This weekend's nugget of joy - involving roller skates and a chainsaw

I'm sharing this because my oldest friend, Matt, told me yesterday that he hasn't seen me this happy in years. And if he's able to discern that in me, it must mean something.

Matt is in charge of gaming operations at FenCon, an annual fantasy/SF convention in Dallas. In the past, he's conducted a one-on-one with the legendary Steve Jackson, hosted exhibitions by Sandy Petersen of Call of Cthulhu, and made all sorts of connections in the gaming world. Yesterday, he was running the tables at a local game shop to promote both FenCon and WhoFest. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make the event, but a last-minute raincheck freed up my Saturday, so off I went to Roll2Play, a game shop not terribly far from the DFW International Airport.

It was a real hoot. The Dallas Future Society (which runs both cons) supplied food for the event and a full-size Dalek replica. Matt was happy I was able to make it to the shindig, which started off a bit slow but quickly filled the shop with eager gamers. Dawn, a representative of Steve Jackson Games, came over with a whole bunch of games tucked under her arm. I got to meet Tim, one of the former con chairs of FenCon, as well as Louann, another old friend of mine who has now married a guy named Russ - who, as luck would have it, is the new con chair. Tim, Louann, and I sat down to try a game called TICKET TO RIDE, which Matt highly recommended and was surprised I hadn't played yet. We grabbed a few other players, including Louann's son, and off we went, laying rail lines all over the US and Canada while trying to prevent the other guys from claiming their lines. One delightful player, whose name escapes me, adopted a strategy based on food, connecting St. Louis barbecue to Boston clam chowder and laying tracks for Miami's Cuban fare. I concentrated some of my efforts in the Northwest, shuttling coffee from Seattle to folks in Calgary, Helena, and Denver. But it was Tim who managed to pull ahead of all of us by concentrating on the southwestern lines and a few other routes here and there. TICKET TO RIDE is delightful and perfect for almost all ages.

While shooting the breeze with Matt over some pizza, he recommended I give THE RED DRAGON INN a try. Dawn's ears prick up at the mention of the game: "I have the game along with all of the expansion packs! Let me grab them from the back." Dawn's amazing - she's been running Steve Jackson titles ever since setting foot in the joint, and now she's ready to run yet another game. Simply put, THE RED DRAGON INN is a game where weary adventurers in a D&D-style universe compete against each other for the last room in the Inn, but it involves drinking, gambling, drinking, cheating at gambling, drinking, pranks and mishaps, and the occasional drinking contest. As gameplay progresses, your character's BAC naturally rises while your fortitude decreases, and if the numerical values of both should ever meet in the middle, or if you run out of cash at any time, you're out of the Inn. Basically, the game's a great excuse for the players to get together and get silly. Then we heard from one of the players about how these guys at one convention played THE RED DRAGON INN with real alcoholic beverages. We can only imagine how crazy that one game turned out.

Then came my third and final game of the day, a Kickstarter project called ZOMBICIDE. Once again, Dawn was in charge, and supplied the board and the gaming pieces, including some Kickstarter exclusives that you just can't get anymore (unless you want to shell out insane bucks on eBay). ZOMBICIDE is another post-apocalyptic zombie-shooting game, but this one emphasizes cooperative strategy and play in order to achieve certain objectives. Players take the role of survivors that are often based on characters from movies and TV shows such as Machete, NCIS, The Walking Dead, and even Office Space. One of my characters just happened to be Wanda, a drive-thru restaurant waitress complete with short skirt and roller skates. And a frying pan. That's the weapon she started out with, and that won't do much good against a horde of zombies. But then Wanda found herself a chainsaw. Naturally, everyone else had pistols and shotguns, which are great for popping off the undead at a distance, but the zombies are starting to swarm us, and there's one abomination walking among them who can only be brought down by a Molotov cocktail.

Soon, two of the original six characters have already bitten the dust, and the other four are being penned in at a dead-end alley. All of us have been wounded, and there's just too many zombies - our party is about to die. Then Wanda decides to use the chainsaw to cut through a door to one of the office buildings bordering the alley, and guess what? More zombies await us inside the building! Matt is looking at me and say, "You might as well face it, this game is over." But that's when I turned to Matt and said, in a strangely animated and inspirational tone that made everyone at the table laugh, "We are facing a threshold moment! Either you can wimp out and say it's a hopeless cause, or you can join me as we walk hand in hand into the valley of the shadow of death, which is quickly filling up with zombies!" Well, something like that. Whatever it was, it make Matt laugh. And my chainsaw was getting hungry for zombie flesh.

So this is how it went down. One of the surviving characters decided to immolate a pack of zombies as well as himself by dropping a Molotov cocktail at his feet - it took out one of those insanely tough abominations I mentioned earlier. With my Wanda now all alone inside the building, surrounded by zombies at every corner all looking to take a bite out of her sweet warm flesh, I grabbed a handful of dice and tossed them on the table. Zombies started going down. Three more swipes of the chainsaw, and suddenly every zombie in that room was dead. I rose from my seat with everyone laughing in astonishment and took a victory lap around the store. That's when Dawn said, "Wait a minute. You missed one of the fatties over in that corner." I looked down at the dice. "Isn't that a 5 and a 6 I just rolled?" I asked. "It sure is," Dawn replied, "the fatty zombie is dead." I rose from my seat again and took another victory lap. Our little party had been attacked on all sides by no less than 30 zombies, and now all of them were dead, half of them killed by Wanda's chainsaw. The building was empty. For the first time, there was a mad hope. We could win.

And that's when about 50 zombies who were down the street managed to pour into the building and completely overwhelm Wanda. She was dead. Game over, man. But man, what a hilarious ride that was.

In short, I had a blast. I can't remember the last time I learned three new games in just one day, so my brain was a bit worn out, but I was elated. Good friends, good games, good food, great fun. Matt commented on how happy I seemed to be. Hadn't seen me this happy in years. Hell, yeah, I'm doing better.