Nerd Alert: Into the Dungeon

I first killed a man when I was 15. It wasn’t in Reno, and I didn’t do it just to watch him die. He deserved it; he had ill intentions toward the lady I was sworn to protect.

You see, I was engaged to provide safe passage for a duchess. When her coach was waylaid by brigands, I fulfilled my duty and ran the bastards through with my longsword.

If my actions seem unbefitting a middle-teenager, you should know I was a late bloomer.

I didn't start playing Dungeons & Dragons until I was a sophomore in high school. Many gamers began pilfering purses, ransacking castles and slaying marauding monsters and lowlife humans before they had reached puberty.

Recent events have got me reflecting on my D&D days — or nights as was more often the case. The reverie erupted as I read David M. Ewalt’s “Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It.” I discovered the 2013 tome in the Galesburg Public Library. After checking it out a second time — because I forgot I’d actually read it the first time (I know that doesn’t sound like much of a testimonial, but it really is a wonderful book) — I now own my own copy.

Ewalt covers much ground in relating the history of the game and his experience in it. It is fascinating and makes me a trifle jealous. Besides having an incredibly awesome title, the book is just the sort I once dreamed of writing (did I even come up with the same title?).

Well, a quick search reveals I wrote about all that two years ago. So this is not virgin territory. What new can I say, without simply writing a review of Ewalt’s excellent book? You can check it out for yourself. OK, so I mentioned “recent events.” That implies more than the singular incident of reading a new book.

Which brings us to my newest Facebook habit: saving links. It’s DVR for Fb. No longer must I indulge my interests immediately upon passing over an interesting post by a friend. When it involves a link to an intriguing story I simply click on that little arrow in the upper right corner of the post and “save link” for later entertainment and continue scrolling. 

Illustration from AD&D Players Handbook

Here are a few I’ve stumbled upon recently:

Game on: Nerd nightlife thrives in the Twin Cities

The 20 Most WTF Magical Items in Dungeons & Dragons

12 Nutty Dungeons & Dragons Media Mentions From the 1980s

What's Next For The New Dungeons & Dragons?

Which RPG Class Are You?

The 10 Most Insane Old School Dungeons & Dragons Rules

4 Overlooked Classic TSR Modules You Should Run

That takes us back to February and skips over all the bicycle, food and beer links that demanded I save them.

Some observations:

Nerd Nightlife: I love that so many adults have managed to stick with gaming, whether D&D or some other RPG or similar entertainment. Not all of us have done so. I miss it, and yet attempts to rekindle the thrill of those initial expeditions into fantasyland never matched my memories.

WTF Magical Items: As I wrote the Fb friend who posted this and many of the other links above, cursed magic items are terrific tools for livening up a campaign and injecting a little conflict among the adventure party. Other items, like the Bountiful Spade (Official description: “Characters who use this enchanted farm implement to turn over the earth prior to planting a field receive a +3 bonus on their agriculture proficiency check for that year.” I feel confident in saying that any D&D game that needs its player to perform an agriculture proficiency check for an entire year is the worst D&D game ever.) are  the sort of object a character stumbles upon in a crappy hoard and catalogs for out-of-play use (your magic user wants to establish a keep and the Spade will ensure healthy crops for his little fiefdom).

Media Mentions: The ’80s were rife with paranoid parents: Rock ’n roll music is rotting my kid’s mind; D&D turned my boy into a devil-worshiper. Thankfully my parents didn’t freak out about my gaming habit. Did they understand the game? No. On the rare occasion that I came home before they hit the hay, Dad would ask, “Did you win?” Not really a fitting question; adventures weren’t summed up with wins and losses. Though I suppose surviving our latest encounter with Asmodeus would go in the W column. Anyway, Mum and Dad knew that gaming kept me out of trouble. Hell, I always pointed out that my grades improved second semester of my sophomore year, after I started playing D&D.

Insane Old School Rules: This piece on toplessrobot.com begins, “The First Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was hugely popular and a kick-ass fun time. It was also known as a numbers-heavy intellectual and imaginative exercise (which was why some parents and educators backed it as a hobby — even sponsored gaming groups in afterschool programs). The nature of the game was both abstract (no gameboard; play happens in your head, for the most part) and concrete (weird dice, many tables to consult, a massive and growing amount of rulesets, books, and supplements); so it's only natural that some parts of the game would be, well, a bit cumbersome. Or, put another way, utterly nuts. (The effects of which could perhaps be rolled on the insanity-type table on page 83 of the DMG.)” 

I love all the tables and charts!

 Of course the abundance of tables and rules were a comfort and attraction, too. David Ewalt covers this in his book. There’s a whole chapter on the latest edition of D&D — version 5 — which seeks to unify and simplify the game for players across generations. Funny thing is, we adjusted the rules to suit our style of play — no need for the company (TSR then, Wizards of the Coast now) to do that for us. We simply discarded or modified the rules as befit our game.

Much of it was common sense. Who needs a table to determine encumbrance? We all know gold is heavy. Even a fighter of 18/00 strength isn’t going to lug around 30,000 gold pieces on his person. Logic, man.

Today’s Stats (Sunday, April 26, 2015)
Temp: 48 degrees F
Distance: 3.15 miles
Weekly Total: 3.15 miles
Treasure: Nothing today.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):
Clocks - Coldplay
Maria Maria - Santana, feat. The Project G&B
I Won’t Give Up - Jason Mraz
Welcome to the Machine - Pink Floyd
Safe and Sound - Capital Cities
Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood