…I have decided to write again. I know I have been quiet for weeks but trust me…there was so much to blog about! I am just sorry that I did not have the time to share all my rants with you.

I was asked yesterday “How does it feel now that you are 30?” I thought about it for a minute and replied “Well, I still want to play video games, so I must feel okay!”. I stressed out about my get together for the last 4 days…so much that I had a twitch in my left eyelid. But everything turned out great and everyone had a great time.

Lots of people wonder why 30 was so important to me. My thoughts was this: when you turn 10, you are just happy to be ‘2 digits’ old. When you turn 20, you are setting goals for your future. At 30, you look at how many of those goals you accomplished. Well, I think I did very well because with the exception of 1 major goal, I completed a majority of them to include getting my degree, being gainfully employed and getting married. An unexpected goal was purchasing my first home.
Overall, I am happy with what has become of my life thus far. I have wonderful, caring people in my life, I am healthy and I am successful. Not bad…not bad at all. I would ask for your help with one of my goals…if you all can pester that stork to come by my house, I would appreciate it! Don’t send him hate mail or anything, just sent a letter with my address on it.

This week we’ll take a break from the adventure to talk about the people in the group. For the first time in my 15 years of role-playing, I am in a group where there is an even split between male and female players! Much like video games, men are seen as the dominating gender in role-playing. This is a nice change of pace.

The regular members of the party:

• Nadia plays Amalana, an elven swashbuckler. She excels at quick movement and avoiding attacks. Her character is the most accurate (i.e. she has the highest base attack bonus).
• Guillaume plays Elian, a halfling druid that rides atop a wolf. He has taken the leadership role of our group, and is the only spellcaster, making him our healer, buffer and blaster. His wolf (I can’t remember his name) is also an effective combatant.
• Terra plays Madeira, a half-elf monk. She often fights along side Amalana; the two start combat with a volley of arrows and bolts, then move in to the front line to meet the enemy head on.
• Jess plays Cadfel, a gnomish monk, the one the Soren refers to as “the bald guy.” She is the only player in the group who plays a character of the opposite gender. Cadfel is a pacifist, and spends as much time parlaying as she does condemning us for “killing everything we see.”
• I play Soren, a human barbarian. The primary damage dealer, he is the focus of Elian’s healing goodberries to keep him alive.

The occassional members of the party:

• Katrina plays Freiya, the half-elf sorcerer. The presence of her character exposed a gaping hole in our group - arcane spellcasting. Freiya facilitated a number of encounters we had, which Soren would have settled with extreme violence.
• Pete plays Sam, the human rogue. I should probably put his class in quotes, since nothing about his character suggests that he is actually a rogue. In an adventuring party, one expects a rogue to find and disarm traps, amongst other things, but Sam doesn’t do that sort of thing.

Matthew, our DM, rounds out the group, making it an even 4/4 split. Very nice!

A shifty looking rogue came out of nowhere, claiming that he has dealt with this ettin before, and he wanted to help us. What really helped was the other elf girl that also just showed up out of nowhere. I was getting ready to swing at the ettin when she managed to talk him down and change him back to human. The ettin is lucky too. I would have killed him.

Turns out that ettin was a cursed paladin. Probably a good thing they kept me from killing him. I don’t think Kord would have allowed me into Ysard if I did do that. I have to remember to thank them later.

The elf girl turned out to be half-human, and Freiya is her name. Sam is the rogue.

So, we get to town, have a drink, and follow this guy Corvus back to his home (finding some dead guy along the way). We broke into his house and Ama found a secret door. The new half-elf is a sorceress; she put several guys to sleep with a wave of her hand. We snuck around like a bunch of common thieves; I felt real dirty doing that. When we finally found Corvus, I slid across his table and punched him in the jaw, knocking him out. That was the only useful thing I had done all day.

Kill count: nothing, unless you count Corvus’ ego.