Last Thursday, Conklederp and I were having Coolman over for a game of Munchkin and I had previously thought that a d10 die would be perfect to keep track of your level, which apparently Steve Jackson and Company had previously thought of, but are no longer producing. Now between the two of us, Conklederp and I have three full sets of D&D dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 & d100) and I didn't want to take the d10's out of each little box and possibly lose them. I wanted dedicated dice for the sole purpose of being used in Munchkin.
The obvious solution was to go to a pseudo close by gaming store, except the closeness of said gaming store meant driving through a downtown area of a smallish yuppie-ville, over an apparently crumbling bridge and then all the way back. So a 16.6 mile round trip for 6d10 worth of dice. Enter Yelp to see if I could locate a closer gaming, or even a comic store that might sell d10 dice. As it turned out, there is a gaming store less than five miles away. I'll go there, and pick up some Dutch Bros. coffee on my way back, because I have a horrible love affair with caffeine.
We'll now jump ahead to the part when I'm at Dutch Bros., after I was convinced that I had been on the wrong road for Epic Games and made a U-turn, only to discover 3/4 of the way to Dutch Bros., that I was, in fact, on the correct street. So I pull up to the ordering window, order my iced ER911 and sit back. Then the guy at the window turns to me and says, "So, what are you doing today?" It's a simple/normal enough question. I just wasn't expecting to be talked to after the initial ordering. I also took a moment to answer. My first thought was, "Well, I'm going to a gaming store to buy some d10's for a game of Munchkin that I'm going to be playing with friends later tonight."
For some reason, I felt mildly shamed at possibly replying with that sentence. And that bothered me. The fact that I'm 32 years old, and I felt even the slightest bit like I'm being judged in that I was out to do something incredibly geeky as buy dice Not to mention that it wasn't a six sided die either, but one with ten sides!! So I ended up just saying that I was going to a store to buy dice, not bothering to mention the Munchkin part of it in fear that I would have to talk to this person further and try to explain what Munchkin was. Don't get me wrong though, he didn't seem like a bad/intimidating person, I just get uncomfortable talking to people, mainly when they're people in public. Or people on the phone, but that will come up later in Friday's post. So naturally (??), the guy said "You're buying dice? What're they for?" Now, I get that he's just trying to be nice and trying to make conversation, but in my head I was thinking "God damn, please stop talking to me." I instead say, "They're dice, for um, like Dungeons & Dragons." He then said something about needing coffee for that, I said something like "Yup." I then received my coffee, I thanked him, then drove off blaring Russian folk metal, because that's what I was listening to before I drove up to the window.
As I drove away, I thought, "Holy shit, that was similar to part of Ken Levine's keynote from PAX 2008."
Granted in Ken Levine's story, he actually was being laughed at and I felt like I could've been laughed at.
The point is, I shouldn't have to feel like that. Ever. And I shouldn't let myself feel that way just because the purpose of my leaving our apartment was to buy coffee and buy 6d10. I guess it's something that I'll still have to learn to get over. And in the meantime, I'll listen to this song again:
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Part III of Munchkin Will Be Published On Friday.
Confession Time: I was actually working backstage in the main theatre at PAX when Ken Levine was giving his keynote address. At that time, I hadn't played Bioshock and didn't even know who Ken Levine was. And it wasn't until I got the PAX08 DVD's after working PAX09, that I watched his keynote that I finally saw what all the visual jokes were. I'm pretty slow on some fronts.
This is really sweet. You ARE cool!
ReplyDeleteThat speech as fantastic! I'll have to go find the full thing to hear the part after the Atari is introduced. I think it's really interesting hearing his story because it takes place about ten years before our stories do. And we got to see the beginning of the 'Nerd Culture' era, fully armed with the awesome power of the internet.
ReplyDeleteI also really love that he tells his story through comics, because I am like.. totally all about comics. That is to say, they are roommates with Video Games in my heart. They sometimes have late-night conversations when neither one can sleep.
Regarding your encounter at the drive-through coffee... mmm coffee... place. It seems like a quick sort of white-lie type thing would have been useful. Like "I have some friends over and we want to play a board game, so I'm gonna buy one." or something. I get the drift that the fact that it was an (paraphrase Ken Levine) 'Exotic and Unusual" kind of a game -- that is what triggered the sense of self-conciousness that has probably been with you ever since you were first socially reprimanded for liking dorky shit.
I guess I'm being wayyy too armchair-analytical on this, but I don't like to know that you feel bad when you shouldn't have to. I get anxiety when dealing with random people in public too (or even worse, with coworkers that I see every day) and I know it's not fun. But I'm working on it. Working on the art of the small talk. And the subtext and all that fun stuff. Where you like... keep the details low, but still make a connection? idunno, I think I get it. sometimes.
Anyway, best of luck. Time to read your next post.