by Matthew McHale
Funny in life how one thing can lead to another, those rare moments where what seems like a small decision can wind up totally changing the course of your life. I often think back to a party I was at in 1989. What if I would have left that party when I was going to? What would my life be if I had not stayed and met my long time partner and wife? (Still together after more than 22 years) What would I be doing without her and my three children? Impossible to say.
Another one of those moments, that is not so drastic, was one night at a horror movie convention. It was at Monster Mania in Cherry Hill, N.J. in August of 2008. Five of us horror movie fanatics got together to play D&D. A game I had not played in many years. So long in fact it, was edition 3.5, and I had not played since AD&D first edition. I remember the night so clearly. The rush of playing that wonderful game again and the excitement of slaying my first monster after about twenty years. I was hooked. My favorite game of my youth was back in my life as an adult. I ran out to buy all the 3.5 books. I have since moved on to Pathfinder which is an improved 3.5 with a different name. After all these years it is still my favorite game.
So this brings me to one more of these moments that can change your life. Again it revolves around horror. I am an actor at The Haunted Prison (Halloween haunted house) in Mt Holly, N.J. We are all volunteer but they show their appreciation for the help by taking us to other haunts, on them. It was the Halloween season of 2009 and The Prison hosted a bus trip to a haunt in Reading PA. On the trip home I heard Jim Reed talking about board games and a game night that he hosts at his house. I asked him about the games he was talking about, having seen some of them at the game store where I played D&D. He asked me if I would like to come over for a game night. I in turn told him I would be more than glad to Dungeon Master for his game group to try RPGs if he wanted. I went over Jim’s on January 1st 2010 to play Decent. This was the first time I met Jeff Scott, and after a long game of Decent, I had a new obsession: BOARD GAMES!
Now here I am very much involved in this wonderful hobby and I come back to the same question, what if I didn’t go to Monster Mania that night? What if I sat somewhere else on the bus on the trip back from the haunt? Of course, I’ll never know. But I do know that I may have missed out on meeting some great friends and missed out on some great memories around the game table.
Now ask yourself: What if…?
