Word: alessandro
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...game is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. in the evening, but really it won’t start until 6:30 p.m. or so. Alessandro arrives a few minutes before. Ian and Carl, fairly die-hard D&D enthusiasts, come soon after Alessandro. Tanya shows up last...
Alessandro—a super senior in Pforzheimer—and Betsy casually hold hands as they wait. The waiting, far from being dull or awkward, is jocular and full of anticipation. As people banter, Alessandro unfolds a square table and places it in the center of the room. East of the table is a small red couch—the type with no arms. North of the table is a futon covered with a sheet. Opposite the futon is the chair Betsy and Alessandro share—a fuzzy auborigine loveseat with arms of imposing breadth...
Atop the center table, now stable and in place, Alessandro unfurls an off-white grid placemat-ish thing, slightly larger than a chessboard. The placemat-ish thing is a map; it is a battlefield; it is a tent; it is whatever the Game Masters choose to make it with their dry erase markers. Indeed, if the real people are actors, playing their elves and orcs with convincing intensity, the placemat-ish thing is the stage. Over the course of the game it will serve as proxy for the characters. In fight scenes, rather than swinging real clubs at each other...
...Alessandro acted in his high school plays, ran the 100 meter in high school track, ballroom danced at Harvard for three years, and is an all-around jolly guy whose chest hair protrudes from his open collar. Every time I have seen him, he has had a goofy, genuine smile. He says that there is no Dungeons & Dragons “type.” John agrees that there is no type, as do others. That said, I doubt there is much crossover between final clubs and the HRSFA e-mail list, which has upwards of 300 students...
...major identifying feature of those who play Dungeons & Dragons, Alessandro says, is their “willingness to suspend disbelief.” To play best, one must be good as visualization, at making things that exist only in the mind become real. Because the game is so involved, so versatile, imagination is key. “You like to dig your fingers into a world and understand it,” Alessandro says of people who tend to play the game. But in terms of introverts and extroverts, players say there is no solid rule...