As I’ve mentioned before – Mark & I love to play tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder, Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Vampire, Hunter, and so on). Here in PA, we’ve got a great group of friends who also play and every other Saturday we get together to roll some dice.
      And yes, it is awesome.
      The group began a million years ago, when several of the guys were wild little children running amok in the hills of New Cumberland, but the current iteration really got going when Mark & I moved back to Pennsylvania in 2011. We all gather at Tim & Rhesa’s place, usually share some communal meal (chili, tacos, goulash, pizza) and hang out until the wee hours of the night.
      Roll Call: Paul, Mikey P., Tim, Rhesa, Brian, Mark, Josie (and when his schedule allows it again, Garth).
      Role Call: DM, Tuanar (scarred male Elven Ranger), Trick (tricksy male Human Sorcerer), Kenzi (sneaky female Elven Rogue), Eric (well-mannered male Human Fighter), Anajalihn (elegant female Elven Wizard), Mim (brutal female Human Fighter).
      Presently, Paul’s running us on a campaign that has seen our characters tromping through a seemingly endless crypt of horrors, saving a village from some bizarre reptilian invaders, investigating 200 years worth of kidnapped & murdered maidens, and facing down a powerful Merchant’s guild which is backed by the Cult of Mazul.
      I’m playing Miriam “Mim” Vermiere-Cressen, a CG Fighter. She’s the daughter of a LE Pirate and a NE Sorceress – and is rather the black sheep of her family. Poor Mim has been through a lot – I’m planning to post my ‘snippets’ here in the future, a series of short stories written about the game from Mim’s perspective – and this most recent game was no exception. She hit the dirt and saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately (or not, depending on your perspective), her work on the material plane is not yet done and she was brought back to fight another day.
      Surprisingly, a bunch of us are still on our first character in this game. For all that he’s been threatening to kill us all each week, Paul’s body count for PCs is standing at a mere one. Tim was playing a wrasslin’ Dwarven Monk who got himself slaughtered by the Thieves’ Guild we were tangling with – Grue only got one roll, if I recall right, in his own sleepy-time murder. Mike started out playing a Dwarf called Stoney, but he’s still alive somewhere (he got switched out because a monster sapped his STR down to 1 and he needed weeks to recover) and Brian had two different Clerics (a Human female who showed up in one session, then never again, and a Dwarf male we all called Bob Durgan, who got switched out at some point) who vanished to be replaced by Eric, a gentlemanly Fighter-type.
      That stat could definitely change this week – some of us barely survived last session and we’re going into a really awful place severely handicapped because of it.
      …so, that’s sort of where we stand. The system of the day is “Pathfinder”, the setting is a modified version of Faerûn (The Forgotten Realms), we’re around level 12, and we’re just about to break into the Demon Lord Mazul’s “Tower of Bone” where we will more than likely all die.
      But Paul promised to run us to level 20, so even if we do get a TPK* this week, he’ll just have come up with a way for all of our back-up characters to join in the fray. Muahaha!

*=TPK is Total Party Kill, a term used to describe a game in which every player character gets murderpated.