Mostly, though, I wonder about the me in this reality. How did I get here? Where am I going? Are there better uses of my time?

A specific topic of pondering I like to indulge is related to my favorite pastime - tabletop rpgs. I got into them the summer between high school and college, but sometimes I think about why.

Gaming is fun. It's a great way to enjoy a story, relieve stress, and hang out with friends. It encourages learning, thinking, teamwork, and socialization. But, it's a hobby with, at least until recently, a certain social stigma attached. My friends and I were stealth geeks. Other than an offhanded reference to failed Dexterity checks or some inside jokes, few people even knew we gamed. But it wasn't because of my friends. I took too it like an mindflayer to brain-juice.

And I think I know why.

When I was very small and we visited my grandparents, my Papaw would lay in bed with us at night and tell rabbit stories. They were always pretty much the same. Every kid in the clan was out in a field rabbit hunting. Each one would shoot at the rabbit and narrowly miss in some fascinating way. Finally, the last kid, almost always the youngest, would hit and the story would end. But even though the story was always the same, with a few improvised variations, I was always drawn in. The story captured me because I was one of the children. Every kid there was included in the story. It was a story about us. It wasn't true. We were way to young to run around in a field unsupervised with a firearms, but I could see it all.

That was role-playing – our pretty close anyway. That was a story game. That was me, rooting for my character, hoping he would be the one to get the rabbit, but still having a blast if he didn't.

When my boys were very small, I used to lay in bed with them at night and tell stories. And my stories were about pirates and knights and talking bears, not rabbits. But, most of all, they were always about my boys.

And now they sit around the table with dice and character sheets, planning to topple villains and shape kingdoms. They write fiction, draw comics, and film movies. And I think the why behind all of that can be traced to my Papaw and those old rabbit stories.

The campaign will have myself playing 2 characters (a dwarf Warpriest of Kord, and a human Fighter), alongside her human female rogue, and her older sisters (19) male elf rogue. Although both girls are playing rogues, one is a crossbow specialist the other a duel blade talent.

Though she went through the character creation steps with me, she hadnt seen the powers in effect. So I ran a first encounter using the crossroads map from Red Box. Sophie's crossbow rogue, the warpriest and warrior came across a group of goblins (2 cut-throats and 3 minions).

After some abysmal initiative rolls the minions went first, and the the first roll was a natural 20 as one shot at the rogue! Sophie's response was "Oh, your gonna pay for that!" but on her turn rolled a natural 1 in response . Thankfully the combat got better from there with the minions falling quickly and the cut-throats lasting just long enough to let her use a few different powers against them. When they checked out the building they found a chest which Sophie wanted to examine. She successfully found and removed a trap, but failed her first attempt to unlock it. The warrior offered to smash the lid off with his axe but Sophie reasoned that it would also probably break whatever was in there. A couple of more attempts later and she was rewarded with a haul of 30gp and a glass bottle, "See!" she happily exclaimed, before asking me how she find out what it was. I explained how to identify items and she was happy to find it was a Potion of Healing. "Who needs it?" she asked. It was agreed that as the warrior had the most hit points and the warpriest had healing magic, she should keep it for now. "Oh yeah, I got treasure" she beamed.

The second encounter used the monster lair map. One minion returning from patrol, two more at the cave entrance. Two cut-throats a the campfires inside and a Bugbear brute by the wooden "throne" in the northern cave.

With better initiative rolls this time (Sophie changed to her pink dice), she managed to snipe the returning patrolman before he could raise the alarm. The warpriest charged the cave entrance using stormsurge to take out another before the remaining minion screamed its little head off, just before the warriors battle axe took it off for good.

The fight in the cave was a little tougher as the bugbear was able to use its goblin allies to flank the warpriest as it charged, scoring a huge hit. Sophie decided that she needed to get in the mix and help her comrades out and chose to switch to her shortsword and flanked a goblin with the warpriest, taking it down with Riposte Strike. The warpriest and warrior both used daily's to combat the bugbear, bringing it to its knees as Sophie took out the remaining goblin.

As we tidied away our things, my proudest moment was as she announced "I enjoyed that, can do it again later?".

It makes an old DM's cold-stone heart warm up (slightly ).