In view of the fact that more and more people of both sexes are
entering the ranks of Dungeons & Dragons adventurers, I have established
a list of definitions which broadly encompass the limits of
romance vs. impartiality in the fantasy universe.

DMs who allow your wives/girlfriends/paramours/
whatever to run characters in their campaigns, take heed! Where on the
following list do you fit in?

LOVE IS. . . .
•when you stop collecting and painting orcs, trolls, gray ooze, and
lizard men because she says they “look icky.”

•when you agree to let her pay ten gold pieces extra for clothing to
obtain “designer originals.”

•when she always makes her saving throws.

•when the treasure chests she opens are never booby-trapped.

•when she “accidentally” finds a Potion of Healing every time she’s
down to one hit point.

•when everyone else in the party finds copper coins, but she finds
platinum.

•when, if she is a Magic-User, none of her spells backfire.

•when she never blunders across a Girdle of Sex Change.

•when she runs a 7th-level Cleric, and all her party meets are
Zombies and Skeletons.

•when she runs an 8th-level Fighter and all her party meets are
Kobolds.

•when she prays to her gods and they hear her.

•when she inadvertently calls the name of a demon, and he doesn’t.

•when her party never meets more than two goblins at a time.

•when she can scream, set fire to the walls, and jump up and down
on a sleeping dragon and he still doesn’t wake up.

•when you paint female miniatures that look just like her.

•when she doesn’t have to obey the maximum weight-carrying
capacity.

•when she has her own personal bodyguard of twelve 10th-level
Paladins.

•when she is instantly recognized as a long-lost relative by every
14th-level Witch her party meets.

•when she always does double damage.

•when there are three knobs attached to the same door, and she
turns the one that opens it.

•when the only wandering monsters she encounters in the Wild are
kindly Pilgrims, benevolent Elves, Unicorns, Lawful Clerics, Super-
Heroes, and her patron deity.

•when her character is never killed.

HATE IS. . . .
•when you deliberately purchase hundreds of the most disgustinglooking
monsters available, paint them in sickly hues of black, gray, and
olive, and line them up beside her plate at breakfast.

•when she runs an Elf, and continually encounters Evil Dwarves
with fanatical anti-Elven hysterias.

•when she gives alms to a beggar and contracts bubonic plague.

•when her characters always have their charismas lowered to three.

•when she always starts with the minimum number of hit points.

•when she adventures on the 1st level and enters through a oneway
door into the throne room of the Dragon Queen.

•when everybody who attacks her wields a poisoned weapon.

•when she activates traps on a roll of 1-6 on a six-sided die.

•when she is always made to walk at the front in a strange corridor.

•when the noise of her heart beating attracts the attention of a
dinosaur herd.

•when every piece of cursed armor she puts on cannot be taken off.

•when she walks into a teleportation room and materializes in the
middle of a vampire convention.

•when the pits she falls into have quicksand at the bottom.

•when merchants always cheat her.

•when the Arch-Druid happens to wander by just as she finishes
cutting a load of firewood from a nearby sacred grove.

•when all the rings she finds turn out to be made in Taiwan.

•when she hurls a fireball spell at a group of mummies and the DM
tells her the dungeon is made of wood.

•when rats eat her food supply while she rests at night.

•when the DM rules that her character has fallen in love with a
gelatinous cube.

•when the DM tells her the +5 mithril mail she found is too small for
her to fit into.

•when she takes a pike on her expedition and every room of the
dungeon is six feet square and six feet high.

•when her party never meets fewer than 200 goblins.

•when her character always goes hopelessly insane.