Day 26: Do you still game with the people who introduced you to the hobby? 

My older brother, who introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, hasn’t played since he was in middle school. My other friends who started playing with me, who I’m still in contact with today, don’t play anymore either. In fact, when I first started getting back into playing D&D after college I got this rather unique response. I believe it was a mixture of incredulity mixed with longing.

It was if they couldn’t believe that I was playing a game that we played when we were children, yet longed for the experience. I’m not sure if their longing was caused by nostalgia or their searching for a creative outlet. All of them still love the fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre. I’ve gone with them to see the Lord of the Rings movies, discussed Game of Thrones, and my brother and I share a love for Stephen King – especially the Dark tower series (Thankee-sai.)

That same brother was curious about my gaming. He was living out-of-town, married, going to graduate school, and raising kids, when I told him that not only was I gaming, I was trying to get published in Dungeon magazine. I had sent them a few adventures, and one of them got green-lighted for publication. When I told him the news he was almost as excited as I was. I sent him a draft to take a look at and he was very impressed with what I had put together. I did my first round of edits, got feedback from Paizo, and made my second round of edits. Then I got an e-mail that WOTC was going to take back the publishing rights to Dragon and Dungeon magazine. I got a letter that said that WOTC now owned the rights to my adventure and when I inquired if it was legal for me to withdraw my and submit it to another company for publication I got a response that confused me enough to think it wasn’t worth any possible hassle. While I was pretty peeved by the whole situation, my older brother also was upset and disappointed.

My only saving grace that I consider confirmation that it was a good adventure and that it WAS going to be published (if Paizo could have) was this: I found little bits and pieces of my submissions in Paizo Pathfinder adventures. I’ve got no proof or official confirmation, but I’m going with it. I was not upset, I would never even consider it stealing. I was happy that my stuff inspired some of my favorite authors and designers. I didn’t tell my brother that my stuff inspired someone else at the publisher to tweak it and wrote new adventures, he might not have been as understanding as I was.

But I’m glad knowing that the guy who introduced me to the game and inspired me to get into this hobby was still interested and even had some emotional involvement in my almost brush with gaming-fame.

[NB: I’ve also done stand-up and improve comedy and something similar happened to me in that business. Years ago, when they brought Star Search back on television I saw a contestant use one of my bits. Word for word. I looked into it, not only was he from the same city I was when I performed that bit, he was at the same university where I performed that bit. It was too much coincidence for me. I was a little shocked at first, but this guy took what I wrote and added to it. He took my bit (I’m sure) and made it better. He friggin’ NAILED it! I called his father, who also worked at the university, and told him I saw his son perform and that I wanted to wish him luck. It took a while for this comic to respond to my e-mail – he probably thought that I was going to get all bent out of shape or threaten a suit or something But when he finally did get back to me I told him that I liked hearing my bit on national television and that I liked how he had made it better. I was genuinely happy for the guy.]

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Day 25: Longest running campaign/gaming group you’ve been in

My current group has been together since October of 2000. Our current members have been playing together for at least 8 or 9 years – it’s been so long that I forget exactly. And you know what, that makes me extra grateful. I’m not thankful for possible memory loss, but for the fact that our group has been playing together for so long.

In terms of longest campaign, I’d have to say that we really struggled with “finishing” a campaign. Somebody would move, or a DM would have a kid (or a second, or third…) and things would have to go on hiatus. But the necessary yet dreaded hiatus would never yield a return to the campaign. Since we’ve played primarily 3.x or Pathfinder, most of our campaigns have been Paizo Adventure Paths. We started with Shackled City, but never finished. I DM’ed Age of Worms, but life got in the way. The first full Adventure Path that we finished was Savage Tide and it took us a little over two years I think. The next was Curse of the Crimson Throne, again it was around two years. We started on Kingmaker, but put it on… hiatus. So I took up the DM mantel and have been DM’ing Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition for a little more than a year now. They’re a little less than halfway through the Adventure Path so we seem to be on our previous paces of about two and a half years for an Adventure Path.

Looking forward, I would love to get back to being a player in our Kingmaker campaign if the opportunity presents itself. I would even like trying another game, like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying. Whatever the case, the campaigns and characters may change but our players remain the same. We’ve also joked about gaming being good for our mental health (using both left and right sides of our brains) so we’ll all eventually end up gaming together in a senior living facility. Not sure if that’ll actually happen, but it’s not a bad way to spend my twilight years.

How about you?

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Day 24: First movie that comes to mind that you associate with D&D. Why? 

Almost anything with a dragon I associate with D&D: Dragonslayer, Dragonheart, How to Train Your Dragon, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogies as well. Some of these movies have dungeons as well, so they fill the “associated by titular theme” niche fairly well. Dragonslayer is a classic who’s special effects still stand up fairly well in the modern age. The grim mood and overcast skies really lend a grit to the movie that makes it seem all the more real. The dragon of Dragonheart seems slightly too shiny and Sean Connery’s voice is so damn iconic that I think it actually takes away from the film a bit.

You know what movie I do NOT associate with D&D? The Dungeons and Dragons movie, or the second one. It was just brought to my attention that there is a third movie as well – and it sucks too. They’re all pretty horrible and anyone who’s ever played D&D for any length of time I’m sure is as frustrated as I was to see, among so many other awful things, the bad guys using beholders as watch dogs in the first film. If you are unfamiliar with the movie, read that last line again.

Beholders.

As watchdogs.

It’s like somebody was thumbing through a Monster Manual and said, “This monster has lots of eyes – it must be good at seeing things. The bad guys will use them to try and see the good guys.” Granted, the rest of the movie also seems rather immature in its acting, production value, and plot… but that scene brought forth the loudest and most sustained groaning/cursing from me.

But it does inspire me to ask myself: which iconic D&D monster would I like to see on film? And the answer comes almost immediately to mind: the illithid. A half-man/half alien tentacle-faced villain that uses deception and mental influence to trick other things so that it can eat their brains is beyond creepy. Plus, the mind flayer hits two nerd nerves for me: it’s D&D. (So D&D that Paizo cannot incorporate them into Pathfinder because WOTC, who owns the rights to D&D, owns the rights to the mind flayer… and beholder, grick, grell, etc.) But it’s also so Lovecraftian. These be-tentacled men of the subterranean depths are just begging for Cthulhu to be called. I would give some of my hard-earned cash to watch a film of a mind-flayer at its absolute best – and no hero should survive intact. There should be no happy ending at the end of that movie. Care to watch it with me?

What other D&D elements would you want to see in a movie? Which films remind you of D&D?

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Day 23: First song that comes to mind that you associate with D&D. Why?

I never used to intentionally added music into my D&D experiences. I’ve tried to include sound effects and ambient noises, but never really songs.

But another DM in our group will play music during battle encounters. My favorite: the original Conan theme. There are tons of songs on his playlist, almost exclusively from movie soundtracks. Gladiator, Braveheart, Conan, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and so many other great fantasy and epic combat films typically have great scores. But for some reason the original Conan theme is the one that gets my heart pumping for battle the most. Plus, it’s just so damn iconic to the genre.

There is a second song that I associate with D&D that makes me laugh and that’s a song we call “Techno Bard”. Years ago, when I first started incorporating the ambient noises into my DM’ing, I just ripped them right out of computer game files: Neverwinter Nights, TES: Morrowind, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, were but a few that I used. But Ruins of Myth Drannor also came with a CD. In fact, it was this CD that inspired me to try and incorporate more of the sounds and battle music from the games into our tabletop gaming. One of the tracks is a bard singing a ballad in a traditional medieval fashion. Then they took it and gave it a techno re-mix, hence… “Techno Bard”. It might even be a “hidden track” that only plays after about a minute of silence after the last track – so I remember us being surprised by it while the CD was running. It became a running gag with our group and while we haven’t used that CD in years I could probably bring up “Techno Bard” and it will immediately bring smiles.

I’ve used metal and techno for futuristic sci-fi games and even used Star Wars tracks when doing a Star Wars campaign.

Any suggestions you have for particular songs, artists, or albums for DM’s looking to enhance their tabletop experience?

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Day 22: First D&D-based novel you ever read (Dragonlance Trilogy, Realms novels, etc.)

I’m pretty sure that the first D&D novel I ever read was Shadowdale and the Avatar (Time of Troubles) Trilogy. But it could have been The Crystal Shard of the Icewind Dale trilogy. They were definitely my first two Forgotten Realms trilogies and once I borrowed them from my uncle started reading these two trilogies I devoured Realms fiction like a glutton.

This lead me to reading the following works (in alphabetical order):

• Cleric Quintet
• Cormyr Saga
• Dark Elf trilogy
• Elminster Series
• Erevis Cale trilogy
• Finder’s Stone trilogy
• The Harpers
• Hunter’s Blade trilogy
• The Last Mythal
• Legacy of the Drow
• The Legend of Drizzt
• Lost Empires
• Netheril Trilogy
• Paths of Darkness
• The Pools
• Return of the Archwizards
• Sembia: Gateway to the Realms
• Shadow of the Avatar series
• The Sundering
• The Twilight War
• War of the Spider Queen
• The Year of Rogue Dragons

Many of these books were popular enough to have video game tie-ins so I could play the game and interact with the same characters I had grown to love. That really cemented my love of the Realms (thanks Ed Greenwood and the business savvy folk who crossed these mediums for my entertainment!)

And almost all of them were purchased by me or gifted to me. When my wife and I first moved in together and I had boxes upon boxes of these books she scoffed and said: there was no way that I read them all. I stunned her by giving her a synopsis of each one she picked up at random. So, the collection is quite impressive but not exhaustive. In fact, I lost interest in the Realms fiction when they switched to 4^th edition and made sweeping changes to the Realms. But since I started at the Time of Troubles – their attempt to get the Realms to follow 2^nd edition rules, I must have felt as the older readers of the Realms novels felt towards the changes to the Realms brought forth in my entry series.

I never got into Dragonlance as a campaign or into their novels. But I must admit that the cross-media practice still captures my attention and imagination. I recently finished the latest Song of Ice and Fire paperback: Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones for those who are familiar with the amazing show on HBO but not the source material). I also have Dragon magazine 307 that puts the world of Westeros into 3.x. I would really like to run a campaign set in Westeros. It even came with a map of the known world of Westeros (up until the 3^rd book – when the magazine was published) that I have hanging in our gaming space. As every member of our group is a fan of the novels, the show, or both – I might be able to convince them to take the Black or join one of the kings vying for the throne.

Which novels really captured your attention and inspiration?

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Day 21: First time you sold some of your D&D books–for whatever reason.

I’ve never sold any of my D&D books (or any other roleplaying gear) and thankfully, I’ve never had to sell any of my D&D books. If anything, throughout the years, I’ve had to reign in my spending on books.

When it was time for me to get married, my wife and I were paying for most of it so we had to save all we could. That meant less money spent on gaming stuff. When we had our first child and had to save money for childcare, that meant less money for roleplaying. But I have never had to sell anything. I’ve also never chosen to sell anything. As I look on my gaming bookshelf I see AD&D, 2e AD&D, 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder books.  I don’t still have my red box edition of D&D – I’ll have to check my parents’ house to see if they still have it.

One of the many reasons that I’m lucky to be a member of the group that I game with is that we’ve all pooled our resources. The bookshelf has lots of Pathfinder stuff, but I’ve hardly purchased any of it. Other members of the group have purchased it and left it at my house – because I host the sessions. So our gaming library is rather large. And it is a library in every sense of the word. Anyone in our group can borrow anything during the week to help develop their character or add something to their sheet.

Our electronic library is even larger. One of our members was one of the early subscribers to Pathfinder so he has electronic copies of almost every book available for us to peruse. Another member has tons of old Dungeon and Dragon magazines (older than my 3.0 run) that he has scanned and made available to us. The math and rules may not always fit with Pathfinder but the character hooks, backstory ideas, and cultural connections are great resources.

I’m lucky that our gaming group is so generous with their books and that we’ve decided to pool our resources to enhance EVERYBODY’S gaming experience. I’m sure that if I had purchased a copy of every book in our library that I would definitely have a different answer to the original question.

How about you?

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Day 20: First non-D&D RPG you played.

Optimus Design System’s Battlelords of the 23^rd Century. I remember that the image of a futuristically armored  warrior with a bloody chainsaw, hooked blade, flamethrower, and plasma weapon at the end of each of its tentacles really caught my attention. Read that description again and imagine that picture underneath the title: Battlelords of the Twenty-third Century. Yeah, it’s that awesome.

As an eighth grader BL23C scratched my itch for sci-fi violence that Star Wars and Star Trek: TNG just couldn’t reach.  It’s dark humor was also entertaining to my angst-ridden sensibilities. The choices for races and the depth presented for each alien character race was awesome! There are over 25 playable races, each with its unique abilities. No spells, per se, but energy, healing and psychic matrices allowed for similar powers based on the race of a PC.

Plus, it was designed by a guy who lived an hour away from me so I had friends who knew him personally and playtested new material. I felt like I was on the cutting edge of this amazing game and I had friends “in the know”. As I described a few days ago, I eventually had a chance to meet Mike O., one of the original artists for the game and owners of SSDC, who gave me my first gaming developer cred’s in one of their Lock n’ Load source books.

Since I first tried BL23C the game has changed ownership to two of the early contributors (who named their company SSDC) and slowly and steadily the game is growing with new rules, equipment, and a new edition on the horizon. As an adult I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to help them with some of their expansions. My gaming group was gracious enough to let me Battlemaster a homebrewed campaign in-between our D&D adventure paths. I had a blast, but their reviews were mixed. Some of them were uncomfortable with the fatality of 23^rd century combat. Others bristled with the merc/military roleplaying and didn’t like taking or giving orders. Others loved the tactics and the futuristic weapons and armor. But for all of that, combat was slow and plodding. Their new edition is going to streamline the combat.

In my early roleplaying years I also tried Shadowrun and West End Games’ Star Wars. How about you, did you start roleplaying a game other than D&D or what was your first non-D&D RPG?

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Day 19: First gamer who just annoyed the hell out of you.

When I got back into tabletop gaming after I graduated college, I responded to an advertisement for gamers to try the new 3rd edition adventure The Sunless Citadel. I met two guys that I’m still friends with today and the DM who put out the ad I still game with regularly every week. But there were two other guys who answered the ad who were pretty much the same guy.

They were friends who attended the local technical college. They both played loads of roleplaying games, they each had gigabytes of anime on their computers, and they both were carbon copies of the same roleplayer stereotype. They were both so socially awkward that it even made me uncomfortable. They didn’t seem to understand any jokes or standard pop culture references and meanwhile we didn’t get any of their anime references. When the campaign moved from the back room of the game store to one of my fellow gamer’s homes one of them abruptly backed out. He claimed it was because he had other gaming responsibilities to other games. I had a feeling that it was actually because he was uncomfortable in someone else’s home. I’m not sure what worried me more at the time: a college student who was struggling to balance his gaming time or someone who struggled to make simple personal connections with other non-gaming adults.

And that same player played a Halfling. A Halfling with a high-pitched voice. It was bad enough that his voice cracked when he spoke – but, you guessed it: he squeaked every time his character spoke. I don’t know why, but the guy’s style coupled with how socially awkward he was, reminded me of my younger, awkward, geeky self. But that squeaky voice? That pushed him over the edge in my book. It just annoyed the hell out of me. His friend didn’t last too much longer. He stayed until the end of the semester and then his new class schedule fortunately didn’t allow him to continue meeting with us.

But I must admit that I’m curious to know how they’re both doing now.

Any gamer peeves of yours?

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