Down Memory Lane

And, like that, the weekend comes to an end...I think it was productive -- I didn't do certain things I wanted -- but we completed Mom's move, I finished some other projects, answered emails, did a spot of cleaning (not nearly enough of course), and saw many people over the weekend...so much so, that, combined with the late nights, I have a cold.  Ugh.

http://io9.com/the-24-most-embarrassing-dungeons-dragons-character-1524448977

I got a kick out of this...for one thing, I still own all my D&D stuff, and I remembered a lot of it, so some of it was pretty fun to go back and reminisce...the other, well, I got into the comments...the one thing that I found amusing/annoying was the fact that people were complaining about how the classes were limiting.  I don't know; I never found them so, mainly because I suspect we did a lot of role-playing and thus did more than hack-and-slash...I mean, let's face it, that was important and cool, and most adventures had some sort of climax where you fought a new monster/collection of NPCs/both; the challenge was of course defeating them.  But...not every adventure was like that (to be sure, this was as much the DM as us), and -- I would argue this is true for many other RPGes -- that the best adventures often included parts where you had to adapt.

In college, I played one of my favorite characters -- Matahier, the elven priest of Elendaen -- with a guy who had an elven wizard (we cheated on some of the rules for level advancement but that is another story); we integrated the characters and took to traveling with each other.  Anyways, many a time we found ourselves needing to break into a home/other place to find info/rescue damsel/whatever.  We didn't have thief abilities, but...we still got in.  You could use a bunch of spells to recreate the abilities.  Knock could be used to open the window; ESP was a way around detect noise (detect evil could also work); wizard eye could be used to scout about, while fly or levitate was good for escaping or reaching upper levels (assuming, of course, invisibility was unavailable).  The priestly obscurement could do wonders, while silence, 15-ft radius  was awesome -- we even figured out a way to develop a form of sign language to communicate.  Hell, once I used the humble create water spell to recreate a leaky roof -- sending the homeowner into a tizzy (he was an art collector) to plug the "leak" while we made a hasty getaway.  I suspect, of course, we had some miraculous dice rolls, but the DM was the type of guy who would rather see us pull crap (basically) and reward us than start shooting fireball and watery fist at everyone.

I guess my point is is that one of the lessons of D&D -- and life -- is that even external limits -- such as rules or handicaps -- aren't barriers, but rather channels, directing you towards one path, but not pushing you there; you can always take what is handed to you or the skills you have and come up with a solution.  Many a work problem of mine is solved in such a way; you take your random factoid collections, discern some pattern of knowledge, and go from there.  Not elegant, of course, but...useful enough.  And, in most cases, people pick up on this...