Our friend and fully-compensated minion-manager Janci Patterson ran an RPG last night at Dragon’s Keep. The rule-set was “World of Darkness.” The setting? Dragon’s Keep, July 3rd, 9:00pm, in the Utah we know… only faced with zombies. The characters? Us, as ourselves. Me, Drew (Janci’s husband and business partner), Timothy and Rebecca, Tim, Jared, and Big Mike. Oh, and my 14-year-old daughter.

It turns out I’m a fairly robust RPG character. Good firearm experience, solid knowledge of the lay of the land and back routes, and healthy enough to keep up. Most of us were probably a dot or two overpowered in places and I’m sure I was no exception, but the stuff you know how to do by the time you’re 40 actually does count for something in games like this.

Game play began at around 8:00pm and ran with a few breaks until about 6:00am. The Keep was full of people until 1:00am, and downtown Provo had people camping along University Avenue all night in anticipation of the parade in the morning (which, following the game, I decided I would love to miss. So I drove me and mine home before the road closed.)

In-game, in a nutshell… there was a big crash, and we realized that there were dead people coming into the store. Hasty barricades and improvised weapons kept us alive long enough to get to cars. We zombie- and traffic-clogged roads prevent us from getting to Jared’s house and his firearms, so we settled for my house (and MY firearms.) Another stop for ammo and supplies (Jared’s Mom’s place) led to our first real combat. We all lived. From there we headed up the canyon to this place I know, a place that is pretty defensible. Except when it’s being swarmed by big stitched-together conglomerations of undead.

Still, all of us except Timothy lived. Timothy died once, and then undied a second time. It was sad. We almost lost the whole group, but the zombies rolled badly during those last three rounds, and I managed to get behind them with a semi-automatic shotgun and a pair of assault pistols while their attention was focused on trying to finish off the other party members (two of whom were unconscious.) And then morning came and the dead stopped being undead. No explanation for why. Life’s like that. Apparently so is un-life.

It was an intense play session. So intense, in fact, that my daughter decided to bail out and play a different RPG upstairs with Bob and Gary and friends. We gave her a happy ending early — the life-flight pilot came to get his wife near Jared’s Mom’s place, and had an extra seat, so Kiki flew to safety before the real fighting started. In that game she played some buccaneer sharp-shooter, popping off the guys with the fancy hats as the ships closed with each other. Oh, and apparently she accidentally seduced her way through Port Royal. I’m going to have to talk to her about that when she wakes up…

Speaking of which, I’m not as young as I used to be. That all-nighter was draining. I suspect I’m ruined for any sort of thinky work until Monday at the earliest.