And the band played on...

Quick recap: me = nerd. reader. movie watcher. history major. tip of geek iceberg.

My brain totally had me believing I was at the forefront of geek/nerd thought.  Little did I know that there was plethora of nerd-tastic  stuff out there just waiting for me.  Cue Paul. 

As most of you know, we have an interesting story which I will not bore you with here.  In short, Paul and I were friends before anything else and it was during this time that his geek started to seep out. 

Now, I knew that most guys really enjoyed playing video games.  I just assumed, however, that video games were limited to Madden.  You're probably chuckling at me at this point, don't worry, I'm laughing at myself for believing that piece of crap assumption.  So yeah, there ARE more console games out there other than Madden.....Final Fantasy, for one. 

This was ridiculous....there are games out there with a story behind it?  You actually have to follow a plot?! NO SHIT!  How did I NOT know this?! Well, Rita...there was still much much more you didn't know.

Second revelation: people still played table top games....ASTOUNDING! Don't get me wrong, I grew up playing Monopoly, I was fabulous at Cranium....but seriously? people still played Risk?? and wait, there was a LOTR card game?!!   There was, not surprisingly, an entire world of table top gaming that I had NO CLUE ABOUT.  I'll get more into this subject later, but for the sake of this post, let's just say I wasn't feeling nerd-tastic anymore. I was feeling utterly deprived and more and more like a moron. What the hell else was I missing out on???

Thankfully I had Paul, great geek tutor that he is, to help me out.  I found that I was actually paying attention when he played console games like Portal, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted.  They were interesting, they required thought, and honestly, the graphics were ridiculous. There were still some I couldn't stand, i.e. Bio Shock, Mass Effect, and the like, but they were few and far between. As I started to be more curious about his console games, I noticed some interesting paper work on our coffee table.

I took a closer look and noticed the paperwork was character sheets, a player's manual (what required a player's manual??), and an outline for a campaign (honestly, what the frick was a campaign? we weren't in an election year).  Realizing I had more questions than he had time (or patience) for, Paul placed into my hands Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress by Shelly Mazzanoble.  I credit my base knowledge of table-top RPGs to this book.