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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9646294" data-attributes="member: 7044704">Mine is a thankfully single-session anecdote, because if I'd done this twice it would be time to quit gaming in shame. I once ran a demo game of D&D for some classmates, bringing along dice for everyone from the masses of them I'd accumulated from various boxed games over the years.  Had pregens set up based on loose requests (I want to be a great swordfighter, can I cast spells, etc.) and a short adventure that started in media res with a simple chase, a quick fight, a social scene that might or might not lead to another fight, some investigation, and a final, slightly harder fight.  Even with newbies it should wrap in under three hours, more likely two.  All good, right?Well, it mostly went fine, but one of the three players could not roll over a 10 on a d20 to save her life.  I was having similar problems hitting her AC so she wasn't taking damage in return (she was atank, and I kept getting elevens and twelves) but I could see she was getting frustrated.  Swapped dice with her around the one hour mark, just after they finished the optional second fight.  She suddenly started doing better, and we eventually got to the finale battle - at which point I couldn't hit a thing, and failed a key save that made things much easier for the players.  So it wound up being a bit of a fizzle, but they were polite about it and two of them (including the "unlucky" one) came back for a second try and eventually joined a group I was playing in.So what did I do wrong?  It was the early 1980s.  A significant number of my twenty-siders were those godawful lumps that were numbered 1-10 twice, and needed to be half colored-in or used with another die to act as a real d20.  One of them had gotten into my dice pile unmarked, and I accidentally grabbed it when building my die sets for the session.  And then I proceeded not to notice it until after the game was over, despite having swapped it into my own set a good hour before the "jinxed" finale.It's been more than forty years, and to this day I still still doublecheck every d20 before I roll.  I'm so paranoid about them I subconsciously favor game systems that don't use them at all, from Traveller to Sentinel Comics.  The early 2000s and the 3.0/d20 boom were a nightmare for me.</blockquote>

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