youngerpliny

Been playin’ now goin’ on, well goin’ on forever. Can’t remember my first game, I was too young, but momma done saved up a few Morgan dollars and had my “baby dice” bronzed. 16mm they were, too large by half for a piddlin’ whelp like me, but I always did dream big, even in the beginning. And momma, she was some kinda good woman. She never said a word, even when I’d ride out at sunset on my trusty schwinn and not come home til sunrise, floppin’ down in my bunk for a few minutes sleep before the school marm rang her bell, my breath reekin’ of soda and chips, my knuckles dusted by pencil graphite and eraser shavins’. No, momma didn’t say a word, even though she’d lost pa the same way, that fateful night at DragonCon when he missed his saving roll against a stony medusa gaze. After that night he’d become a hollow remnant of his old Elf, turning to beer and football like a common redneck ‘til the pain got too great and his ticker up and quit. No, momma never said nothin’, not even when I brought home my first cosplay girl. Oh sure, we called ’em renfair wenches in my day, but they were the same loose gamer girls. No, momma never said a word, not just because she was a good woman, but because in her closet, in an old prada shoebox, momma kept a full set of polyhedrals…