Doing My Part To Reinforce Stereotypes

 
To All My Fellow Awkwardians, I Bid Thee Hello!

They say that if you haven't used or looked at something in over a year then you should probably get rid of it.  If that's the case then I really need to get rid of a lot of crap.

Unwilling to immerse myself in the spiritual nadir of a flea market or a swap meet setting, I decided to post some of my loose detritus on Kijiji.  So far, this has been a tremendous success.  In selling some of my unwanted crap I've made enough money to purchase a new board game and procured the budget to acquire each new ship in the ever-expanding X-Wing fleet.   

One of the things I put up for sale was my Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition Player's Handbook and the intro module Keep on the Shadowfell.  This is no big loss since I've wanted to turf this stuff ever since I cracked the cover of the Type-Four Player's Handbook.  At the risk of inflaming the Edition Wars: Fourth Edition sucks Herculean amounts of ass.

Actually before I get a bunch of geek-rage-marinated posts and emails sent to me, let me qualify that statement just a little bit.  Fourth Edition would actually be a tremendous system for, say, a superhero role-playing game.  But, for me, the Fourth Edition ruleset is about as good a match for D&D as raisins are to...well, just about anything.  Seriously, why ruin a perfectly good dessert by including something that has the consistency of a cured booger?

Heh.  If you didn't agree with my militant anti-raisin stance before, then I bet you do after reading that last line, huh?  One of us!!!  One of us!!!    

Anyway, Monday night I got an email from a nice lady who expressed an interest in buying the Player's Handbook and the aforementioned module.  Here's how the email trail went down:

HER:  I would like to buy the books!
ME:  Sure!  I'm at _____________.  TEL ________.  I'll be around anytime tomorrow if you want to pick it up.
HER:  Can I come by around 330/400?  Also do you have a DM guide?

To this I thought: 'Wow, she actually knows enough about the game to inquire as to whether or not I have a matching Dungeon Master's Guide.  I wonder if she's getting it for herself?'

This is what I wrote back:

"That time is okay for me!  I'm afraid that I don't have a DMG.  Sorry (insert lame sad smiley emoticon thingie).  Having said that, between the Player's Manual and the 'Quick Start Rules' included in Keep on the Shadowfell, you should be able to get started at least.

"Hope to see you later.  Take care and have a great day!"  

With these arrangements made, I promptly went to work editing the audio for our latest entertainment-related podcast.  Now, I tend to get pretty engrossed in what I'm working on, especially if it's something that I'm really invested in.  This seems to happen to the detriment of everything else, including arrangements I've made hours ago for someone to come by and pick up an item that I no longer care about.

Oh, and just a quick word about working from home.  Since, as a boss, I'm kind of a slave-driver I like to give myself a bit of leniency when it comes to the dress code.  Now, please don't think for a moment that I don't wear pants when I'm working.  I usually wear pants.  Usually.      

What I'm trying to say is: I have a tendency to let personal hygiene lapse a bit when I'm working from home.  Not for days mind you.  I brush my teeth twice daily and floss every morning lie a good little obsessive-compulsive.  But since I really sincerely believe that daily maintenance is actually kinda bad for you, I sometimes go a day without washing my hair.  This usually necessitates wearing a scruffy-looking Guinness baseball cap that my beloved wife brought back for me from Las Vegas in 2007.  As you can well imagine, after wearing this hat every other day for the past seven years, it's starting to look a tad threadbare. 

"Why don't you get rid of that ratty old thing?" she'll ask occasionally, sounding slightly cross.  "One of these days you're gonna put it on and require a tetanus shot."

In response to this I usually remind her about my odd-shaped cranium and how difficult it is to find a hat that doesn't make me look like a pinhead ("One of us!!!"  "One of us!!!").  As such, I'm probably destined to wear this hat until it looses structural integrity and disintegrates like an over-chewed stick of Beeman's gum.

Shaving's is also a bit of a bugaboo for me.  In fact, this clip from The Simpsons nicely illustrates the futility of shaving for me: 

So, this was me last Tuesday afternoon: a day's worth of Unibomber-ish beard growth and my unkempt hair concealed by a hat clearly liberated from Dublin's dodgiest Value Village.  Given my own draconian work ethic, my personal appearance was pretty much the last thing on my mind that day.  The only thing I cared about was reviewing, editing and then writing the accompanying post for an entry that I was hell-bent to complete by day's end.   

While feverishly hammering away at this, I caught myself scrubbing away at an itchy spot just underneath my nose.  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a giant gout of warm liquid sprang from my nose and started streaming down my top lip.  I reflexively dabbed a fingertip there and it came away scarlet red. 

'Fiddle dee dee,' I thought to myself.  'I appear to be bleeding.  A lot.'

I rushed to the washroom, trying not to drip gore everywhere.  I looked in the mirror, took my hand away and was immediately shocked as a veritable geyser of blood left from my face like Regan's spinal tap pre-op scene in The Exorcist.  I quickly put pressure on the area with a piece of tissue paper and then promptly began the process of wondering what the f#@k had just happened.    

Now I know that, for a lot of you out there, the inimitable words of one Ralph Wiggum have probably spring to mind:

"The doctor said I wouldn't have so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger out of there."  

Um, yeah, thanks.  

Like all classic geeks, I will admit to a history of nosebleeds.  In fact, I had so many of them as a kid that I daresay that only Eric Northman is more familiar with the taste of blood.  But between a strict regimen of using a vaporizer to soften the dry winter air and a strict regimen of...*a-hem*..."keeping my finger out of there", thank you very much, I haven't had one in at least five years.  

After taking a closer look I noticed that the blood wasn't even coming from my nose.  It was coming from just below it.  I've always had a predominant and oh-so-sexy red vein perched close to the skin just underneath my snout.  While rubbing it absently I must have brought it to the surface and caused a rupture.  

So there I was, frantically trying to stop the bleeding like Dan Aykroyd in his French Chef skit when, all of a sudden, the phone rang.  Then, and only then, did I remember that I'd made arrangement for some sweet anonymous lady to stop by and surrender her hard-earned cash for my unwanted D&D swag.

With a swiftly-saturating piece of toilet paper plastered onto my face I ran to the phone and picked it up.  Sure enough, it was my unsuspecting Kijiji customer.  My heart sank. 

"'Ullo?" I managed to grunt through my not-so Kleenex.

"Hi!  It's _____!  I'm here for the D&D books!"

"Oday, ahl be dowd in a minnud!" I managed in reply, knowing damned well that I wouldn't be down in anywhere close to a minute.  

I ducked back into the bathroom and tried some last minute Hail Mary / Florence Nightingale shit in a vain effort to impede the hemorrhaging.  No matter what I tried, nothing worked.  With a perforated vein as the culprit I just couldn't get it to stop.  All I could do was grab a relatively unsullied piece of paper towel, run downstairs and then hope to complete the transaction before I ended up looking like an extra in M.A.S.H.     

Now, what I've been describing thus far sounds awful, but as I opened the door to the lobby it actually got a lot worse.  As it turns out, the person with whom I'd been corresponding wasn't buying the books for themselves.  They were buying them for their kid.  The same kid who was standing expectantly in the foyer with his moms right now.  Honestly I have no idea how old the kid was, since I'm really a poor judge of this sort of thing.  Just suffice to say that he was very young.  Way too young to see me in the state I was in, that's for sure.

Both of them looked completely aghast as this bleeding, vaguely-transient-looking weirdo whipped open the door to the foyer and practically threw a bag filled with books at them.  Books, I will remind you, that help people pretend to be elves and wizards and instructs them on how to go about slaying orcs and dragons.

"T...thank you," stammered the mom.  "Um...okay, honey...go ahead and give the nice man his money."

I'm pretty sure that I heard her add a barely-audible 'BE CAREFUL' under her breath as the kid shuffled incrementally towards me.  Wearing a facial expression suggesting rigor mortis, the child shakily offered me a handful of bill, stretching out his arm to the full extent of his reach.  I immediately snatched the money out of his clenched paw and then quickly turned to leave.

"'Tank 'oo," I blurted out from behind my increasingly-scarlet gore-rag.  I heard the mother remotely parrot back the same statement as the front door clicked shut behind me.  I quickly ran back to my domicile, hoping and praying that I wouldn't run into and subsequently spook any of the easily-startled senior citizens in my building. 

The bathroom mirror confirmed the worst.  I cursed under my breath as I took stock of my frightful appearance.  I looked woefully at the ratty, dirt-smudged beer hat crammed atop my birch-broom mop.  I silently chided myself for the day's worth of beard growth that might as well represent a week.  I grimaced at the sight of my nose, upper lip and chin cleft painted with dried hemoglobin.

To my poor traumatized customers I have only these three humble things to say:

1. I'm sorry.
2. Mom, please don't think that playing Dungeons & Dragons necessitates your child participating in some sort of blood-drinking Satanic rituals.
3. I assure you that I'm not selling all of my stuff to support a raging cocaine habit.        

EPIC SKIT:

The French Chef by y10566

FAIL-ING THE PHYSICAL   See?!?  It's medical, dammit!!! 

I Hit It With My Axe - Part IV - "Can I Hit It With This HAMMER Instead?"

All Hail, Hardy Adventurers!

To aid you in your quest, the previous entries in this series can be found right here:

Part I               Part II                Part III

Well, after my buddy Glen was introduced to the intense and danger-fraught world of Dungeons & Dragons (subsequently achieving a certain modicum of in-game success) he told me about another dude who wanted to get in on all the dice rolling, loot-plundering, troll-slaying action.  I already knew this guy to recognize him but I hadn't talked to him very much, but my reasoning was that any friend of Glen's was a potential friend of mine.

And so I was introduced to my buddy Greg, kicking off a friendship that's been sustained for almost thirty years.  It's yet another incredible blessing afforded to me by this supposedly antisocial and "weird" game.

I was going to say that Greg came from a religious background but it could be argued that every kid growing up in rural Newfoundland in the 80's came from a religious background.  After all, we'd all attended Catholic school, but to Greg, it was pretty important at the time.  As such, the character class of cleric, or holy man, really appealed to him.  This choice also dove-tailed nicely with Glen's existing adventuring party since they hadn't added a cleric to the ranks yet.

Clerics typically have their divine spells granted by some higher power.  Unlike the destructive capabilities of wizard's arcane abilities, cleric spells are typically what World of Warcraft has since regrettably labeled "buffs": I.E. they provide healing, protection and attack bonuses.

Back in the heady days of D&D's first edition, the game designers didn't bother to provide their own original deities in the core rules.  Instead, as the all-powerful Dungeon Master, you were either expected to create your own gods from scratch or just link your cleric to some pre-existing mythological pantheon.  Being a lazy and shiftless bastard, I opted for the latter, using this classic tome as a guide:

As Greg thumbed though the Legends & Lore manual, the historic mythology that seemed to appeal to him the most was the Greek pantheon, with Zeus being a notable standout.  He created a character with the appropriately classic handle of Amon and then equipped the poor, squishy bastard to the best of his limited fundage.

Whereas magic-users are forced to wear little or no armor to counter-balance the raw damage and destruction of their arcane spells, clerical magics aren't nearly as powerful.  As such, clerics are allowed to wear any kind of armor.  Also, back then, clerics were further balanced by their weapon limitations.  Since they theoretically abhorred excessive bloodletting, priests couldn't use slashing weapons like swords or piercing weapons like arrows.

So Greg got his poor, frail, scared little avatar all decked out in chainmail, holy symbols, hammers, slings...the whole works.  And let me tell ya, folks, Greg's introduction to the game certainly wasn't slow pitch.  In fact, his first outing ended up being the most challenging adventure I'd tabled thus far.  It involved the re-appearace of a legendary creature called the Tarrasque, pictured here: (with people standing around shitting blood for scale)

So basically, the last time this Gojira-like beastie appeared in my campaign world, he'd trampled Osaka...er, the village of Nesselheim into matchsticks and then fought the Duke's armies to a standstill.  I then circulated a rumor that a gnomish illusionist/wizard named Celator had devised some sort of control rod that repelled the creature and sent it back into hibernation.  Because the artifact was presumably too big to just stick in someone's kitchen drawer, it ended up in the equivalent of a bank vault.  A bank vault rife with deadly traps, loathsome monsters and the constant threat of certain doom, of course. 

In order to retrieve the wand, the group had to venture into an incredibly hazardous dungeon and brave terrible dangers.  The great thing about D&D is that a noob's genuine ignorance of the game's mechanics translates nicely to their character.  Since Greg went into this greener than Kermit the Frog's taint, he usually fell back on following orders from Glen.

Despite the palpable inner-party friction already building, the group managed to find the all-important control wand...with a twist.  Its power had waned considerably in the intervening years and one of the unlucky adventurers had to hit the Tarrasque with it three times before it had the desired effect.

In a completely unrelated piece of trivia, Greg's character got his arm bitten off during the resulting fight.  

Nevertheless, the group prevailed and Amon had his arm regenerated by the senior priests as a reward.  Now consisting of Glen's fighter Valain, Greg's cleric Amon and a small stable of supporting players to fill out the roster (including wizard Aleara, cut-purse Demetrius and professional scrapper Gailen), this ersatz  fellowship went on to achieve tremendous sucess.

Next up, the group began to hear whispers that the evil Baron "Black Eagle" Von Hendricks was searching frantically for the Talisman, an all-powerful sentient statuette once worshiped as a god.  With legend promising that "an army in possession of the Talisman will never see defeat", the team sought to secure this apocalyptic artifact in order to keep it out of the Baron's power-hungry mitts.

After doing some detective work, the group discovered several possible hiding places for the Talisman:

• In the dungeons below the Keep of Galatine, who was once the head priest of the Talisman-worshiping cult.  After Galatine met a mysteriously violent end, the Talisman vanished, and the castle fell to ruins.  It then became overrun with vile monsters 
• In a clearing in Darkwood Forest.  
• In the lair of the stone giant Konom.
• At the summit of the once-lavalicious mountain Volcan Peak.

The group instantly struck off the third avenue since they'd already befriended Konom and were convinced that he didn't have it.  They also took a quick dart out to Darkwood Forest but found nothing there but a pack of slavering werewolves.  So, it was decided to explore the crypts below Castle Galatine.
 
This underground maze proved to be the deadliest thing they'd encountered thus far.  It also inadvertently resulted in a situation that still dredges up bitterness to this day.  Glen was still bossing Greg around like Jennifer Lopez and at one point he volun-told the neophyte cleric to investigate the following room alone:

"The floor of this chamber is covered with what looks like mucous and multicolored molds.  There are pieces of half-dissolved leather, cloth and metal scattered about and a corroded sword lies twisted in the upper left corner of the room.  There is a stale, wet smell in the air.  Blobs of a thick, viscous green goo drips from the ceiling."

Now, I ask you, Kind Reader...does that sound inviting to you? 

Indeed, the ceiling was completely labored with a nasty, corrosive gelatin blob of green snot called, appropriately enough, a Green Slime.  Here's a mug shot for this charming little feller:

So, naturally, just as soon as Greg's character ventured across the threshold he instantly looked like Katy Perry at the Kids Choice Awards.  And the real bitch of it: fire is pretty much the only way you can kill a green slime.  Soooo, being totally bereft of torches at the time (the group had been relying on magical light sources), Glen pondered his options for about two milliseconds and then ordered Aleara, the group's resident spell-slinger, to blast Amon square in the mush with a full-bore fireball.

Yes, it killed the slime but it also left our intrepid cleric bereft of eyebrows.           

Yeah, Greg didn't forget that little encounter anytime soon.  On the up side, Aleara did become more attracted to Amon after this.  I guess smoking someone in the lips with a close-range fireball is kinda like the medieval fantasy equivalent of thinking that the cute red-haired girl in your Grade Three homeroom class likes you because she stuck gum in your hair.

As if all the inner-party drama wasn't tense enough, they found what appeared to be the Talisman in the maze but then realized that it was just a decoy.  In the off-chance that it might prove useful somehow, they lugged it along as they hauled ass to the only other place it could be by process of elimination.  Unfortunately a veritable army of the Baron's guards were there to greet them at Volcan Peak.  They fought their way through the gauntlet and finally located the Talisman.  Unfortunately, it was being presided over by a team of the Baron's senior wizards and toughest fighters.

After the group witnessed the Talisman brutally murder one of the Baron's men who'd dared to lay hands on it, a wild scrum broke out in which our heroes proved triumphant.  Finally they were able to gaze upon the true face of their reward: a four foot high, gold shimmering statuette with the unique appearance of whomever was gazing upon it!

Just before they could snatch it, the Talisman came to life again.  It began glowing and then blasted through the floor below with a potent gout of fire-lightning.  Before disappearing into its newly created tunnel the Talisman spoke to the adventures in a powerful psychic message:

"You May Yet Prove Worthy".

Unwilling to let their quarry escape, our intrepid heroes plunged three-hundred feet down into the bowels of the earth, ending up in a hellish environment filled with fire, brimstone and broiling heat.  At the bottom of the freshly-made chasm the Talisman had left a clue as to the group's next test:

"FIND THE KEEPER OF THE FLAME, FOR HE ALONE IS MASTER OVER THIS REALM OF FIRE.  IT IS HIS TO KNOW THE LOCATION OF THE THERMISTONE, A WEAPON FOR GOOD NOW IN THE HANDS OF THE UNWORTHY.  RETRIEVE THE THERMISTONE AND RETURN IT TO THOSE WHO MADE IT AND YOU SHALL PROVE YOUR OWN METTLE. ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE BEEN PURIFIED BY THIS WORLD OF FIRE CAN YOU BE FIT TO SEEK MY GREATER GLORY"

The group slogged through endless challenges: swinging blades, flame hydras, crushing blocks of hardened lava rock, siren-like flame maidens, hell hounds and nefarious riddles.  Eventually they located Surtis, the Keeper of the Flame, a massive Fire Giant who eventually divulged the location of the Thermistone.  Turns out it was in the possession of an evil tribe of humanoid Flame Salamanders:  

Seems that they'd pilfered the stone from the peaceful Azer, a race of flame-fetish dwarf-like creatures:

    

 

The party managed to liberate the stone and return it to it's rightful owners and the Talisman appeared once again to congratulate our valiant heroes.  But not two seconds later, the fickle deity vanished again after inviting the fellowship to follow it south on one last quest to prove their "worthiness".  The group had little time to react since the Talisman had abandoned them in the collapsing lava chamber, a fix they only barely managed to escape from.

Spurned on by the promise of a god's good favor (and outing themselves as suckers for punishment), the group ventured south, finding tell-tale signs of the Talisman's path.  Amidst a group of slaughtered gnolls, they found a lock box containing a map of the south seas.  Later the group discovered that an island marked as "Malistan" on the recovered map was listed as "Wakanda" on every other chart.  Hmmmmmm....      

At a skeezy bar the adventurers hired a tramp ship (ironically called the Paragon) captained by an upstanding gent named Slayde.  Next morning, just paces away from the boat, they group is spotted and then  pursued by an entire platoon of the evil Baron's troops.  The heroes barely managed to get onboard and cut the mooring lines, all the while withstanding a withering hail of enemy crossbow fire.

During the voyage the crew was forced to contend with several threats including a nasty gale, a sea hydra and a spectral ghost ship.  Just as they neared the mysterious island, two of the Baron's war galleys appeared from out of nowhere.  The Paragon was boarded and it was revealed that Slayde had been working for Von Hendricks all along.

However, when the deal began to sour for the pirate, Slayde pulled a "Lando", freed the captured adventurers and smuggled them back on-board the Paragon.  The battered vessel was no match for the Baron's warships, however, and soon it was reduced to a flaming derelict listing dead in the water.  The adventurers stole away in a life boat during the confusion as the pirate ship slipped below the waves.

Finally on the island the adventurers were forced to deal with an endless parade of exotic threats: giant crabs, ant swarms, carnivorous apes, and this little menace...the axe beak:

Other prehistoric adversaries also presented themselves, such as the nasty ceratosaurus:

 And the terrifying T-Rex:

When the local natives witnessed the bravery of the adventurers in battle against this last threat, they rushed in to help.  When the threat was finally overcome, the locals lead our heroes to their village which seem cloaked in an aura of trepidation and fear.  The reason for this soon became apparent as the Talisman suddenly materialized and killed the village elder as he tried to tell the group to flee.

"He was not amongst the worthy," the all-powerful artifact explained to the adventurers.  "Unlike you, my champions, he did not believe and he did not obey.  You have defeated my tests and proved yourselves worthy to be counted amongst the numbers in my new world.  This untouched paradise is not yet perfect: it lacks life, life worthy enough to warrant my company.  You, your elite predecessors and those still to follow will populate and perfect this new world.  With worthy life will come my sustenance."  

Well, before Glen and Greg could insist on a mandatory Q&A, the Baron's men stormed in.  The Talisman, confident that the "Black Eagle's" forces might have the right stuff after all, proposed a contest of champions between the forces of good and evil.  Our heroes triumphed and were promptly horrified when the Talisman dispatched their wounded rivals with abject cruelty.

It's then that the adventures realize, all too late, that the Talisman may be possessed of god-like powers, but it's also as crazy as a shit-house rat.  Its plan to abduct the group from their world only to transplant them into a new realm to act as devoted, obedient worshipers, is revealed.  Clearly "worthy" is a matter of perspective.

Needless to say, this proposal resulted in a bit of kickback and by kickback, I mean combat.  During the battle, the Talisman fought halfheartedly, obviously confused by the group's less-then-ecstatic reaction.  In the resulting dust up, the "decoy" Talisman was produced and the all-powerful entity suddenly showed fear for the very first time!

Turns out the other gods conspired to create this statuette as a weapon against their batshit insane rival.  When the decoy came in contact with the real Talisman, its surface shattered in a blast of radiant light and the group was nearly killed in the corona of explosive energy that followed.  After digging themselves out of the debris, the group was exhilarated by their narrow victory.  Needless to say, our intrepid champions stuck around the island to rest, recover and soak up as much adoration from the native population as they possibly could.              

Many more adventures would follow.  The party would tangle with such diverse foes as Valain's asshole dad Daltallen, the suave, aristocratic (and blood-sustained) Baron Latos, their old buddy Saren and the necromantic sorcerer Noctornis (Ten points to anyone out there who recognizes that name).

The fellowship also traveled to increasingly dangerous and exotic places.  They ventured into the swampy expanse of the Deadlands on a quest to recover "The Treasure of Darmin" and in "Draconia!" they sailed to Latismere Island to liberate the local population enslaved by the fierce Draconians and their dragon-goddess Tiamat.

And then, just as things seemed to be clicking along perfectly, Glen dropped a bombshell: his family was leaving Stephenville and moving away to St. John's.  Twelve f#@$%^& hours away.  I was crushed. 

But there was nothing we could do about it.  We did one final adventure which saw Valain leave the group on a solo odyssey to find and confront his nogoodnik father and transition command of the group to Amon.

Admittedly Greg's character had grown and matured in the time since he'd started playing but could he rise to the unique challenges that leadership would demand?

Indeed he would.  Unbeknownst to me, Greg had been carrying on his very own clandestine and torrid D&D love affair on the side.  In fact, he'd already started to Dungeon Master his own campaign for a circle of friends I barely knew.

In time Amon would lead his fellow adventures into brave new worlds and deal with horrors unlike anything that had come before.

But that is a tale for another time...               

EPIC PHOTO  Portrait of the Dungeon Master as a Young Man.  Here I am, hard at work, perhaps on this very same adventure.  Check out the state-of-the-art Commodore 64 computer and bass-ass Ozzy poster in the background...

EPIC SESSION Your reaction to the following vid (whether it be giddy thrills or total boredom) is like a litmus test of cool to me...    



FAIL  I swear parents wouldn't be so quick to do this if they knew what kind of psychological impact it has on their kids:

http://www.emovingstorage.com/client-resources/guide/helping-your-child-adjust-when-a-friend-moves-away/

http://moving.about.com/od/movingchildrenandteens/a/friend_moves.htm

http://www.amodernmother.com/2009/12/my-daughters-best-friend-is-moving.html

I Hit It With My Axe - Part III - My Axe, Your Sword, His Bow and Her Staff

Greetings, Bold Adventurers!

Well, after the events detailed in Part II, I just had to let some friends in on this amazing, new Dungeons & Dragons game that I'd discovered.  I needed to find someone who was appropriately nerdy and open-minded; someone who I felt comfortable broaching the subject with.  After all, D&D was starting to carry some pretty heavy societal baggage around then.  It was even getting lumped in with Satanism and Heavy Metal music, which I was also heavily into.  Er, Metal, that is, not Satanism.  Honest!  Stop looking at me that way! 

The first person I selected to baptize into my unholy order, er...my gaming circle, was my buddy Glen.  Glen was the dude who'd reintroduced me to the joys of Marvel Comics.  It's because of his patient and wise tutelage that the recent movie release of Thor carried with it a modicum of adult appeal.   

One day while we were perusing the latest issue of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (looking for new images to trace for our own "original" stable of superheroes), I finally worked up the courage to ask Glen if he wanted to try playing D&D with me.  I did this so sheepishly I might as well have handed him a gold- filigree invitation to a circle jerk.

"So it's like, what?  A board game?" he asked, lingering on a fetching sketch of the obscure Irish Marvel heroine Shamrock (natch!).

"No, no,"  I said.  "It's better then that.  You create a fantasy character like a fighter, a sorcerer or a thief and the Dungeon Master (that's me) guides you though a series of adventures where you fight monsters, explore dungeons, avoid traps and solve riddles."

"Uh huh," he replied, sounding supremely skeptical as he flipped the page to She-Hulk.

"Yeah, and there's no board because all the action takes place in the player's mind," I said, sounding ethereal, fanning my fingers and looking up into the buzzing florescent heavens of our Elementary School classroom.

Instantly I realized, that by quoting directly from the game box, I'd made a major tactical error.  To Glen, I probably sounded like 70's-era hippie stoner magician Doug Henning.  I'm sure the Jazz Hands certainly didn't help. 

I spent the next few days doing D&D damage control, launching into a P.R.blitz that would make the advertising juggernaut for the Transformers sequel look like ads for your local dinner theater's production of "Glee Club Dropouts".  I loaned Glen the issue of Starlog magazine containing the article that first inspired me to check out the game.  I also brought the Basic Set Player's Manual in to school and showed him some of the completed character sheets.

Eventually something clicked with him and he became unabashedly intrigued.  I probably have Larry Elmore's spectacular art to thank, since it had certainly cast a spell on me a few weeks prior.

"Yeah, okay," he reneged.  "I'll try it but I wanna play a fighter."

"Yeah, great!"  I enthused, knowing that the naturally tough and easy-to-play warrior class was a natural  choice for a beginner.

I invited him over to my place the following Saturday and spent the rest of the week designing my first dungeon.  By the time I was finished, my home-brew catacombs were rife with traps, riddles and vile undead (the living-challenged being my favorite monsters at the time).  I set up a table in my basement (Long live the stereotype!), laid out some snackage, and then went to hide my copious notes and graph-paper dungeon schematics behind a rudimentary screen so Glen couldn't see them.

But, crap...I hadn't bothered to buy an actually official cardboard screen!  What to use?
 
I ended up just using the biggest hardcover book I could find in the house: National Geographic's Romance of the Sea, a coffee table book that could actually double as a coffee table.  I split that sucker open, balanced it precariously agape, and hid my top-secret documentation just behind it.  Excepting that errant pages of the massive tome would slowly infiltrate my personal space and it threatened to collapse every four minutes, the thing worked so well that I ended up using it for years after.

The first few hours that day were spent hammering Glen's character (christened "Valain") into shape.  I was pretty generous with the character's initial statistics, reasoning that adventurers are made of sterner stuff then just the average Medieval turnip-farmer.  
                
To stress just how dangerous this crypt was, I made it very difficult for Glen's character to persuade any NPC's (that Non-player characters, BTW) to accompany him on this inaugural delve.  The only person willing (and apparently crazy enough) to venture down there with him was another fighter: a twitchy, shifty character named Saren.  Together the unlikely pair managed to drive into the heart of the dungeon, but just as soon as the duo stumbled upon a mother lode of phat lootz and magical items, Saren promptly went missing on his first watch.

And so did the lion's share of the treasure...

Glen was understandably enraged by this turn of events and I was delighted to have incited such a genuine emotional reaction from him.  Through the framework of this amazing game, my ability to weave a compelling  story and Glen's action-altering decisions, I'd managed to create a completely interactive, emotionally provocative visceral experience.  It was a resounding success!

In fact, Glen's character was so pissed off that he immediately began an obsessively thorough recruitment campaign in his home town and all the nearby hamlets.  His goal: to forge a proper adventuring fellowship to seek out and kill Saren post haste.  He eventually found another fighter who seemed curiously predisposed to a revenge mission: a pint-sized, badger-like, hot-headed soldier-for-hire named Gailen who carried a two-handed sword that was bigger then him.  Initially, Glen was decidedly leery about trusting another stranger, but when his new ally soon proved his mettle in combat, a strong bond began to grow between the two.

Soon Aleara, a geeky (but ultimately smokin' hot) sorceress, was added to the mix.  She also provided a key, previously-absent component to the group...brains.  She was adept at interpreting secret writings, solving riddles and negotiating civilly with people without it ending in inevitable eviscerations.

Then, on a trip to the BIG CITY, Valain caught a wily thief named Demetrius as he was attempting to pick his pocket.  Aware of the thief's legendary reputation, Glen offered the foot-pad a spot in his adventuring group.  With execution or imprisonment being his only choice, Demetrius the Rogue reluctantly agreed.  Cursed by a strong streak of honor, Demetrius turned his ample skills towards the noble cause and saw tremendous success.

Just as the group's final charter membership began to coalesce, Valain's old partner Saren turned up like a bad penny.  He accused Valain of abandoning him in the crypt and claimed to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the missing bling.  During a particularly heated parley, a fracas erupted and Aleara ended up using her 'splody burn magic on Saren's face.

Needless to say that it would be awhile before my old foil would be seen in public again. 

Next time on "I Hit It With My Axe": a new player player character ushers in my own personal Golden Age of D&D!            

EPIC SNAP  Glen, all smiles before I had to tell him that his character had been robbed completely blind...

EPIC Another decent D&D doc:



FAIL  Gawd, this movie was an insult to all things D&D.  If I recall correctly, Jeremy Irons's "performance" won the "Jack Palance Memorial Scenery Chewing Award" for 2000.  Eeeeesssshhh!

I Hit It With My Axe - Part II - How Exactly DO I Hit It? With My Axe, I Mean?

Hail, Spell Slingers! 

Well, after learning about this mysterious game Dungeons & Dragons in an article in Starlog magazine, I knew I had to investigate further.  Unfortunately no store in my small hometown of Stephenville, Newfoundland sold the game.  I had to wait several weeks for my parents to take a drive into Corner Brook, where I knew that the Coles Bookstore in the Valley Mall had D&D box sets on display right up front.

Thinking about this amuses the hell out of me.  To consider that Dungeons & Dragons was such a huge cultural phenomenon that it was once prominently displayed in the same place now reserved for the latest Dan Brown, James Patterson or J.K. Rowling book is pretty high testimony.

Unfortunately that self-same article in Starlog inadvertently resulted in some "point of sale" confusion and subsequently caused me to buy the wrong thing.  I'd completely misinterpreted the following part of Lenny Kaye's article:

"Those with more serious bent, or who know they want to make a full hobby of these games...would do better to begin with the 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' set.  Along with the expected enlargement, it also relies on a different combat system, though the possible rewards awaiting your character are much greater.  The basic set only takes your character up three skill levels (a continuum which makes the game more of a serial then a one-shot); in 'Advanced D&D', you not only progress further in riches and power, but the number of possibilities open to you at any one level of skill are more varied"
   
Hmmmmm..."Greater Possibilities"?  "Further Riches and Power?"  Hells, sounds good to me!

Given what you've just read, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I'd purchased one of the more complex hardbound  Advanced D&D books by mistake.  Nooooo, that oversight would have been somewhat forgivable.

Standing by that sidewalk display in front of Coles Bookstore I was confronted with the following two colorful box covers:

I guess my undercooked brain must have interpreted "Expert Set" to mean Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  I went to the cashier with the "Set 2: Expert Rules" box in my fevered little mitts and just as soon as I was strapped into the backseat of my parent's car, I had the cellophane ripped off that sucker quicker then you can say "Leomund's Tiny Hut".

Half way home a sinking feeling came over me.  As I flipped through the already-daunting 64-page rulebook, I finally noticed a chilling disclaimer on the back of the box: "THIS IS SET #2.  DO NOT BUY THIS SET UNTIL YOU HAVE SET #1".

In the intervening week I began a merciless campaign to pester my parents into taking me back to Corner Brook as soon as possible.  In the meantime, I studied the Expert Rules as best I could.  From what I could glean, the preliminary findings were tremendously exciting.  If the game delivered as promised, I'd soon be able to create a fantasy alter ego of sorts: either a brave fighter, a wise and holy cleric, a spell-weaving magic-user, a wily thief, stout dwarf, a nimble elf or a diminutive and sneaky halfling.  Once "birthed" in the game world, my plucky little avatar would then be able to explore a world rife with travel, adventure, battle, traps, riddles, exploration and tremendous in-game wealth.

Sorry, but for a socially awkward 13 year old kid weaned on Star Wars and The Hobbit, this held a lot of promise.

Equally evocative was the incredibly convincing art contained inside these rulebooks.  I mean, c'mon, just looking at this map, who wouldn't want to create a heroic fantasy avatar, hire a ship and sail across the sea to the ominous-sounding Isle of Dread?

As if the last two weeks weren't torturous enough, the following six days were chronological agony.  My dad made up some half-assed excuse to take me out of school Friday afternoon and we were soon en route to the Promised Land.  When we arrived in the parking lot of the Valley Mall I jumped out of the car while it was still moving, rushed to Coles Bookstore and snatched up a copy of that precious red box.  


"Okay, we can go now," I said when I'd reunited with my ever-patient parents.  They just shook their heads and promptly ignored my persistent requests to set course for home post haste.  

On the drive back I greedily studied the contents of the box.  It included a set of weird-looking, barely legible dice.  In addition to the standard-issue six sider, it also had a pyramidal four-sided die, an eight-sided die (which looked like two four-siders stuck together), a ten-faced pentagonal trapezohedron (try saying that five times real fast), a 12-sided dodecahedron and...the mother of all die, the exotic-looking twenty-sider.  This alone was intriguing enough.

What didn't make sense was why a simple white crayon was included in the box.  I studied it quizzically for a moment and then moved on to the books contained therein.  Now that I was actively looking for such things, I heeded the screaming instructions on the cover to "READ THIS BOOK FIRST"  and set aside the "Dungeon Master's Rulebook" in lieu of poring over the "Player's Manual". 

The Preface on the inside front cover contained the very first Dungeons & Dragons related words I would ever read:    


"This is a game that is fun.  It helps you imagine.


'As you whirl around, your sword ready, the huge, red, fire-breathing dragon swoops towards you with a ROAR!'


See?  You imagination woke up already.  Now imagine: this game may be more fun then any game you have ever played!"


This infantile but arresting little hook instantly cast a spell on me.  Just as soon as I got home I began to delve deeper into the precious tome.  First off, the mystery of the crayon was finally revealed:

"During your first adventure you will only need one of the dice in the box.  The others will be used later, for now all you need is the roundish one with the numbers 1 to 20 on it.  Use the crayon to fill in the numbers and rub off extra wax with a tissue so only the numbers are colored in."

After I'd made my enigmatic dice imminently more readable I continued to dive into the section entitled "What is role playing?":

"This is a role-playing game.  That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending to be that character.  You won't need a stage, though, and you won't need costumes or scripts.  You only need to imagine." 
 

Intrigued, I plowed onwards to discover what my debut role would be:


"Imagine: it is another place, another time.  The world is much like ours was, long ago, with knights and castles and no science or technology - no electricity, no modern comforts of any kind.  


Imagine: dragons are real.  Werewolves are real.  Monsters of all kinds live in caves and ancient ruins.  And magic really works!  


Imagine: you are a strong hero, a famous but poor fighter.  Day by day you explore the unknown, looking for monsters and treasure.  The more you find the more powerful and famous you become."

As if that wasn't enough, the section earmarked as "Your first adventure" really stirred up my yen for the noble quest:

"Your home town is just a small place with dirt roads.  You set off one morning and hike to the nearby hills.  There are several caves in the hills, caves where treasures can be found, guarded by monsters.  You have heard that a man named Bargle may also be found in these caves.  Bargle is a sort of bandit, who has been stealing money, killing people and terrorizing your town.  If you can catch him, you can become a hero!"  

Let me assure you, Kind Reader, in the simple days before Blu-Rays and Streaming Video, this was pretty heady stuff.  As an already imaginative kid, I could picture my fighter character striding confidently away from the relative safety of his small town, hoofing uphill with an equipment-laden backpack slung over one shoulder and a long sword's scabbard clattering against his armored leg with every stride.

The brief quest that followed saw my hero venture into a dimly lit cavern.  Inside the cave I had a brief dust-up with an evil goblin and then a deadly rattlesnake.  As I ventured deeper into the labyrinth, the simple yet brilliant mechanics of this completely original game began to reveal itself.

If I intend to accomplish anything at all with this blog series, at the very least I want to debunk the stigma and mystery around how this game works.  Let's face facts: to the casual onlooker an average game of  D&D can easily inspire some serious head-sctatchery.  With it's odd cardboard screens, out-of-context ad-libbing, seemingly complex record keeping and hopeful throws of gemstone-shaped dice,  it's no wonder people just glance at it and conclude that its just something weird, cultish, ritualistic or exclusionary.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  

When Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson invented D&D their goal was to was to give players the ability to exist within a realm that was considerably more romantic, daring, adventurous and scarier then our own.  They did this entirely within the frame work of a game.  And if I can communicate anything at all, it's that.  D&D is just a game.  

And as such it has rules.  Although there's plenty of over-the-top drama, danger, escapes, heroics, battles and close calls it's still kept fairly "realistic" by the framework of it's rules.  Like real people, each D&D character is born with it's own unique strengths and weaknesses.  Before they play, prospective adventurers roll dice to generate their characters ability scores in six key areas.  They are:

Strength: Which determines how easily you can smite someone, how much damage you cause and how successful you are at performing feats of strength like lifting a beam off a fallen team-mate or opening a particularly stubborn jar of mayonnaise. 
Intelligence: Which represents how much your character knows, how well they learn and how many languages they can speak.  It's also a clutch ability if your character uses magic; since it often giving you bonus spells.
Wisdom:  Whereas Intelligence is a measure of booksmarts, Wisdom is your character's common sense and willpower.  This one's critically important if you're trying to avoid being bespelled, for example.
Dexterity:  This illustrates how nimble your alter ego is and how proficient they might be with a missile weapon like crossbows and such.  
Constitution:  This one determines how hearty your l'il avatar is.  It influences how much damage they can soak up before they croak and how resistant they are to disease or trauma.  
Charisma:  Will your character be a Poindexter or Suave Motherf#@$%^?  High Charisma gives your characters a chance to talk your way out of sticky situations as well as easily gain friends and influence people.

Just like real life, we don't get to choose our high and low points and the same goes in the world of D&D.  To generate random ability scores, players roll three 6-sided die for each characteristic and add 'em up, creating a nice bell-curve result from 3-18 (with most scores falling into the 9-12 or "average" range).  The higher the number, the better the ability.  

Needless to say, just by rolling these die you already get a built-in hook on how your character might behave.  For example, a fighter with a Strength of 17 and a Intelligence of 4 might habitually get through locked doors by headbutting them open.  In the same breath, they're also probably not smart enough to figure out why they're having periodic dizzy spells and persistent ringing in their ears.

So, in that first introductory adventure my pre-made warrior character had the following stats:

Strength           17        Constitution    16      
Dexterity          11        Wisdom           8
Intelligence         9        Charisma        14

So, with these numbers in mind, it isn't difficult for me to describe this dude.  He's likely got little to no discernible neck, isn't likely to slip on a patch of ice when running for the outhouse, reads nothing beyond the odd issue of How To Hit Stuff With Your Axe digest, doesn't usually get the flu, does alright downtown with the ladies and might one day be voted "most likely to have all of his gold grifted by a fake Jamaican with fast hands and a card table."

Also, unless your Peter Griffin, most people can only take a certain amount of abuse before they konk out.  In D&D terms, this is referred to as Hit Points (an affectation that's already been stolen by countless video games).  Often times your character's Hit Points are determined by your class (rough and tumble fighters can take more abuse than, say, your average pencil-necked, pasty wizard) and it's augmented by how good or bad your Constitution is.  


But the whole idea is not to get hit in the first place, right?  In the wacky world of D&D this is simulated by a simple little stat called Armor Class.  Armor Class (or A.C. for those with a fetish for abbreviations) is determined by what kind of cool, medieval-style armor your character is wearing and how good their Dexterity is.  For example an agile knight wearing a suit of chain mail armor is gonna be a helluva lot harder to hit and damage in battle then say, Steve Urkel.

Man, I just wanna smash that little...*Ahem*...sorry 'bout that. 


Ergo, whenever you get in a scrap, your chances to successfully concuss your opponent before they brain you is determined by how armored your opponent is and how strong your l'il paper champion is.  When you want to try and hit something, your success also isn't a foregone conclusion.  You have to roll the big 20-sided die, add any bonuses or penalties based on your Strength and then check the results against your target's armor.  Generally, the higher the roll the better.  

In addition to all of his of her physical properties, you can laden your character down with more equipment  then a Manhattanite going on their first camping trip.  You can buy backpacks to carry all the phat lootz you find, lanterns to light your way in the darkness, holy water to splash on nasty undead things, mirrors to see around dungeon corridors, wooden poles to safely poke around in scary piles of refuse, rations for your character to nosh on, rope for climbing and/or assorted kinky stuff, spikes to keep dungeon doors propped open, tinder boxes to light fires ("Heh, heh, heh.  FIRE!!!  FIRE!!!"), waterskins to keep your whistle wet and wolvesbane to keep the Lon Chaney Jr. types away.

Also in a painful simulation of real life, when your intrepid character starts his or her career, they're often poorer then church mice.  In fact, one of the main motivators for your character to venture out into a monster-filled world is to rake in a few Benjamin and, as such, make enough coin to buy the medieval adventurers equivalent of a 50" plasma T.V.  

1080p LCD Progressive Scan Crystal Ball, mayhaps?      
 
All of this stuff (character name, gender, profession, Hit Points, Armor Class, Ability Scores, equipment, money, sexual orientation, political affiliation, blood type, favorite color) can all be summarized on a handy-dandy Character Sheet which you'll be asked to refer to periodically during the adventure.  Taken as a whole, that Character Sheet is kinda like your Permanent File, but in this case, it's a good thing since it encapsulates your character at a glance and makes him or her a breeze to play.    

Back in Adventureland, my fighter managed to slay the giant snake and claim it's modest treasure of scattered coin.  Marginally wounded he staggered further into the darkness and stumbled across a figure in the dark who appeared to be meditating or praying:

Her name was Aleena, a cleric and member of the local clergy who, through her faith in a higher power, receives spells of healing and protection in addition to her martial combat prowess.  After she healed me by laying on hands ("Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, knowwhatImean,knowwhatImean?") we formed a temporary alliance and forged ahead together in the darkness.

After Aleena used her holy influence to turn back a horde of slavering undead monsters we both finally managed to reach Bargle the evil magic user and his goblin henchman.  In the ensuing melee I managed to slay the goblin piss-boy but sadly, Bargle used his dark arts to kill my new found friend.

  

In the end, Bargle managed to escape.  As the undead ghouls closed in again I decided on an expeditious retreat and fled from the dungeon carrying Aleena's body with me...

Although Aleena had been laid low, I'd had some pretty hairy adventures and lived to fight another day.  Still using that magical "Players Manual", I soon continued on an even more elaborate quest.  After purchasing some new platemail armor from Armorer Baldwick, I soon ventured back to the same caves via another entrance.  In my subsequent delve the following adventury things happened:

• A statue revealed a secret note giving clues to the dungeon's other denizens.
• I managed to scare away one giant rat but was forced to tangle with two more of it's nasty brethren.
• "O-T-T-F-F-S-S!"  A giant disembodied mouth suckers me into a twisted game of "riddle me this".
• Goblins!  Goblins!  Goblins!
• I face a diabolical creature that I wished threatened my own hide instead of my shiny new expensive armor!
• I ask myself if finding a treasure chest is worth losing my head over.
• I recreate my own version of the Sinbad vs. Skeleton fight:

After this harrowing delve, I soon created my own fighter character and ran him through a series of randomly generated adventures.  Eventually I grew tired of this and decided that the time was right to come out of my imaginative closet and let a couple of my friends in on my little gaming secret.

Ultimately it was the following tempting words that swayed me to get others involved:

"Most of the fun of a Dungeons & Dragons game comes from playing in a group.  To play in a group, one person must be the Dungeon Master (or DM).  The DM is the person who plays the parts of the monsters and runs the game."

I let this sink in for a bit.  Playing these heroic, swashbuckling characters was undeniably rewarding, but for aspiring Dungeon Masters, who's role it is to craft the stories, design it's evil traps, act as the realm's denizens and be final arbiter of everything that happens in the game the lure was even stronger:

It was the chance to play god.

EPIC  If Tarantino directed my D&D adventure, this would be the poster.  There's a whole generation of geeks out there that have spent the past 28 years wishing that there was some way to save poor, hot, fictional Aleena and kill that f#@% Bargle.

EPIC QUEST  This is, without a doubt one, of the best books you can read to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons.  It's written from the perspective of a real "girly-girl" named Shelly Mazzanoble who began working for the company that currently produces D&D.  Eventually she got suckered into playing the game and, to her suprise, managed to look past all the societal stigma to discover one of most consistently enjoyable and rewarding pastimes.  A hilariously funny and very candid read.

 

EPIC DOC  A decent little doc about the game although the lines between fantasy and reality seem to be bleeding together for the guy with the giant beer mug...

ARTISTICALLY EPIC  The beautiful sketches that culled from my old D&D Basic Set to use in this blog were drawn by the truly magical Larry Elmore.  Do yourself a favor: check out his site and prepare to be amazed!
http://larryelmore.com/ 
 
FAIL  It's because of freaks like this that D&D will always be somewhat "stigmatic":

I Hit It With My Axe - Part I - The Axe Is Forged

Greetings, Fellow Dungeon Crawlers!

Dontcha just hate it when you've chosen what class you want to level in, added your new attack modifier, adjusted you base save bonuses, rolled up your new hit points, increased your skills, picked your new feat and just when you're finally ready to gank some undead your Dungeon Master cancels just because he has choir practice on Sunday.  I mean, c'mon?  How many times has this happened to you?  Anyone?  Ladies?  Holla?

Alright, I admit it.  I'm a forty year old man who still occasionally plays Dungeons & Dragons.  I can just visualize my blog's hit count withering and dying like a gelatinous cube hit by a fireball.  Indeed, I fear this confession is tantamount to openly admitting that I have four gigs of transvestite dwarf pron on my hard drive.


For the record, it's only two gigs, BTW.   

At some point in time Dungeons & Dragons was officially declared the crown jewel of geekdom, maybe just a shade below the ability to speak fluent Klingon.  But I'll tell you right now, if D&D had Hugh Grant's PR person and not Mel Gibson's, the Trekkies would be standing alone with their scarlet letters.

Truth being, a slew of people have played this game.  As many as six million at last count in 2007.  As an experiment, just ask the people in your own circle of fiends...er, friends to see if they have any past experiences in trap detection and orc slayage.   And then there are all the celebrities that harbor this dark secret like Troy McClure's fish fetish (and that includes Troy's overseer Matt Groening).

Matt's in some pretty awesome company.  The following people have either confessed to making saving throws, have been inadvertently outed or have made so many references to D&D that you just know they're a closet case:  Stephen Colbert, Vin Diesel, Mike Myers, Dwayne Johnson, Dame Judy Dench (turned onto the game by Vin while filming The Chronicles of Riddick), Jenny McCarthy, Wil Wheaton, Daryl Hannah, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Matthew Lillard, Jon Stewart, Jim Breuer, Marilyn Manson, Kevin Smith, Eddie Izzard, Jon Favreau, Curt Schilling, Todd Pratt, Tim Duncan, Jacques Villeneuve, Rivers Cuomo from Weezer ((but more like all the members of Weezer), Seth Green, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Patton Oswalt, Stephen King, Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Jack Black, Metallica, Conan O'Brian, Andrew W.K., My Chemical Romance, Ed Robertson of The Barenaked Ladies (but more like all the members of The Barenaked Ladies), Kari Byron (of Mythbuster's fame), Brian Posehn, Jason Mewes, Weird Al Yankovic, Billy Crystal, David Duchovny, Insane Clown Posse, Emilio Estévez, and Glenn Danzig. 

Hmmmm, if Marilyn Manson, Metallica, Stephen King, and Glenn Danzig all got together to play, I wonder if they'd ever play any other campaign besides Ravenloft?  Also, I wonder if "Juggalo" is a playable class when ICP start chuckin' their 20-siders around?    

The invention of Dungeons & Dragons pre-dates my involvement by about nine years. It sprang from the war gaming hobby which was all the rage in the Sixties and Seventies.  Presumably bored with the limited variables of chess, developers created complicated rule sets that read like legal documents in order to simulate past battles of history.  Legend has it that even the Kennedy family was obsessed with the entry-level war game Diplomacy.

Many of these early games (one of which was developed by War of the Worlds author H.G. Wells) involved the use of miniature figures to depict units, squads and platoons arrayed on three-dimensional terrain dioramas lovingly constructed from HO scale props.  Avid wargamers E. Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren eventually created a medieval-flavored rule set called Chainmail:

Perhaps due to the era's focus on the individual versus the group, Chainmail's scale was considerably smaller.  Instead of figures representing groups of twenty or so men, each miniature stood for a single person.  Being a devout historian of the Middle Ages, Gygax made sure his game adequately covered things like mounted charges, veteran heroes, melee fatigue, leaders, sword and spear-wielding footmen, crossbows, siege engines, morale breaks, tilts, jousts, duels and other opportunities for daring-do.

But what really set these rules apart was the optional fantasy supplement that followed a few years later.  Inspired by the growing popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gygax added sorcery, dwarfs, elves, monsters and giants to the hypothetical mix.  As such, Chainmail made quite the splash in the war gaming community.

When a Minnesota die-chucker named Dave Arneson used Chainmail to guide his players into a dungeon underneath the fictional Blackmoor Castle the resulting surge of adventure was seen as revelatory.  Arneson recreated the scenario at a convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and Gygax was there to witness it.  Inspired by the giddy narrative the experience generated, the two collaborated to expand Chainmail's fantasy supplement into a realm which ultimately became D&D's most venerable and hallowed campaign setting: the world of "Greyhawk".

The two added a veritable dragon's horde of fantastic new foes, wildly imaginative spell effects and just enough rules to invoke the imagination while keeping everything contained within the framework of a game.  Despite their excitement (and the enthusiasm of an ever-expanding troupe of willing play-testers), Gygax and Anderson just couldn't get any of the established game companies to give them the time of day.  So, the duo stood true to their convictions and in 1974 founded the company TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) just to bring their radical new design into the world.

But what to call it?  As a veteran designer, Gygax new the importance of a good, catchy name.  He wrote down about thirty keywords (like magic, monsters, treasure, castles, giants, labyrinths, mazes, spells, swords, trolls...etc) divided into two columns and played "mix and match" for awhile.  With the aid of his wife and two kids, Gary eventually settled on the alliter-rific combination of Dungeons & Dragons.  A few days later, the new-christened first iteration of his unique brainchild was sent out into the world.

The game was an instant smash, especially amongst college kids.  Game conventions and societies sprung up seemingly overnight, and despite the game's initially poor presentation and slip-shod amateurish proof-reading, the underground swell of support for this unusual new experience became impossible to ignore.

With every new iteration Dungeons & Dragons began to venture into the realm of cultural phenomenon.  The game was revised by several notable outsiders who brought increasingly slick levels of presentation to the game.  First there was the 1977 version edited by J.Eric Holmes:

And then this 1981 edition which was overseen by Tom Moldvay:

The game became so popular that even Steven Spielberg chose to kick off his seminal 80's flick E.T. with a session of something approximating D&D in progress.   When I first saw the movie in theaters in 1982, my curiosity was understandably piqued.  What was this imaginative, co-operative fantasy storytelling game of complex characters, strange dice and high adventure? 

But it wasn't until November of 1983 did Dungeons & Dragons really demand my attention.  I read Lenny Kaye's illuminating article "Role Playing: The Ultimate Fantasy" in Starlog magazine's "Space Age Games" column.  The concluding paragraph quickly had me saving up the modest shekels that constituted my allowance so I could further pursue Sir Kaye's invitation to venture forth with him:

"It's the Grand Quest of Gaming, and who knows what chills and thrills lurk behind the next door - a planked wooden gate barred ominously on your side.  There is no window or keyhole you might peer through, and you can't go back the way you came because the wererats have summoned their giant brethren to help in the assault on your party.  You are Ragnok the Halfling, traveling with Anika the Magic-User and the Cleric-Adept Gen U. Flect.  A kings ransom - in fact, the king's ransom - awaits you if..."       

I knew nothing about the game or how it worked.  I just knew that this article was like tinder in my imaginative, thirteen year old brain.

There was no way I could buy the game in my small town of Stephenville.  It would be a week or two now before my parents would be going back to Corner Brook where I knew I could pick up the box set I'd seen on display outside the Coles book store in the Valley Mall.

Until then I read and re--read the article over and over again during breakfast every morning and pondered my future life as an adventurer.

I was not to be disappointed.      

Next time: After a tragic miss-step two books in a red box with some funny-shaped dice and a crappy crayon (?) results in a lifetime of imaginative exploits.  Plus, I break it to you gently that you've probably already played Dungeons & Dragons in some shape or form yourself.

NERD! 

EPIC:  Hmmmm, if I've never once talked in another voice or unsheathed a sword during one of these games does that mean I'm actually less geeky than Vin Diesel?

EPIC +1:  It's hard to believe that D&D was once so popular that it was advertised on television.  In retrospect, I'm sure this commercial did little to debunk the myth that all gamers were mutants...

CURSED MYTHIC FAIL OF THE AGES: (Yes, this is real...)