dOrange Origins

Although we celebrated two years of dOrange back in April, the origins of our little gaming group actually go further back. As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, the earliest history of our group can be traced to a New Year's Eve Party back on December 31st, 2004 where Jeremy, Sarah, Leslie and I played our first tabletop RPG adventure. The shameful part of the story is that the adventure was none other than the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game.

Consider the cheesy text on the back of the box:

Enter the world of adventure!

There's something moving behind that door...

Perhaps it's a vicious ogre waiting to tear you limb from limb.
Or a horde of zombies thirsting for blood.
Or maybe a terrifying dragon ready to engulf
    you in a maelstrom of fire.

Problem?
Nope. Not for you.
You're a hero--

a powerful wizard, a strong fighter, or a sneaky rogue.
You can handle whatever comes
at you in this introduction to the greatest fantasy
game of all time.

I'm surprised we weren't turned off by this blatant dumbing down of a rich roleplaying game, but somehow we persevered. (Since when zombies thirst for blood? Isn't that a vampire thing?) Even when the very first adventure had us saving a lame-o unicorn from a bunch of goblins, we still wanted to know if we could kill the unicorn for extra XP. (Instead, all we were told was that, Alabern the unicorn, "can touch wounded characters with its horn.")

We've come a long way since then. It's a Paragon night tonight and I'm itching to get back into it after Squibblequick smote Anthony's computer last week, forcing us to delay the session. And then we're kicking of Matt's newest "evils" campaign, Anathema, on Saturday, granting us a double dose of gaming. Who knows? Maybe we will finally get to kill a unicorn this time!