I already read this some time ago, but couldn't remember it, so did a reread just now. I love the all-dialogue choice, an author can communicate a lot to the reader that way. There is the problem of needing some artificial-sounding exposition at times, but if you don't stick religiously to all dialogue, then it can read more comfortably.

I haven't got to play any RPGs in recent years, but not by choice. Life just works out that way, sometimes. IMHO, one never gets too old to have fun, and a lot of types of people do have fun with RPGs if they aren't too embarrassed to try them. One doesn't have to be a nerd or a geek to have some good, old-fashioned Let's Pretend fun. Nor should anyone feel "too old" for RPGs; playing an RPG does not mean the player is immature, contrary to what some people say. Remember, the word "play" is should be the watchword.

Someone above (John in Wauwatosa, maybe) mentioned Traveller and that always brings a smile. Science fiction role-playing game, and still the best. In the last dozen years or so a number of companies have licensed it and issued new versions of Traveller rules, along with more adventure materials. The most recent ones are Mongoose's version of Traveller, a little pricey but quite popular and Marc Miller himself published a fifth edition Traveller, usually called T5 and it is only available as a CD. Visit www.farfuture.net if you're interested in buying his version.

I am an M2F crossdresser, hetero, not a transsexual. Is it funny that one of my long-cherished fantasies has been to be a pretty young woman in a face-to-face RPG with friends, playing as an F2M character? I also like a variation of that, where I'm not a GG but instead am an M2F crossdresser in stealth mode, pretending to be a GG who is playing a male character, in an all-males or mostly-males group. Kind of Victor/Victoria. The biggest difference is that in Victor/Victoria, the plot revolves around everyone knowing the protagonist is crossdressing, but in my fantasies nobody has any reason to suspect that there is crossdressing going on.

I have a couple of story ideas based on this, but all my writing progresses verrrrryyy slowly, and in fits and starts.

Anyway, nice short-short, Erin. We can always rely on the quality of your work. :-)

Annie

"Role-playing on a Saturday nite and I ain't got nobody, I've a game book because I just got paid",Singing out of key!

I'm sorry if my comment was too strange. It was just too familiar to me. Been there done that, did again and liked it, repeat every weekend! I can understand how those of us who don't play game role-playing games can be confused by this. RPGs are just hard to explain without using Clue or Monopoly as examples. Dungeons and Dragons is well-known, but there are so many others that are just as much fun. I'm trying to write a modern RPG story and the line between explaining too much and not enough is a BEAR! Of course you don't have my bad spelling and grammar to contend with. Please continue this story!

I remember how great it was when the Crystal/Gem Dice came out! Followed by the high impact plastic, that was replaced by the metal coated ones. What a racket when rolling an handful! What about the ceramic dice that had the numbers printed backwards! Who used to use grease pencils or markers to color half the 1 to 0 on their D20s, so they could call the colored ones as the high to get teens on their rolls? Now the sides are numbered 1 to 20 and colored in so you can actually read it. Great for aging gamers needing glasses at 40 something!

PS I almost forgot about the old D4 with the sharp pointed tops that was better than caltrop for stopping gamers in their tracks from going for munchies. The pain, the pain!

I didn't get started till spring of 1980 when some army buddies introduced me to D&D, followed by Traveler, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Champions, Villains&Vigilantes, and the list goes on. Die rolling programs may be statistical accurate, but it seems so heretical somehow!

Alrighty then, Let's try this. Have you ever read a story or seen a movie where you kept telling a character in that story, to or not do something. You know:, "don't open that door",or "run go get help". In an Role-playing game you are playing an role as a character in a story that's told by the Game-master (story teller). The Game-master tells you why your character is there, what's going around you, and what happens, when you do certain things. You get to decide what your character does, just like an actor in an play, but the action is free-for-all and moderated by the Game-master.There are rules to this game and the rule-books use math formulas to decide everything from how strong or fast your character is to how often someone can hit your character or you hit them. Dice were use to help determine statistical chances for various actions, such as combat, climbing, thieving, and ect. Geeks, smile when you say that, tend to be fans of Sci-fi and fantasy books, comics, TV shows, and movies. Games are full of references to all of the above usually as quotes or one-liners.
The Hey-day of RPG table gaming was in the 1980's and 1990's. It was a chance to escape and get together,talk trash and have fun. For TGers it was possible, for the most part, to play females, without anyone saying anything, because so few G-women played. You could get your "female" fix without the embarrassment of "dressing" and you could do it with your straight friends without being attacked. Playing male characters from time to time kept the status quo and playing someone different from yourself is part of the fun of the game. No winners or losers in this game; it's purpose is to just have fun. Game-masters are frustrated writers, for they write stories, but the characters in their stories are played by someone else, and you never know what a player is going to do!

Computers and consoles has taken the top-dog honors for RPGs now, because it can be tough getting four or more people together for a game every week. A computer, you just turn it on and play. No worries about the wife, work, and other real-life stuff. It does miss the human element and not even Massive Multi-player On-line (MMO)games make-up that loss. Atlas, sigh, the good ole days.

...of the one time in Keith Laumer's Retief series where he got self-indulgent enough to write a story with no plot -- just a bunch of diplomats sitting around a table making attempts at prescribed nuanced facial expressions and tones of voice with varying degrees of success. Or something like that.

I kept waiting for something to happen in that one, too.

Eric