[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty-six

Day Twenty-six: Do you still game with the group that introduced you to the hobby?

Nope. That ship sailed a long time ago. It wasn't really a "group" per se. As I've mentioned several times, my original "group" consisted of two of us: my best friend and I. We've gone our separate ways, although we've recently re-connected in a different circle. We still talk about gaming, but we play different games these days.

Now, if you were to ask if I still gamed with the group that re-introduced me to the hobby, I'd have to say, "Yes."

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty-five

Day Twenty-five: Longest running campaign/gaming group you've been in.

That would be my current group.

We've been gaming together for the past 14 years. We've had several campaigns during that time, the longest being our Dragon Mountain campaign back in 2000-2004 that spanned AD&D Second Edition through 3.5. Over that time, three of the members left, two of whom came back. We're a good group, we work and play well together, and have strengths that support the overall group. Sometimes I wish they had a desire to branch out once in a while to some Sci-fi or Superhero, but you can't have everything, right?

Slayers, I salute you!

2013 Totals

2013 is now a cold corpse, receding in the distance as we journey onward on horseback. I was doing some book-keeping/house-cleaning in the Stronghold and noticed that my "2013 Totals" table (on the sidebar) had not been updated since mid-June 2013. I also noticed that my "Year-To-Date Acquisitions" page had suffered in limbo since July 18, 2013.

So...I have no idea how my totals compared to 2012. But, I think I can be excused, seeing as how I purchased a law firm and became a self-employed small-business owner around the time that I stopped keeping track of my gaming milestones.

I'm going to try and do better this year. I make no promises; of course, I have no idea if any of you care about my self-congratulatory totals and inventories. If you do, then accept my promise in good faith. If not, continue to ignore my tallies.

One thing I think I will have to do is refrain from including links to products on my "Acquisitions" page. That alone was sufficiently time-consuming (between link-searching and coding) that it made updating the page a chore. Shopping sprees of free items on DriveThru RPG and similar sites also made upkeep generally confusing and frustrating, especially when you add in the afore-mentioned link-searching and coding.

As far as the biggies--Miniatures and Dice--I have found a rough estimate, made as of about mid-November: 125 miniatures and 33 dice. There were probably a few more before the end of the year, but that looks pretty good. I also hereby declare 2014 to be the year of the dice, apparently, as I've already doubled my total dice purchases for last year...I'm at 70 right now, after a mail delivery today.

I know I said this last year, but I'm going to shoot for some increased blogging. 2013 was a year of stress and frustration, both on a personal and professional level, even more so than 2012. I've already endured health issues, family issues, and financial issues and it shows no signs of slowing down. As always, though, the hobby and the friendships made through the hobby helped make it survivable.

Everyone join me in a toast: raise your dice cups high and keep them d20s dry. Here's to 2014!

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty-four

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

Dragonslayer would be the answer to this question.

Why? Well, let me count the ways.

1. Hello, DRAGONS?!?
   
2. It came out during my gaming youth.
   
3. Umm... DRAGONS and DRAGON SLAYING?!?
   

Honestly, though...it was a tie between this movie and Clash of the Titans, also from 1981. I'm sure a lot of people would go with Clash first, because of the whole "lots of monsters, swordplay, adventure, quest-thingy" theme, whereas Dragonslayer is something of a different movie, in part because the hero is a bungling clod through most of the movie. (Before you object: Peter MacNicol. A dragonslayer? Really? In what universe does that make sense?)

On second thought, I'm firmly going with Dragonslayer. It edges out Clash of the Titans on several fronts. First, a golden mechanical owl. Secondly, Clash always gets all the love; Vermithrax Pejorative is due a little respect himself. Thirdly, you've got the bungling hero thrown at the dragon right off. First adventure, BAM! DRAGON.

Finally: "ten tons of rapacious reality. No maiden is safe."

Need I say more?

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty-three

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

Easy.

Hotel California, by the Eagles, 1977.

If you have to ask why... c'mon, have you never LISTENED to the lyrics? I know, I know, Don Henley has claimed that the song was an "interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles" and that "It's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America." All that symbolism aside, I still say:

Why has no one written an adventure based on Hotel California?!?

Let's take a quick look at the obvious: you have an adventurer, traveling in the dark. He sees a light in the distance, and immediately becomes sleepy. We have a mysterious woman whose motives are unclear who welcomes him into the house by candlelight. Charm spell, anyone? Once inside, he hears voices. Ghosts? Undead? Captives? Minions? Who knows?

This mysterious woman--Tiffany--has a bunch of boy toys pretty boys thralls in the courtyard, dancing. Honestly, some of them may actually be zombies, too. I can see in my mind both kinds: the thralls are in the middle of the courtyard, ball-room dancing while the zombies are around the edges, perhaps a few interspersed in the crowd, and every day they're shuffling, shuffling, shuffling. (I couldn't resist.)

Now, the idea that you entered the building willingly takes on a particularly dark and sinister note, doesn't it?

The hero asks for provisions, without any luck. And then, the voices come back, and loud enough to wake you up in the night. As you wander around investigating the building, you find garish, tacky, or out-of-date decor: mirrored ceilings, although despite the lyrics I always see them as a room of mirrors, like in the funhouse; fancy, cloying food and drink; and prisoners, but possibly willing prisoners. Maybe they're more thralls, maybe some of them are merely kept for occasional "snacks."

Then you find yourself in the "master's chambers." Perhaps Tiffany isn't the BBEG after all.... Whoever IS master, however, has a beast of some kind chained in his chambers. All of the thralls and his other subjects have gathered there for a ritual sacrifice: The Feast. No matter what they do to it, it will not die. Perhaps it's troll-kin. Perhaps they have a resident cleric who waits until the creature is on the verge of death and who then heals it back to normal. Whatever it is, the ritual is sufficient to cause the adventurer to run, nearly senseless, for the front door.

Only now he finds that there is no front door. The entire building is a trap. And the evil butler, himself likely a mid-level vampire, tells him that he can "check out" at any time, but cannot leave the building. He can die at any time, but he cannot escape.

Now you tell me.... Why would I possibly associate this song with D&D, hmmm? `

"Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim; I had to stop for the night."

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty-two

Day Twenty-two: First D&D-based novel you ever read (Dragonlance trilogy, Realms novels, etc.)

OK. I have to play a game of semantics here. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to today's question, but there's some difficulty in my mind with the word "novel." Did the author of the list of questions mean "novel" to be "any non-game book that is associated with the D&D world"? Or did he mean it to be "any non-game book that is associated with the D&D world that is of generally-accepted novel length"?

Here's why I ask the question. Rather, here's why the conundrum is raised.

My first true novel-length D&D-related non-game book was R.A. Salvatore's The Crystal Shard. Yep. You could say that I cut my teeth on Drizz't Do'urden's swords. I want to say it was somewhere in the fall of 1991 when I first read it, although I didn't remember that I had read it until about a decade later when I picked it up again and got one-third through it before I had the "a-ha! moment."

I'm not as critical of the series as a lot of gamers are. Yeah, Salvatore's not Shakespeare, but he's also published a heck of a lot more than I have. So, he's due a little deference for that, at least. They're a fun read, again, as long as you're not expecting Twain, Steinbeck, or Hemingway. I also like how he treated the dwarves, at least initially. (I take GREAT exception to how dwarves were treated in his Cleric Quintet, on the other hand.) I certainly prefer his writing to that of Ed Greenwood. Although I understand that--for some--that may not be saying too much.

Now, the conundrum.

This little gem was, I believe, the first "non-game book that was D&D-based" that I ever read and owned. Revolt of the Dwarves was one of the Endless Quest choose-your-own-ending* books that TSR published. In fact it was the fifth in the series. I still have it, I believe...somewhere in my vast library. As I said yesterday, I've never sold--let alone given away--any of my books that I can remember. I don't remember a lot about it; I seem to remember a story line about some rebellious dwarves, the reader is separated from his/her parents, and you have to attempt to survive on your own in the world. I'm truly not sure what else there was. In fact, looking online, I'm surprised to find that the book was over 150 pages. I certainly don't remember it being that large. I've only found the page count in one place so far on the internet. Granted, I haven't looked that hard; maybe I'll have to dig out my copy for verification purposes. And to make sure it gets on my game-stuff shelves. [Aside: for the record--and to beat my gaming group to it--"Yes, all dwarves are revolting.They're smelly and hairy. We get it. Ha. Ha. End aside.]

Looking at this book again after all this time raises a few questions in my older, more cultured, gamer mind. Why are the dwarves riding horses? And why does the dwarf in the lead look more like a mongol--say, Gengis Khan--than Gimli? Of course, I guess you could make the argument that these are war-ponies and not actual horses...but there's nothing else on the cover that gives a sense of scale.

*There's a specific reason I did not call it a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. That phrase actually described specific titles published by Bantam. I did not remember these two were separate until I did a search for "choose your own adventure" and "TSR" at which point "Endless Quest" popped up in the results.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty-One

Day Twenty-one: First time you sold some of your D&D books--for whatever reason.

Another easy one. I have never sold any of them.

Heck, I'm not sure I've ever sold any of my books, regardless of what they were, RPG or no. (OK, college textbooks don't count in that respect.) I love books. I am a self-proclaimed bibliophage. I have a book with me wherever I go. As much as I would like a Kindle or similar e-reader--for the convenience of it--I love the feel and smell of books more. My library is huge. I've even lost track of where some of my books are.

Yeah. I'm not even sure I've ever even traded books to a book exchange or a used bookstore. They just mean too much to me.

So...selling game books? Not yet.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Twenty

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

After D&D, I had one other RPG love as a youth. One that rescued me from having Gamma World as my first non-D&D RPG by a couple of months. (See yesterday's post for an explanation of that comment.) In fact, it was this other RPG love that caused much of the grief and contention with yesterday's-mentioned Justin Case.

What was this first second love?

One hint:

STAR FRONTIERS!!!

This, D&D, and Car Wars formed the triumvirate of my gaming loves for most of my youth. We even managed to shoehorn a bit of Star Wars into our Star Frontiers. Lightsabers and the Force--granted, not under those names, of course--were statted up, as was the Sith Lord.

I haven't played in over twenty years. My books are all still somewhere around, though, and I try to keep somewhat abreast of the still-living Star Frontiers online community. Unfortunately, none of my current gaming group wants to try their hand at Sci-Fi or Space Opera.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Nineteen

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

There was a fellow once, back in the mists of time, that I met at a summer camp. He introduced himself as Justin Case. I still have my doubts as to whether that was actually his name or not. Anyway, I was stuck in a cabin with him for an entire week with no escape from the tales of his exploits.

He didn't play D&D--he felt that was too childish a game for his mature twelve years. Yeah...that was the footing from which we started. HIS game was Gamma World. I'd never played or been exposed to Gamma World before then; "lucky" for me, he brought his books to camp with him.

This also explains why I've never picked up Gamma World since that week.

He ran a couple of quick adventures for a bunch of us after "lights out." Most of what I remember is foolishness about finding a sacred toaster and his powerful PCs showing up as NPCs to taunt, fight, and kill off our characters. When he wasn't fighting us with his personal characters, he was telling us stories about what these characters (and others) had done in other campaigns.

Finally, it got bad enough that a couple others in the cabin wound up helping him find his way into one of the large multi-gallon trash cans near the kitchen. I have to confess: I wasn't involved, but wasn't sad to hear about it. It worked, too--whatever threats had been levied against him, he shut up about Gamma World, which gave us a 24-hour period of peace and quiet.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Eighteen

Day Eighteen: First gaming convention you ever attended.

This one's easy too.

I've never been.

I've done some writing conferences where gaming was present. I hit an Origins Star Trek convention that came through back in the day. I've hit a Comic-Con. But never a gaming convention. To my knowledge, they don't even occur around here.

Maybe someday. Although the grief and bad reviews that Gen Con has been getting lately, I'm not sure I want to make the effort. Maybe someone can convince me otherwise.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Seventeen

Day Seventeen: First time you heard that D&D was somehow "evil."

This one's kinda easy, although I can't put a specific date on it. My parents, I guess, bought into the hype of the day a few years after I started playing. Let's call it the early 1980s.

Throughout my junior high days, they counseled and argued about the "wisdom" of playing, and expressed a lot of concerns, although I'm not sure that I ever actually heard them use the word "evil" in connection with D&D. I knew they considered playing it a bad idea and were concerned about its possible effects.

I have no proof that a Jack Chick pamphlet was ever in my parents' home.

In high school, I let my gaming taper off; by then I was more into Car Wars, Champions, and Star Trek. By the time I graduated and started my undergraduate studies in 1987, I'd pretty much put everything away. It was a personal choice, not one imposed on me. And it was a choice made based on time-use and priorities, not "evil vs. good."

A dozen years later, I picked up my dice again.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Sixteen

Day Sixteen: Do you remember your first Edition War? Did you win?

After several years of playing Second Edition at the turn of the century, and several years of putting off changing over to Third Edition, we eventually made the switch. The book-buying and materials-buying went crazy. Then came Fourth Edition.

Apparently our DM at the time decided that he'd had enough of 3.x oddities--concerns and oddities he'd never bothered to share with any of us. It truly was sudden: almost overnight he became enamored of 4E and convinced of its ultimate superiority over all prior things D&D. Even now, I'm not sure what happened or how it happened. I almost wonder if he wasn't somehow in on the playtest. He knew about it almost before it was publicly released.

He also seemed to take it personally when we didn't jump at the chance to change over. You see, we're all middle-aged. We're all really busy, with family, jobs, and church responsibilities. We're also none of us rich. We all determined that it was too expensive in terms of time and money to change over to 4E with nothing earned (at least that we could see) except the DM's worries about 3.xE. So we said no to the change.

And our DM walked away.

Yup. He'd been friends with most of the group since high school, or before. And he walked away. He'd told us he wanted to play football instead of baseball, and when we didn't jump at the chance, he took it personally, he took offense, and he took his football and went home.

As I said, I tried 4E. I really did. I even sat in on a couple of sessions he ran. And I just couldn't do it. I don't know if the other guys ever went further than just reading the 4E Player's Handbook. But none of us ever saw anything in 4E that we wanted to incorporate into 3.xE; neither did we see anything that won us over to 4E to any degree, let alone the highly-personal commitment the DM had apparently found.

That was the first Edition War I experienced; to this day, I'm not sure who won the war.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Fifteen

Day Fifteen: What was the first edition of D&D you didn't enjoy? Why?

{GROAN}I've been dreading this question. To me, it smacks too much of a lighted fuse on the powder keg of Edition Wars. No, really. I'm going to stay in my own little corner of the internet today and not read the other bloghop blogs because, frankly, I hate the edition wars. The answer, for me, is settled. To me, there is only ONE "correct" edition of D&D.

That's the one that you enjoy. That's any edition you find fun.

Now that's out of the way, I guess I need to provide an answer. If I were to pick out ONE edition that I've played that I don't enjoy, I guess it would have to be Fourth Edition (4E). Honestly, I can't pick out exactly one reason for that feeling. I've played several times in several different settings with several different DMs. Every game was different in nearly every way. It was a pleasant way to pass a few hours; at least, it beat a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. That's less than a rousing endorsement, I know, but it's the truth. When I returned home, my wife asked "how it went"--my response? "It was O.K."

Maybe it was the DMs' styles. At the time, i thought that they were all different. Looking back, perhaps they were closer than I thought. There was very little intellectual buy-in with the encounters/adventures and some other stylistic issues. But I also kind of disliked the (possibly perceived) tendency in 4E to make all characters exactly the same, regardless of class, race, etc. I had a DM once who preached the absolute gospel of "BALANCE". (Hopefully you heard the great, booming god-voice there.) Everything had to be balanced. All I have to do use use "the B-word" around one of my current group who also experienced the other DM...and if I do use "the B-word" around him, I have to run from his flailing fists. But I digress....

"Balance." You have fighters casting spells through rituals. You have everybody healing themselves, and not with expendable potions. And yet, you seem to be pigeonholed into specific roles in the party, and each role is "necessary" for an adventure to "work." Again, this may only be a perception, based on limited play, so please don't flame me. I'm not trying to tear 4E down, but merely explaining what I didn't like about it.

I'm at a writing conference today, and have been here since Thursday. I wore my Pathfinder shirt on the first day; one of the first people I ran into was a teenager who looked at my shirt and said, "At last! Someone who plays the REAL version of D&D." As a Grognard and a member of the OSR, I snickered at him, considering I've been a gamer nearly twice as long as he's been alive. I just smiled in response and shook my head. I said it above, 4E is not "bad." It's just not for me.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Fourteen

Day Fourteen: Did you meet your significant other while playing D&D? Does he or she still play? (Or just post a randomly generated monster in protest of Valentine's Day.)

My significant other had no idea that I was a gamer for the first several years of our marriage. And vice versa.

As I've explained countless times, there was a large gap of non-gaming time in my twenties. As the turn of the century approached and a new gaming group invited me to join, I went to my wife for "permission," seeing as how it was bound to take time away from her, which, as a new attorney, was extremely limited. The prep and self-psyching for THAT conversation was really interesting!

And anti-climatic. It was more of a "What? You played? So did I!!"-kind of conversation. Come to find out that she also started playing with the Moldvay Basic Set. Unfortunately, most of her gaming stuff has vanished over the years.

As far as still playing, well, she's dabbled. My group tried to spin-off a "wives' group" game; that ended for her with the birth of our son and a changed focus and time-consuming new "hobby." This past New Year's Eve she actually sat-in once my eldest daughter wandered away and locked herself in her room with her cell phone. My wife jumped in and played the daughter's character for a little while; she seemed to have fun. Perhaps it's time to get her to roll up a character and add her in to the group.

Happy Valentine's Day, honey.

Found Items: Used Book Haul

It's the time of year again for the sci-fi/fantasy writing symposium, Life, the Universe and Everything (LTUE).

The guest of honor, Orson Scott Card, is a no-show until Saturday, being trapped by snow. Several of the panels I wanted to visit lost their luster as a result, so I took a little more time in the dealers' room than I had planned...and walked away with a haul. (The panels weren't a complete loss, though.... Getting to listen to my friend, Larry Correia, talk about his favorite monsters is worth the admission by itself.)

All paperbacks $3; hardcovers $10. I'll be lucky if my wife lets me in the house tonight. But I'll have good reading material, at least....

Not shown are: an original paperback of Robert Bloch's Psycho, Craig Shaw Anderson's Difficulty  with Dwarves, and Outland, the novelization by Alan Dean Foster. I also passed over a bunch of old Moorcock and some John Norman Gor novels (which I know nothing about, I'm ashamed to say). Here's the rest of my haul (at least, the OLD stuff):