I wanted to talk about practical tips this week. I wanted to tell you guys about how I actually keep my 1-year-old son entertained while I play D&D for an entire afternoon. So far I’ve only told you about how to plan for it, after all. And I will cover all of that, I promise, but sometimes a bug just takes over you and you need to write about something else. And this blog isn’t popular enough yet where I feel the pressure to write on a deadline or rigid structure, so Imma just post what I feel today!

Today, the thought occurred to me that I finally got my wish. You see, I play role playing games because, deep in my gut, I want to be a hero. I want to be cool, to be appreciated. I want to solve a mighty problem and make it look easy. It’s not just the magic and the monsters, really. It’s the gratification.

But my son sees all of that in me. Every minute of every day. I can kiss his cheek and he’s knee stops hurting. My husband can give him a belly blast and the monsters in his closet melt into shadows. Without us, Little Green Dragon would starve or worse. Without us, he’d be facing this world all alone – and while that makes for a great backstory you hand into the DM, nothing could scare me more in real life. In real life, I hear him scream and Superman doesn’t fly to the rescue as fast as me. And, darn it, THAT’S HOW IT’S ALWAYS GOING TO BE. I’m his hero, I’m someone’s HERO. Nothing humbles me, scares me, and fills me with more pride.

All that said… being a hero in the game room, and being a hero any other day of the week is so. vastly. different. In the game room, I’m quippy and I’m strong and I’m always in for a wild gamble. But in the real world, a massive part of being your baby’s hero is something as simple as going to work every day. Yeah, leaving them behind to earn money to pay for their food is heroic, even if monotonous or painful at times. And God forbid I gamble with anything – I need every scrap of bacon I gather for my baby. Being quippy won’t get me a raise, so the words hang in the back of my mind they’re just jokes no one needs to hear. What did Gandalf say? “I found it’s the little things that keep evil at bay”… sometimes being a hero in the real world just means holding your temper. Especially when the baby knocks over your favorite stuff or crawls out of his play pen and towards something that was once perfectly peaceful but is now horrifically dangerous (like the stairs) for the umteenth time. Or that one jerk makes another hurtful comment, or someone cuts you off in traffic because you dared drive the speed limit with your child in the backseat.

Very rarely in the real world does heroism entail slaying beholders and mind flayers (the exception obviously being bedtime stories). I’m ashamed it took me a full year of parenthood to put this into words, really. Life has been hard this winter, for many reasons which I will not post here… but the realization today that I’m still his hero, that all of it – the day job, the budgeting, the late nights, agonizing over every decision, the sweat and tears – that this is what a real adventure feels like, fills me with more determination than I can explain. No matter what the DM throws at me, I have a reason to keep fighting. I won’t go to 0 HP. My family needs me.

I rolled a nat 20 when I became a little dragon’s hero.

PS: I plucked up the courage to start a FB page today, too. Check me out at ‘rollingwithrugrats’ if you’re interested. 🙂 And thank you. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556557092463