Roll for initiative

Warning... NERD ALERT

So last night marked the end of a twelve year hiatus from tabletop, dice-rolling roleplaying games. It's been a damn long time since I've played any traditional RPG, let alone D&D - and we're playing 4th edition. There's a lot of catching up to do.

In the four five hour session, we spent 2/3rds of the time rolling up characters. Our group is a mix of old-school veterans, comfortable mavins and complete noobs. I thought I fell into the first, but realized I remembered so little about D&D (probably from years of playing GURPS and forgetting what D&D truly played like) that I actually fell into the latter. It was relatively easy for me to get started, but closing the loop on a number of aspects of character creation left me scratching my head.

I'm also apparently an uber nerd among nerds, as I think I was the only person who had their race and class completely figured out (Elf Paladin) as well as a rough background (worships the Raven Queen - modus operandi is to eradicate the undead wherever found and thwart any mortals who seek true immortality)... like I said: an uber nerd among nerds. I spent most of the time while others were figuring out their characters from the ground up trying to get my stats correctly marked down, my special features, abilities, actions, prayers, etc. picked my equipment, armor and weapons (where I was trying very hard to avoid becoming a Drizzt derrivative, but ultimately chose a single scimitar while using a shield along with a falchion as my primary).

I'm also the only person who seems to have picked a character name that isn't fun or quirky and thus feel the nerdshame like a searing, blistering brand. It's actually a relatively obscure elf character from one of my favorite books. That only enhances the fact that I'm a geek.

Wait a sec... I should be proud.

The payoff for all of this geekishness was that I was handed a folded note at the start of our session with a secret message, one that fit to my character. I know it had mostly to do with the fact that I let the DM know my race, class and diety before last night, but it still felt pretty cool.

What wasn't so thrilling was that my dice rolls sucked big time. I was rolling 2s and 4s and 6s which meant that even with my bonuses to hit, I was still failing all over the place - failing against little midget demon people. Meanwhile, my "more feeble companions" (as the sole Paladin in the group, I'm supposed to be the "tank," or damage sponge) were dropping the monsters to the left and the right of me like they were swatting flies. In the end I managed to kill one critter during our encounter after four or five turns of combat. Hilarious.