Dude, you guys have it easy. So easy.
Last Sunday (Easter Sunday) we were all playing our weekly game in my living room. My PC's were fighting a blue dragon whilst floating on balloons in a sandstorm (long story), which was a really complex and large-scale battle. We'd been playing for a few hours, so we had papers all over the table, snack foods, soda, etc. We even had one of those decorate-it-yourself easter gingerbread houses whose deadly combination of frosting, candies, and gingerbread cookie had lead to various attempts at edible art.
Well, here I am describing the blue dragon putting a lightning bolt through a PC's balloon, causing her to plummet to an untimely death, and just as I'm describing the scent of the charred flesh, my doorbell rings.
I live with two other guys who come in and out while I'm playing, so it's not too unusual for the doorbell to randomly ring. So I buzz the door open, and go back to the table, where the charred flesh had already been forgotten in playing with a melted chocolate bunny and gluing things in perverse positions onto the house with the frosting.
As I attempt to wrestle six overworked college brains back into the world with the whirlwind and the dragon, my door swings open, and Monte Cook is standing there grinning like a madman.
Of course, I'm the only one who really would recognize the guy, being the only one in the group who has that 'certifiable geek' status. So here I am going 'Wow! Monte Cook! We're just playing some D&D!' and here's Monte looking a tad psychotic (which I mostly assume is jet lag from coming so far to play under such a skilled DM as myself).
Well, never one to refuse an invitation, Monte heads over to the living room. I'm kinda awe-struck, this being Monte and all (hell, I was celebrity-struck meeting Eric Noah once...God I'm a nerd...), so I tell him to roll up a 12th level character, and let's get going! I prominently unviel my Book of Vile Darkness and my Call of Cthulhu d20 (much to my player's chargin) as I kick one of the regulars out of the 'special seat' and let Monte sit down.
Well, still grinning like a psychopath, Monte takes out a cigar and takes out a lighter (with 'World's Best DM' emblazoned upon it). I try to think about how I'm going to tell the man who wrote the fuggin' DMG that he can't smoke in my apartment, but he doesn't smoke. No, instead he just tosses the lighter right onto the table, into the midst of all the papers.
Well, my players start freaking out. And so does Monte. Making a noise that can probablybe vaguely described as "the mating call of Nylarhotep, but with more Xena-yodel annoyance and less Black Speach madness" Monte Cook, The Man, tosses up the table, throwing frosted gingerbread bunnies, cans of carbonated liquids, many, many sheets of paper, and at least one partially melted chocolate bunny into the air.
My players leap up in alarm. Also, they leap up in a vain attempt to avoid the airborne junk food. One of my friends still has vaguely chocolate-scented hair, another one has what has to be the only known scar induced from flying frosting.
Once the fluttering paper clears, I, still sitting stunned in my chair, see Monte Cook placing dice up his nose either in imitation of an ancient Egyptian mumification step, or some sort of demented two-year-old. I assume it's the latter when he plugs up one nostril, and sends a snot-and-d20 shower in my direction.
As my fellow players try to stomp on their still-smoldering character sheets and look for towels to dry the toxic spills of soda, I'm looking at Monte Cook wondering if my awe of one of the Fathers of 3e isn't a little misplaced, seeing as he now had his right nostril clogged with a d4.
I'm not able to linger on it much, since in the next minute he's pushed over my chair and I'm staring at the cieling fan above from my back. I hear a scream as he punches one of the girls I play with, and then running footsteps, and then the door closing. Monte has left the building.
He does this every week. You'd think I'd stop inviting him back, or at least that I'd ask for some proof of ID just to make sure he wasn't some random escapee from the mental ward, but gosh darn it, how often do you get the chance to play with Monte Cook?!
So please. As a public plea. Monte Cook, stop screwing up my campaign! If I have to explain to my roommates how Katie got a scar from frosting and why Gingerbread now serves as a second carpet, I think I'll be kicked out of my apartment...then where will I play?
Also, keep up the good writing work. I'm sure whatever you're suffering from you and Sue can work through.
And if you guys thought THAT was a bad story, you should listen to the tale of the time Piratecat and Henry came over and insisted on transforming into the left arm of something they called the "Ultra Mega Super Moderator-Zord!", and then killed my Roommate's fish....
