When you belong to a group of friends, and you have all known each other for years, there are a multitude of shared memories and experiences. But, there are a few memories that will always come back strongly when you think of each person, years from now, after you have parted ways. And usually you tend to remember something funny about someone, some incident that made a mark on at least yourself, and probably many in your group. So here are the things that I will probably remember about each person, when I recall each in my deathbed.

I guess we'll start with my best friend Dave Sweet. Although he finally has a campaign that has lasted more than two sessions, it is one of his early adventures, and more specifically an incident that happened in that adventure, that I will remember most. We were playing Pendragon, an Arthurian role-playing game. This was the third campaign, wherein we decided to run it troupe-style, so that anyone who wanted to GM could do it.

In this particular adventure I, along with Mike Lee, and I think Eric Rowe and Donald Kubasak, had the task of visiting a far land, for some reason. One of them, either Eric or Donald, had to get back for their wedding, and we had gone knowing that there was a good possibility the winter storms would trap us in that far off land. Still we went, and the winter snowstorms started, trapping us there.

But, we can be a hard-headed bunch of knights, and so we decided to brave the snow and cold to get back for the wedding. Day after day we trekked, and each day Dave had us make an Energetic check, failure resulting in a temporary loss of two points of Energetic. We were all feeling good, even though Mike and I were missing checks like crazy. Donald was ok, and Eric was reknown in Energetic so he hadn't missed a check.

And then one day it happened. We still had a good week or two trek to win through the snow-laden lands. Mike had just missed a check, making his Energetic less than 1. I still had a 3-4 Energetic, so I knew I'd be the next in a couple of days. I think we all thought that Mike would get sick and we'd have to do something to help him. Alas, it was not to be, as at the end of that day's trek Dave said those fateful words (which I probably don't have anywhere right): "When you stop, you find Mike's character dead, frozen on his horse."

That brought a round of immediate protests from the players. How could Dave kill a character with no warning? Mike wasn't even sniffling, and now he was dead. But Dave pointed out that we had been making checks and that our Energetic scores had been going down for quite a while now. Dave also claimed that he had been stressing the cold and elements as a formidable danger in our journey. Funny, but none of us thought there had been that much danger at all, certainly it didn't seem like we were in a situation where characters would die.

After the argument was over. I was quite convinced that I was next, since there was no way I was going to make another 5-10 Energetic checks. Still, at least I would die with the knowledge that Eric (or Donald) would make their wedding. But I guess Dave took pity, for after one more day the sun broke through the clouds, the weather got warmer, and we remaining three made it back home safely.

Ever since this episode, and even though Dave has some other memorable GMing moments, even though Dave has become a better GM (which I can only assume since I haven't yet been there when he was GMing GURPS -- I mean the campaign is still running so it must be ok), even though he's my best friend and I have a myriad memories of him, I will always remember him as the GM who froze a guy on his horse with no warning. So when I think of Dave and our gaming group, a young yet dead knight frozen on a white horse trundling through the snow comes immediately to mind.