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Of all the times of year, Christmas was the most special; like many people, I enjoyed trimming our tree, sipping egg-nog, and shopping for last-minute gifts. But the highlight of my holiday season was the event around which I arranged my entire schedule: the annual "Christmas Day Massacre" Dungeons and Dragons game I participated in with my friends.
I knew this year's game was going to be the best one yet. I'd meticulously examined in advance my mythical persona's records to be sure I'd written down all the equipment and abilities he'd need to survive the game's imaginary traps and encounters. My character even had a name—"Darathorn." I'd created everything about "Darathorn," from his blond hair and lean physique to his ability to slay enemies with a single deadly thought.
The long-awaited day finally came, and I was more than ready. We looked like any other party of friends gathered around a table with bags of chips and cans of soda. At the head of the table, surrounded by multicolored dice, rulebooks, and papers, sat our "Dungeon Master," a friend who'd prepared the scenario for the imaginary adventure we were about to experience.
Our Christmas game was the most challenging one of the year. For several intense hours, I escaped my beloved grandmother's Alzheimer's disease and my failing nursing grades in college, focusing on more important matters such as saving villages from marauding dragons and recovering ancient artifacts. I could pretend I was someone else, someone whose looks and abilities were far superior to my own. While I never physically left the table where we played, my mind was transported to a mythical world where I used my character's skills to escape one deadly encounter after another.
Then it happened. In the course of the game, I made a wrong move. One of the players asked me the question all gamers dread: "How much vitality does your character have left?" "Not enough," I replied, trying to keep my composure.
"The monster snaps his neck with one strike," my fellow gamer replied. "You're dead."
The game continued without me. For the rest of the evening, I displayed the facade most gamers do when a beloved character dies—I acted as though losing "Darathorn" meant nothing. But driving home alone later that night, I sobbed so hard I barely could see the road. Although my Dungeons and Dragons character was nothing more than some scribbles on a piece of paper, his "death" was as real to me as if a close friend had died.
So how did I end up crying over the "death" of an imaginary person? It was surprisingly simple. My brother introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons when I was 10, not long after the original books were published in the late '70s. But playing "D&D," as it's called, was only an occasional pastime until I started high school. Then gaming became an escape for me and several of my friends (three of whom were pastors' kids) who didn't fit our school's standards for popularity. By the early '80s, Dungeons and Dragons had grown from a few books and a set of dice to a complex system with pewter figurines, hardcover rulebooks, and fantasy novels.
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