"Later" Can Be A Long Time

In my most recent session of Dungeons & Dragons, I had the most amazing experience ever. The story starts several months ago, when a friend of mine had a character who had an ability to summon a small field of dense plants. My friend, being the joker that he is, decided to have the plants be magical marijuana. I can only assume that the GM was in a good mood at the time because he allowed it. So I take one of my empty bottles and fill it with this magic weed.

I then proceeded to do nothing with it. I made a note of it as one of my possessions, but I never used it. I spent session after session seeing this bottle in my inventory, and having no need whatsoever for it. I certainly did not want to throw it out, but I didn't want to use it for no reason, either. (In a world where almost everything wants to kill you, it is a bad idea to willfully intoxicate yourself.)

Many times, I would envision ways in which I might use this weed. One scenario was using it as a peace offering with some grouchy person. Like, we would all smoke up, relax, and this person would grant us a favor we needed. Similarly, to mix it into somebody's food so that it would lower their defenses. But for months on end, we were never in a situation that even remotely needed it.

Then on Sunday, it finally happened. We escaped from the dungeon we were crawling out of, and were in a small town at night. Before we could get out of town, every member of the party had some strange spell put on them. My character was put into a giant glass bottle on its side, and despite every single thing I tried, there was literally no way out of the bottle. So I announced to everybody that I was finally whipping out the only plan I had left - I pulled out the magical weed, lit it up, and used the enclosed space of the bottle to get really high.

The entire party cracked up laughing. I doubt any of them even remembered that I had any of it, let alone that I would decide to give up and get high in this very freaky situation. But as it turns out, the magical weed basically counteracted the hallucinogen in the air that was affecting me, and cured me of the delusion I was in.

This was one of the proudest moments of role playing for me so far. I love the idea of collecting somewhat random things and using them in unexpected ways, or at unexpected times. I find it really adds to the excitement of role playing, because if I was an adventurer in real life, I would like to think that I would see certain items and say, "that might be useful later." The catch is, I may have no idea whatsoever how long it will be until it becomes useful.

"Later" can be a long time. It can be a very long time when you have no idea when, and really if, something you have will be useful. But there are two lessons here. The first is that it is always better to have something and not need it than to need it and not have it. The second is that when you only have a hammer, you see all your problems as nails. And what I mean on the second point is that you can never have all the tools in the world, but if you focus on the tools you do have, you will find a way to use one or a combination of them to solve the problems you face. And that is as valuable for role playing as it is for anything in life.