).  But also, I don't know if I'm able to "get my nerd on" in front of other people to this extent.  ALSO WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE DICE?!?!