At least I was wearing pants

I had a dream last night in which Siobhan and I were at a con, probably Carnage (the venue seemed right). We were at one of the tables as other people started showing up, but I wasn't sure what game we'd signed up for, or what game system it would use. It turned out to be AD&D.

(When I told Siobhan this, she said "yuck," but it didn't bother me; a con is just the sort of place where the amount of exposure to AD&D would be approximately right. Although it must be noted that the only AD&D I've played at cons around here always sucked on a level unprecedented in the annals of con roleplaying, but that's more a statement about the person who runs it than the potential of the game, and its associated nostalgia.)

Compounding my sense of disorientation at not knowing what game we were signed up for, or what system it used, my reaction to this was simply to be upset that I hadn't brought enough dice. I only brought a single set of Chessex dice (my yellow/orange "Gemini" set, which I call "sunburst"), and the first thing we were doing is rolling 4d6 for character creation, and I already knew I would need to roll 2d8 later for combat damage, and I felt so unprepared and caught flat-footed.

This is obviously an echo of a minor incident at the last Carnage when, playing The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries, I found I had nowhere near enough d6s, which is an odd thing for me as I have jillions of dice and usually have far too many of everything. Maybe the memory was jarred loose because I recently read those rules, but it was a few weeks ago, so it took a while for it to bubble up.

Still, the dream seems pretty obviously a parallel to the traditional "I didn't know we were going to have a test" and "I didn't wear my pants" dreams that symbolize feeling unprepared for something. I don't know what I feel unprepared for, though. I'm just amused that my geekish brain translated the standard dream to a roleplaying con and being short of dice, of all things. How nerdish can you get.