From the Mind of Trevor Stone

I am both interested and terrified.

Back in college, I played D&D once, for several minutes. I was running a male magic user and a female cleric, both obviously completely wet behind the ears. The DM was running a 50th level hobbit character as a guide. He'd say things like, "We're going into the haunted castle," and I'd say, "Why?" and he'd say, "To gain experience points. And I'd say, "My characters don't want experience points. They want to stay alive." He'd furrow his brow at me and say, "There's a closed door, and a hole in the opposite wall. What do your characters want to do." And I'd say, "They want to go home."

He also appeared convinced that I could telekinetically influence the dice, so he wouldn't tell me why I was rolling the dice, or what sort of roll would be good.

Since magic users have, perhaps, one weak spell, and can't carry weapons, and since I had no experience and as such no savvy in dealing with this, I had the hobbit lead, with the magic user pseudo-valiantly second, but really to keep the cleric, who at least had a spear, behind him.

As the hobbit was picking the lock on the door, two six foot were-rats came tumbling out of the hole in the wall. The magic user valiantly picked up the hobbit like a shield and quickly stepped in front of the cleric. It made sense to me; he was the only one of us with a snowball's chance of fighting off anything. And the DM yelled at me that I was doing it all wrong. So I quit and did not play another role playing game until about two years ago.

I think it was running the LARP at a birthday party for JD or Taliacyn or Somebody. Or it might have just been a party. I don't remember things well. I played a female entertainment android, loosely based on the reality of Tanith Lee's book "The Silver Metal Lover". Having no ethics, I dispassionately colluded with the bad guys and sabotaged my fellow players, detected only by , but all the other players thought she was meta-playing and didn't believe her.

That is the total of my life's gaming experience and I am still afraid I'm going to do it wrong and get everybody mad at me.

Most of the time, I like to play Cranium - not to win, but to have the most fun. I don't like it when everybody is trying to win.