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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ranes" data-source="post: 1742833" data-attributes="member: 4826">It’s been an extraordinary weekend, which is I suppose what hitting forty ought to be about. For starters, my brother wanted me to have a good bass guitar. If I was right-handed, I would now be the blushing owner of a Rickenbacker 4001cs (as in Chris Squire) limited edition axe. But I’m left-handed, unlike the 4001cs, so my bro held off buying me anything else, until he had spoken to me. This enabled me to persuade him that his generosity was misguided. Unlike Chris Squire, my bass-playing skills are negligible. You should hear my version of the bass solo from Heart of the Sunrise, unless, that is, you’re a Yes fan or indeed any kind of music lover. Thanks, Our Kid but the evening out on Friday was more than enough. Cheers.My friends’ generosity was similarly overwhelming. The Chronicles of Riddick will keep the Xbox warm for months to come, I suspect. Of course, I’ll be torn between playing that and Battlecry III on the PC. And the new laptop backpack is just what I needed. Thank you, peeps. But…I got something else I wasn’t expecting. A friend from way back paid a surprise visit. I missed him, because I was at my bro’s at the time. Anyway, this guy left something behind. He abandoned a huge pile of rather old books, books with titles like: The Keep on the Borderlands, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger At Dunwater, The Final Enemy, Beyond The Crystal Cave, When A Star Falls, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms, among others. You see where I’m going with this.It gets better. There are big, hardback books, too, like The Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Player’s Handbook. Actually, there are two PHBs. One has the wizard cover. The slightly more ragged one has the thief extracting the gem out of the eye of the demon idol. That’s the one I open.There’s a name on the inside front cover. I hate it when people deface books in that way. It completely devalues the book, as a collectible. The thing is, it’s my name. This is not just my PHB, it’s my first PHB. It’s the one I got in 1978 and haven’t seen since 1988. Yes, I am still choked.There’s more. Specifically, there are character sheets, not just mine but several that belong to friends I still see and game with. There are old campaign notes and maps, pages of scenarios and articles taken from magazines. There are dungeon floor tiles and cardboard building sets (two boxes of Cities of Mystery, in fact, with the buildings still flat-packed).Two days ago, I wasn’t altogether thrilled about reaching the end of my thirties. Now, I’m surrounded by vivid reminders of my teenage years. I’m going to kill that so-called friend of mine when I catch up with him. In fact, I just phoned him, to give him fair warning. You want to know what he said? He told me there’s another box of books on its way.</blockquote>

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