There is always something bittersweet about a looming tide of sadness
1. Beginnings This happens five years back. I’m attending a barbecue at my friend Chris’s house, one of those semi-regular gathering of the geeks that used to occur in our neck of the woods before the social-group in question splintered. There were board-gamers, sword-swingers, and RPG players, all people who had gradually filtered into one-another’s lives through conventions and half-completed RPG campaigns and getting enough folks together to play Settler’s of Catan. I’m a RPG player, by and large, but I have a geeks weakness for games in all its forms. At one point in the afternoon I’m talking to a guy named Al, who I’ve gamed with a time or two. We’re talking about Call of C’Thulhu and how he’d love to run a weekly game. “You can’t do that anymore,” he says. “People don’t have the time.” “I dunno,” I say. “There’s a bunch of people here who’d kill to be part of a good Call of C’Thulhu game.