On Saturday we played another evening of Vahid’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Yes, this is a roleplaying geek story - you don’t have to read it. Given Vahid’s many responsibilities, his games only happen once every few months - just enough time for me to forget everything about my character and lose the Excel spreadsheet I was using as a character sheet. We managed to bodge together what we could recall with an older version of the file, and after an hour or so I felt like I was playing Eric Bystander again.
Now the thing about Eric is that, being a dragon travelling in human form, he has one strategy for effectively dealing with practically any dangerous situation. Beset by brigands? Turn back into a dragon. Caught up in an inconvenient border dispute? Turn back into a dragon. Walked straight into the assassin’s guildhall, sat down for a nice conversation and drank several mouthfuls of the special ale they keep for people who don’t know they have a contract on their head? Turn back into a dragon just before you pass out.
The whole thing tends to get sorted out in a few minutes, with little people running away in blind terror, some fire, and a certain degree of collateral damage to one’s friends and fellow travellers. Or, in the latter scenario, with the destruction of the entire building.