Alright, while I think the cost is mostly clear for now, everyone calm down. ...I go away to get my hair cut and other stuff for several hours, and this happens.
Also, apologies for not posting in the RP last night as planned, it turns out that my PC that I was using to post (and that's been having internet problems in general, partially responsible for my spotty activity this past week or two) won't even
turn on at this point. So basically at that point I decided stewing in my own frustration wasn't going to do me a lick of good, so I went to sleep. ...I swear I have the anti-luck.
I have my laptop, thankfully, which I'm posting from now, so while I'll have to track down the stuff I have to respond to again, I'll do my best to get a post done tonight.
Also, in terms of enlightening Mike about D&D, it sounds really odd, but I honestly think something like the Baldur's Gate Trilogy may be a great place to start, even though it's not the actual table top RPG. It's what got me interested in RPing to begin with, although until Cross Effects, I never actually got the chance to actually play (I *did* try to start a game when I was in high school based on some of the newbie stuff and the base Rule Book, but it didn't end up working out ^_^"). It helped inspire me to transition from being
completely clueless about table top games to being
mostly clueless, so there's that.