D&D&Me

Wow ... that D&D video was perhaps the most boring and poorly put together piece of promotional crap I've ever watched. I put the wrong video up. I had meant to post this one:

A much more light-hearted look at Dungeons and Dragons over the years.

I've played D&D since Summer 1979. Yes, my first time playing was when I was 8-years-old!

All I really recall is I was given an elf to play. At that time elves were not a race, as much as a class. They were a combination of warrior, archer, and magic-user. I didn't care about that then, though. I knew my elf could shoot a bow and cast Magic Missile! Of course, my mental image of Magic Missile was of miniature ICBMs flying out of my elf's hands, not mystical shards of light doing force impact damage. I was eight! Whaddaya expect?

The only other thing I recall from that very first experience was encountering a stegosaurus. Now, I loved dinosaurs at the time. One of my favorite toys was a pack of cheap, multi-colored plastic dinosaurs I would play with for hours, doing mock battles, attacking my other toys, growling and roaring.

The fact said Stegosaurus was in a 10'x10'x10' room in the middle of an underground dungeon never crossed my eight year old mind. Nor did the fact that Stegoaurs do not eat meat, yet piles of bones and half eaten goblin corpses littered the hallway surrounding the door into the dino filled closet. What did register is that the damn thing killed my elf in one lousy hit. This was after my Magic Missile spell bounced harmlessly off its scaled hide, as well as a slew of hastily shot arrows.

I didn't really get into playing D&D until a few months later in 1980, after the Christmas break, when a friend of mine got the Basic game from Santa. Our small group of friends spent hours and hours pouring over the rules, creating new characters, and trying to draw what our carefully crafted characters looked like. All before we ever stepped foot into a single adventure.

The Keep on the Borderlands was my first, real adventure. Fighting orcs, goblins, and the occasional Ogre and undead in the Caves of Chaos is still a warm memory. My elf made it all the way to level 3 this time ... before a black dragon ate her. She had no chance, really. The dragon was hiding under a pile of dirty goblin clothing in a small side cave. The DM (Dungeon Master) added that little encounter into the published adventure after deciding we had done enough Dungeons, it was now time for the Dragons part of the game's title. =/

I was beginning to hate reptiles.

The rest is history.

Playing D&D gave me a way to unleash my imagination, a love of reading (mostly fantasy stories at that time), exercised my math skills with its often arcane rules of figuring out if an action succeeded, broadened my communication skills through story-telling and role-play, and taught me how to research by looking up rules in the books, as well as all sorts of esoteric things relating to medieval times from the library. (Yeah, I learned the difference between a bill-guisarme and a halberd, as well as what a buttery was, and why a longbow was deadlier than a crossbow, among other things. You know, important knowledge to help me in my day-to-day life!)

I've played, and collected, D&D since. I used to have several of the varying Basic Sets (but they were lost or otherwise misplaced over the last 27 years). I have many original 1st edition rulebooks, most of the 2nd edition core rule books, the vastly underrated Skills and Powers options set of rulebooks (more like a 2.5 edition), and the core rulebooks for 3rd Edition.

I never "upgraded" to 3.5 Edition, though i do have the 3.5 Basic Game box set which I keep intending to teach and play with the boys, but never do. Mainly because, by the time the weekend rolls around, we are so busy with one thing or another, someone is on restriction for something, or Mom isn't feeling well (the only real gaming spot is a table very near her bedroom), we have no time. Plus I play WoW ... a lot. More than I should.

Which brings us to this weekend and the lack of posts Saturday and Sunday. I could have, but they would have been made in the late afternoon, almost evening. Evenings are times when I like to pop into WoW and hook up with online friends to hang out. Plus, one of the kids was in big trouble (for something I felt was minor and way overblown, but Grandma wouldn't let it go! *sigh*) and the house was an unpleasant place to be, let alone try to write a blog.

All in all, I'd rather have been in a 10'x10' room with a Stegosaurus.