How a 40 Year Old has fun

Today, March 1, 2012, is my 40th birthday. Birthdays aren't a big deal to me, unless they are my children's birthdays, in which case I pull out all the stops for a memorable celebration. I'll go to dinner with my husband, my two children, and my parents and later I'll co-present with my husband at our church's Marriage Preparation course. I thought I'd take a break from the Minecraft Journal updates to share a bit about another way that this forty-year old woman has fun - she plays in a family D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) campaign.

I'm not a skilled RPGer (role playing gamer) but I'm willing to try. Usually my husband is the DM (dungeon master) but this time our family friend Dave is running the adventure. The last time our daughter participated in D&D, she had become so attached to her character that she didn't want to do anything in case the character died. To counter this, we all made two characters we'd play simultaneously so that there would be a back-up character in case something disastrous happened. Here's a drawing of all the main PCs (player characters) as illustrated by my 12 year old.

We aren't playing the most recent edition of D&D because my husband prefers the "old-school" versions - his blog, Grognardia, exemplifies this. Here are some scans of our character sheets so you can get an idea of the wide variety of people in our game.

 We've had three adventures so far. To help me with my terrible memory, I've been sketching the main plot points. (In Minecraft, I can just use screen shots but I don't have that luxury with our table top game.) Here's my drawing - can you tell what's been happening so far?

I may be "old" now that I'm 40 but I think that playing these games with my family will keep me young at heart for years to come.