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| I always loved this illustration. There's so many cool details... |
The first time I ever heard of Dungeons & Dragons I was in the hospital. I was ten. A friend of mine, Peter, came by to visit, and brought some of the game manuals to show me. He was maybe a year or two older than I was, and more on the cutting edge of culture than I.
He tried to explain the whole concept of Role Playing Games (RPGs) and put forward a sample scenario: You are in a dungeon and open a door, which unleashes a crossbow bolt trap. A dice is then rolled to determine if it hit you.
But... what if I ducked? What if I was to the left of the trap, or to the right? What if I tripped, or dodged, or it hit my shield? How could all that complexity be reduced to a single dice throw? It didn’t make sense!
Of course, I was overthinking it. I’m not sure why. I'd played things like Risk. Somehow, the whole idea of a role playing game was kind of mind blowing to my morphine addled brain.
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| The bestest calendar evah |
I’d already read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (you may have heard of it) in quick succession (my grandfather even had the Hidlebrandts LOTR calendar, which was pure awesomeness), so I was primed for fantasy.
The AD&D books (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) were dense, full of charts and tables and obscurantist statistics, like a physics text for fantasy. They were far denser than anything I was getting in school, and more akin to the vast appendices at the back of a Tolkien book. (As I understand it, AD&D exists mostly because one creator of the game tried to screw another creator of the game out of rights and royalties they’d have gotten for basic D&D material. Sad, if true. AD&D no longer exists. it's all just D&D now.)
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| It's that guy from Stranger Things! |
It was all the more magical because I didn't understand it. The books promised a magical escape from reality into another world, of noble quests and indescribable danger, if I just read all the 300 page long manuals.
Peter kindly left some of the manuals behind for me to look at, and I poured over them... without really understanding it all. I remember being struck by the complexity, and didn’t know where to start.
Fortunately, there were plenty of illustrations. The quality varied a bit, but even the more 'amateurish' pictures had idiosyncratic charm. Some even had more character than the polished ones. All were evocative and intriguing, pure brain candy for the imaginative mind of a child.
I was very concerned when I looked at the Monster Manual that there were good creatures in this fantasy universe, as well as evil ones. I need to know some magical beings stood up for good. There were plenty of evil monsters, such as beholders (floating eyeballs with eyestalks atop), chromatic dragons, demons, devils (apparently they are different), trolls, ooze, wights, vampires, and worse. Fortunately, Ki-rin and metallic dragons were powerful beings on the side of good.
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| He's cute, yes... but he's evil. |
Characters were not alone in the fight against evil.
Unless, that is, you decided to BE evil, of course, which was an option.
Being virtually bad can be a lot of wicked fun, too.
Actually playing AD&D rarely lived up to my initial wondrous impression of it. Much of the time, it was little more than open the door, kill the monster, and take their stuff. To be fair, we were kids, and it can take a lot of work to create a believable fantasy environment.
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| Ooo... let's take their stuff! |
Endless dungeons filled with powerful predators doesn’t make a lot of sense. What do they eat? Most cave creatures live off of detritus that falls down from the surface. What do they breathe? Heck, ancient workers decorating Christian crypts beneath Rome had to take frequent breaks because their candles and torches were consuming all the oxygen. There are all kinds of logistical issues to consider, and when I did, it didn't always make for a more interesting gameplay experience.
It was a fantasy game, not a realistic simulation. You need just enough reality to suspend disbelief, and not much more.
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| Wrap around of the Player Handbook; illo by D.A. Trampier |
There was one Dungeon Master, Ross, that I only played with once or twice, who was superb. He took the game beyond Advanced Dice & Statistics, and fired imagination with atmospheric description and a sense of magic. I’m sure my overactive imagination did a lot of heavy lifting, too, but he was far ahead of other DMs in the small pond in which I swam.
The only real thing I remember from that is a corner archway of an underground temple, from which hung seaweed like drapery. And there was something behind it, waiting… For some reason, that memory has stuck with me. I can't remember what was there, or if that was where the session ended.
My imagination is still active, but it’s nowhere near as vivid and intense as when I was 10.
That was a real magical place.
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| It's quirky but I love it. |
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