This weekend I’m about to do something for the first time ever.

I’m going to play Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes. I realize I’m about to experience a level in nerd/geekdom that even some folks won’t approach.

Growing up, we were told in church about how dangerous and satanic playing games like this and Magic:The Gathering were. Doing this would lead to Satan taking our souls and lead us towards a dark path. There’s even an Adventures in Odyssey episode that talks about the dangers about what can happen when you play the game. Which is really interesting since the group I’m playing with, all the guys are strong Christians that I met through church.

Since my interests in the geek world have expanded over the past few years, D&D is something that I’ve been curious about but never got around to actually doing. I had sort of observed a campaign but since I wasn’t really playing it was confusing. I was shown all these rules books but that was confusing. I was explained how it was played but I fell asleep during the explanation because it was confusing. Needless to say, I found all of it confusing. So I was pleasantly pleased and surprised to be included in with some friends to try out the 5th edition starter set. I was told that it wasn’t going to be hard and as long as I participate, it’ll be a lot of fun. Plus I was also bribed with bacon.

In preparation, I’ve been studying up on my character sheet and trying to figure out what my character’s name is going to be.

My character is an archer.

No. Not that kind of Archer. More like this kind of archer:

I’ve been told if I name my character after Katniss or Hawkeye, bad things will happen to me during the game. Fine fine, I can handle that. I’ve been researching names trying to find a good one. We’ll see how good it is on Saturday.

I imagine this is how it’ll all turn out:

I’ve also been reading the rules. So reading the rules is like reading a freaking book in itself. It is long and complicated. And I’m still slightly confused but from what I can tell, there’s just a lot of rolling the dice to see what happens. I hope I just don’t die right from the very beginning. Unlikely but possible.

While I’m really excited about playing for the first time, part of my fear stems that I’m the only newbie in the group. The other guys have all played at least one campaign before so they know what to expect. I’ve know all of them for a while, played tabletop games with them, and consider some of them to be my best friends. But I’ve never done something like this with them before and I know how some of them can take their role playing very seriously. Therefore I’m slightly nervous that as a newbie I will slow everyone down with all my questions and potentially annoy someone unintentionally.

Being the only girl who is playing isn’t that big of an issue to me. I know that there is a stereotype about girls playing to begin with plus this isn’t really something that most of my other girlfriends would be in interested in.

Again this is something that has always interested me and I just never thought I’d get around to playing it. This is a new adventure for me and I’m looking forward to trying it out. I have a big imagination so I think this will be a lot of fun and something that I’ll be able to cross off my bucket list.

At the very least, maybe it’ll turn out like this.