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| Opera Trance - The Dream from MissDjDolce on https://youtu.be/kBTUdY4X2-8 |
No matter how cool or scary or weird it was, your listeners, because they weren't in your skull with you at the time, have no choice except to make excuses and flee, or nod their heads politely and say, "Uh-huh...that sounds pretty weird."
They have no recourse to responses they could make in a normal conversation that would turn a monologue into a dialogue:
"Yes, I've been to Venice before, too. The canals certainly are pungent!" or
"Yeah, I hate that team, too! My sister dated every last player on the Detroit Red Wings 1966-67 roster...all during 3 months in 1985!" or
"So you like to knit, huh? I do, too. At least I used to, that is, before my horrific accident..."
So here goes - but at least my dream had to do with D&D:
Rachel, who is a gamer and successful YA author in real life, bids me to follow her to the bright flourescent basement of the Friendly Local Gaming Shop, which I don't recognize in the slightest. She points at a long table around which 20 sort-of-hepcat people between 22-35 years of age sit. There is one seat open.
I'm supposed to sit in that empty Aero Saarinen chair and DM for this entire group of intimidating strangers.
Rachel utters profuse thanks as she dashes up the stairs and hurries out the gaming shop.
I turn back to the table. People with day-glo hair, wearing sunglasses indoors and fuzzy-fringed hooded parkas (is what my subconscious thinks is cool? WTF, subconcious!) look at me expectantly.
"Awwww, YEEEAH!" whoops a young man whose curlicued mustache partially covers a tattoo of a curlicued mustache. "Let's get our GAME on!"
Right in front of me is a laptop computer. Did Rachel leave DM notes for this session somewhere inside this machine that I'm supposed to find and run in her place? Am I supposed to project images from the adventure onto the wall?
I can't find any paper module or map or notes. None of the younglings seated around the table have paper character sheets or pencils. No dice are to be seen anywhere.
On the laptop, I can't even get into the Documents folder or the Desktop. All I can get is this nonsensical window ad for Chlorox Bleach: a full-screen pop-up that stayed up... forever.
"Um, five-minute toilet break..." I declare weakly to the ring of eager sunglasses-wearing faces.
I run upstairs, rummage around the completely unfamiliar game shop that I'm supposed to know. I find a yellowed newsprint map of the sample dungeon in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. The cashier waves me on; the paper has gone fungal, so it's free.
I rush downstairs to the over-illuminated table of hepnik whippersnappers. A glacier of boredom has hardened over the table. The hepcats and kitties sigh and yawn and chew on their neon dread-perm
extensions. In the ostensible pursuit of increased comfort, they are in awkward and rude poses of repose.
"Can I just watch this one movie on my phone while you intro the adventure?" says one neo-slacker chica. Her deely-bobber tiara has little acid house smiley globes wiggling on twin springy coils. She is probably wearing them ironically.
"No, no phones! No movies, no TV, no calls, no texts! Pay attention while gaming to the people right in front of you! At most, you can stack dice into towers on the table, although that's still kind of annoying..."
I wish I had been having a lucid dream, so I could direct myself to wrench open a window (in the FLGS basement wall) and yell out over the impossible subterranean rooftops of the city the "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore..." speech from Network. I could melt everyone's cell phones and deely-bobbers with my mind.
Instead, mercifully, there comes a time in everyone's droning dream story where they finally say: "And then I woke up!"
So
AND THEN I WOKE UP!
