When I was around 12 years old, I sat down with some of my family members to play Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. I expected something involving benevolent wizards, chivalrous knights, and sly thieves meeting in a tavern to go on an adventure, likely involving a dungeon and a dragon. Instead, my character and his fellow adventurers awoke as prisoners aboard an armored caravan. Those running the convoy kept us well fed, and it was about the time that it dawned on me we were being fattened up for an eventual slaughter that the caravan came under attack by a band of elves. Our captors freed and armed us in the hopes that we’d assist in the defense, a gamble that did not pay off for them. After finding our way out of the mobile structure that housed our cells, we managed to roll our dice well enough during some social skill checks that the elves did not kill us. Instead, they allowed us to wander the desert wastes while clinging to the slim hope that we’d reach shelter before dying of thirst or exposure.
