None of my friends are geeks. Or nerds, for that matter. In fact, if I were to take all of their social, physical and mental identifiers and average them out, they would be generalized to just this; college graduate pizza delivery guy. They have no obsession with buying 16 thin pages of story and art every Wednesday. No obsession with collecting comics or digging through dusty boxes to find something worth more to them personally than the sticker on the bag & board says. Sure, they see/love all the super hero movies but they are actually capable of waiting until they are released on DVD. They sometimes slip up and call Star Wars “Star Trek” and vice versa. I guess this is why I was so surprised when my best friend; a high school hockey player turned raver turned pothead turned, wait for it, pizza delivery guy said one afternoon:

“We should play Dungeons and Dragons.”

Dungeons and Dragons. The highest apex of wonderful, imaginative nerdiness. I stood there, sipping a warm beer at 4 in the afternoon (our day off tradition), and could only reply one way… “Alright, I’ll be dungeon master.”

So we made some calls and gathered a crew. A few short hours later we sat at my kitchen table with the famous “red box” starter kit and a crew more confused than excited. There was (and it took weeks for their characters to develop, mind you):

Josh (My friend who catalyzed the quest we were about to embark on), or “Farwyn”, an elvish wizard with an affinity for defecating on the ground when he can’t think of something better to do.

Nate (one part of my oldest two friends; twins) or “Hrafnir”, a human warrior with long blonde hair and an eagle he can communicate with telepathically. Over the course of the next few weeks, he proved to be the only one with the slightest semblance of a heart.

Josh 2 (the second part of my oldest friends; the other twin) or “Murry”, a dwarfish rogue who just can’t help but get cursed and turn into a komodo dragon counterpart of himself.

Pat (EASILY my most imaginative friend) or “Oric”, a Halfling wizard who can weasel his way in and out of any situation.

And….

Dylan (he doesn’t even need a real life parenthetical remark because he’s) “Noah Calhoun”, named after Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, Noah quickly becomes the quickest, evilest, most despicable and arguably smartest Halfling Cleric to ever play the game.

So there we sat, sipping Pabst Blue Ribbon, as I read through the instructions and fiddled with the dice in my hands. I carefully folded the included map and placed it back in the box. I know my friends well and to play the game strictly would end it. So, I began to wing it with the basic knowledge I gained from creating their character sheets.

“You find yourself seated, prisoners, in the back of a buggy. The dune buggy halts quickly and an arrow shoots through the cloth covering. Oric weasels his way out of the handcuffs and frees the rest of you. You escape out the back of the buggy and see a gang of Goblins approaching.”

My god! They fought, and they rolled dice, and they fought, and they rolled dice some more. I couldn’t believe it. Twenty minutes into the game and they had already found a beautiful chemistry. They worked together and they DESCRIBED working together; slowly, they began to roleplay their characters and build a stronger connection to the Elf or Halfling or Wizard they were rolling the dice as. So, naturally as dungeon master, I guided them towards a dragon. As they walked through the rocky paths of the cavernous dungeon I described, I could see the excitement in their face as they slowly realized what they were building up to. Hrafnir, or my friend Josh who first decided to play this game, pushed a rock door open.

“Steam covers the floor. In the distance you see a large, blue dragon.”

“Oh god, Oh god.” He screamed. “I slam the door shut!”

“Ok, roll for it.” I demanded. He rolled a 20 sided die and….SUCCESS!

“The door slams behind you. You are now standing in the hall with the rest of our adventurers around you.”

“Ok.” He responds, “I poop. I poop on the floor.” Believe it or not, pooping on the floor is not in the beginner’s dungeon master’s guide. I learned quickly that I was just going to have to make up numbers to continue their story and, more importantly, to continue the fun! (and bear with me, our story advanced quickly out of poop on the floor.)

“Ok, roll an 8 and you’ve successfully pooped on the floor.”

Of course, he rolls exactly an 8. So, the rest of the crew took turns opening, firing their weapons, and shutting the door in front of the dragon until it was Hrafnir The Pooper’s turn once again.

“Can I use ‘Mage Hand’?” he asked.

“Sure,” I responded, intrigued, “but to do what?”

“I want to smear my poop in the dragon’s eyes.”

Success. The dragon was blinded. And after rolling and rolling and rolling, the dragon was defeated. To make a long story short, the motley crew we got together last minute to play Dungeons and Dragons defeated a dragon by blinding it with feces and attacking. On one hand, it’s an entertaining story because poop is rarely the winning weapon in an action sequence.

But, what impressed me was that poop was so much more. That small, miniscule action of pooping on the floor wasn’t just a bullet point in how they defeated a dragon. It was proof. Proof that whatever this crew could dream up could become an important plot device of the story we create together. It proved that this game was unlike anything we had ever done before. Somehow, poop opened up a million doors in the form of “If I want to do it, I can.”

So after defeating the dragon, I said “Wow. If you guys would like to continue we can start to play this weekly. I’ll buy some books and write some stories and we can keep it up?” I was nervous. This group just didn’t seem to be the “dungeons and dragons type” I unfortunately had stereotyped in my mind.

“Of course, we’re going to keep playing.” they unanimously responded. And somehow, poop on the floor turned into the greatest adventure story I’ve ever been a part of. A story with everything; good, evil, love, betrayal, humanity, violence, and most importantly, fun.

Now, we’re on week six of a campaign that started as “Keep on The Shadowfell” and turned into “I don’t know what’s going on anymore but I’m dungeon master so someday I’ll get you all back to the Keep on The Shadowfell, oh wait, you destroyed the whole building, that’s fine let’s just keep going”. At this point, Dylan (Noah Calhoun) has been killed (and revived) by the rest of the crew for being an asshole and the rest of the crew has gotten nowhere towards successfully establishing peace in the world I’ve created for them, but what’s important is; we are all having the time of our lives, once a week, with a d20 in hand.

It seems dumb to most people, when I tell them “Dungeons and Dragons has brought my friends closer together”. They think, maybe, that we play some medieval Monopoly in my parent’s basement. The truth is we play a game that allows everyone in it to be a hero. If you’re reading an article on www.eatyourcomics.com, then I know at one point, you’ve imagined what it would be like to be Spider-Man or Superman or Batman or even Martian Manhunter. This game, though, took my friends and gave them that opportunity. An opportunity to be anything they could imagine; from a wizard with the power to control blood pressure in someone’s body to an elf who poops on the ground.