This is Me in ’83 – Dungeons! Dragons! Tomfoolery!
This entry likely begins in late 1982, when I was at my friend Mike’s house, and we wound up watching this movie called Mazes and Monsters on TV. (I say “likely,” because while the movie debuted on Dec. 28, I suppose it’s possible the thing was re-run in early 1983.)
So the whole terrible anti-role-playing propaganda of the movie was lost on us, because not long after, I remember Mike telling me one day in study hall that he had learned to play pencil-and-paper “Mazes and Monsters.” Basically, you’d draw a map of a cave or a castle or something similar, with small, numbered notations that corresponded to a hidden list of treasures, creatures and traps. You’d then guide the other guy through, asking him where he wanted to go, and describing what he encountered along the way. I think there may have been some super-basic sort of combat with plain old six-sided dice, but mostly it was kind of like walking the player through a Choose Your Own Adventure story.
The next step, of course, was Mike getting a Dungeons & Dragons basic set, and showing me the cool dice and the character sheets, and The Keep on the Borderlands module.
Since we didn’t know anyone else our age who had any interest in the game, though it was tough for us to play for real. Most of the time we just created characters with artificially-inflated stats and ran through maps and modules in a souped-up version of our “Mazes and Monsters.”
On a semi-related note, here is a Polaroid of Baltek, the Green Dragon:
Mike and I built him out of homemade green play dough and wrote a story about him (spoiler alert: Baltek wins) for our “Medieval Day” project that year.
We shared a study hall in sixth grade, and somehow, Mike and I started getting passes from our teachers to play D&D either in the hallways outside their rooms, or in adjacent empty classrooms. I remember in particular sitting on the floor with The Lost City awaiting Mike’s adventurers.
Then one day, I happened to see a copy of the morning memo that teachers used to get from the office every day. One note read, “It’s springtime! Practical joke time – how about no more hall passes for John and Mike?”
After a couple days of us trying unsuccessfully to finagle passes, one morning, the school heard this over the PA system: “Attention – if anyone has seen John Booth and Mike ___, please let us know: They are missing from the sixth grade halls!”
So we had no luck. And then, Mike had one of his friends ask a teacher for their autograph. And the kid got it. Just her signature on a blank piece of paper. Above which we then wrote, “Please excuse John and Mike during study hall.” Now, being a dork, while I thought this was ingenious, I also knew that some teachers would think it was funny, and some would, well, not. So I said, “Let’s take this to the office and let someone know it’s a joke first.”
Now the really weird coincidence is, when we got to the office – over Mike’s quit-being-such-a-nerd objections – and I told the secretary my name, she said, “John Booth? Your mom just called: She wanted us to remind you that she’s picking you up early today, and you have a dentist’s appointment. She’ll be here in about 10 minutes.”
We never got to find out how our clever fake hall pass would have been received.
Our shared exploration of D&D was pretty brief. In seventh grade, I traded away ten bucks plus my copy of The Lost City for a Timex Sinclair.
It would be 17 years before I created my next Dungeons & Dragons character, and while the game – and I – are different, rolling those polyhedral dice still takes me back, on some level, to 1983.
Dungeons & Dragons: Into the Unknown
Over at GeekDad, I’ve published a review of Dungeons & Dragons – Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook.
Click the cover image to visit the post at GeekDad.
Dungeons and Dragons: Wednesday Withdrawal
Mid-February. Massillon, Ohio: One of the players, Tom, had brought a celebratory cache of cheap foam weapons – short swords, axes, hammers and even flails – along with his usual giant bag of fresh popcorn. The resulting silliness helped offset a little undertone of sadness to this particular Dungeons and Dragons night, because it was going to be this group’s last session, at least for awhile.
I came to this group at Backlist Books as the new guy back on Sept. 7, 2011, and I was a little nervous. The only person I knew at the table was Fred, the store owner and Dungeon Master, and I hadn’t played D&D since summer 2010. It was already week three of the Lost Crown of Neverwinter adventure, so in the interest of saving time, Fred offered me a pre-generated character in the interest of saving time, so I took up the bow of Belgos, a drow ranger.
Belgos was an enjoyable enough character to play, although I feel like I approached him a little coldly – leveling up was all about how he could get better in combat, and I was always more focused on doing well in battle than in actually role-playing Belgos. I’m sure that partly this was because I was the new guy in the group, and I was still getting to know everyone else, and partly because I really had no connection to my character.
Over the course of Lost Crown, though, spending Wednesday nights with this group of people I’d just met became a fantastic, energizing, bizarrely comforting ritual. I’d get home from work, have dinner with Jenn & Kelsey, gather up my dice, pencils and books, and take the back roads over to Massillon. Most times, I’d listen to mixes of 1980s music, because it put me in what felt like an appropriate frame of mind.
The early session was usually still wrapping up when I’d arrive at Backlist, so I’d sit down and pick something off the shelves to read, or sit on the couch in the front of the store, or, if one of our group was already there, say hi and catch up a little on everyday stuff from the past week.
Our sessions were supposed to start at 8 p.m. We were all there on time, most weeks, and yet most weeks, by the time we all caught up with each other, had purchased books or new D&D minis, and stocked up on our snacks and drinks for the evening, it was still closer to – or well past – nine o’clock by the time we actually started playing. If I got home at midnight, I didn’t care: Wednesdays were fine, fine nights in my book, no matter how the dice had fallen.
The group stuck together for the next 14-week adventure, Beyond the Crystal Cave.
This time, though, I wanted to create a character all my own. Thus was born my tiefling hexblade, Azathoth (the first Cthulhu Mythos name I found upon picking up a Lovecraft book). The core of his origin tale came to me almost immediately, and fleshed out a bit more over time as I played the character. I may even write it out sometime in a short story format, just for fun.
During the very first Crystal Cave session, as our characters got to know each other, I made a decision regarding Azathoth’s feelings and motivations, but I opted to keep it to myself and play it pretty close to the vest until about halfway through the adventure. When I finally did make the revelation, several weeks later – and I admit, despite the fact that by now I was really comfortable role-playing with this group, I wondered how it would be perceived – I was ecstatic that the reaction was amusement and support and a recognition that this would be fun to play out.
Our final session was, fittingly, the perfect mix of combat and role-playing and ideal dungeon-mastering that tested our characters’ mettle, allowed for some dramatic heroics, and felt very much like the final moments of a good cinematic story than the end of a game.
Example: My terrible dice rolls were a longstanding joke within our group, ever since Belgos once went for what seemed like weeks without managing to hit the broad side of a tavern with a single arrow. So when Azathoth unleashed an Eldritch Bolt (think “Force Lightning,” but, you know, from hell) that turned out to be the final boss death blow, it was a fun moment. Fred the DM let me keep the figure representing the villain – and though I don’t collect D&D minis, that thing still sits here on my desk like a victory trophy.
Even the post-battle story wrap-up presented opportunities for a few more truly enjoyable moments with our characters.
It’s only been a month since then, but I have missed my Wednesday night Dungeons & Dragons sessions. I miss showing up, seeing my friends, stacking character sheets and dice on the table, popping open a Coke, and passing around Twizzlers and popcorn. I miss sitting down and creating, from the same elements in use by players and DMs all over the country, a story that is totally ours.
I’d like to imagine that in the not-too-distant future, there’s a time when Azathoth finds himself sitting in a tavern reminiscing about that tale, only to have his thoughts interrupted by a familiar voice calling from the doorway…
DIY Miniature Terrain: Glowing Pillars
Pillars are a common feature in many dungeons and ruins, and magical pillars can provide an interesting terrain feature for encounters. I'll show you how with a few supplies from your local craft store you can make great looking glowing pillars to enhance your next game.
To make four glowing blue pillars, you will need the following, all of which can be found at
Arthur to Young Sherlock Holmes – 2011′s miscellaneous GeekDad stuff
In addition to the reviews and interviews I did for GeekDad this year, I also wrote a half-dozen posts about things like discovering the TV show Eureka, spooky Ray Bradbury stories, and attending the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 with my daughter. I loved writing these.
Eureka – I Have (Finally) Found It!
Young Sherlock Holmes Revisited
Pick A Doctor, Any Doctor, on Netflix
Harry Potter and the Nostalgic GeekDad (Probably my favorite GeekDad contribution this year.)
Ten Tales by Ray Bradbury to Get You in the Halloween Spirit
The 15 Geekiest Episodes of PBS’s Arthur
The Fellowship of the Ring and a Decade of Family Geekdom
GeekDad also featured my Delving Into Dungeons & Dragons As A Family post – originally from summer 2010 – as a “wayback machine” post this July. Since this is one of my other favorites, I was glad to see it up there again.
Reasons This Weekend Ruled:
Friday night, my younger brother came over and hung out for a bit. Then I dove into my first play of Dead Space: Extraction.
After lunch Saturday, Jenn, Kelsey, Kels’ friend A. and I all headed north for a long-planned get-together. Things kicked off with a ten person, nearly four -hour marathon Rock Band 3 session with excellent friends who accommodated a last minute upheaval in plans and did not throw sharp objects at my neck when I requested lead vocals on “Through the Fire and Flames.” Also, there were chips and salsa and Skittles. Lots of them.
With same friends, TACO NIGHT IN AMERICA, followed by several hours of general goodtiminess, including introducing my daughter and her friend to Better Off Dead. From 1:45-5 a.m., a four-man game of Castle Ravenloft in which a timely roll of 20 brought our party from the brink of doom – seriously: the Rogue who rolled it had just used a healing surge to go from “Mostly Dead” to “Leveling Up and Unleashing Hell in Dagger Form” at the toss of a die – to a zombie/skeleton/gargoyle/kobold sorcerer-crushing victory.
Late breakfast, then some Dance Central with our hosts (Am I good at it? No. Did we have a blast? Yes. Is that girl Poison? Confirmed.) and then home.
And have I mentioned that it’s sunny and close to 80 degrees here in Ohio today?
2010 in Books
When I went through my journal to log this year’s books, I learned I’d been a bit lazy and had completely failed to record five of this year’s reads. Fixed.
So, here’s what I read in 2010:
The Hunger Games and Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins. My first daughter-recommended science fiction reads. Proud parenting moment.
The God Engines – John Scalzi. Dark. Bizarre. Innards-tangling. Not for the faint of heart, and a real deviation from Scalzi’s usual writing paths. I liked it.
Sailing to Byzantium – Robert Silverberg. I’ve liked Silverberg since I read Revolt on Alpha C as a kid, and when Kelsey was little, we read Lost Race of Mars together. This collection’s much more for the grown-up science fiction fan, and his take on Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer is fantastic.
Zoe’s Tale – John Scalzi (re-read)
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling (re-read)
The Gone-Away World – Nick Harkaway. The 100 Stories for Haiti anthology reminded me that I had been meaning to read this, and I loved it. Post-apocalyptic and mind-bendy and still human. Plus it has both Pirates AND Ninjas.
Math, Science and Unix Underpants – Bill Amend
Mainspring – Jay Lake
Cleveland’s Greatest Disasters – John Stark Bellamy II
The Sagan Diary - John Scalzi. Listened to this one on the drive back from Providence in March.
PvP Levels Up – Scott Kurtz. Bought from the man himself at PAX East, signed & Scratch Fury-ed.
Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks – Ethan Gilsdorf. Couldn’t put this one down: gaming and nostalgia and adventures and explorations galore.
The City & The City – China Mieville. For me, this was 2010′s equivalent to last year’s Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It’s a mental workout to read, especially in the beginning, but absolutely worth the effort.
FoxTrot: The Works – Bill Amend
Wildly FoxTrot – Bill Amend
Quixote: A Novel – Bryan J.L. Glass. Adam introduced me to Bryan at the Pittsburgh Comicon in April. ‘Cause I’m a sucker for tilting at windmills and all.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Player’s Handbook – Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt
The Specific Gravity of Grief – Jay Lake. Reviewed this one for GeekDad, though I would have read it regardless.
Goblin Quest – Jim C. Hines
Daemons Are Forever – Simon R. Green. This is the second book in a series – it was a freebie from the author’s lit agency – so I started a bit behind the curve, but it was so unlike just about anything I’ve read that I got hooked pretty quickly. And James Bond references tend to go over well with me.
Found – Margaret Peterson Haddix
Scenting the Dark and Other Stories – Mary Robinette Kowal. The only thing I didn’t like about this book? Too damned short. And I wish it could have included “Evil Robot Monkey”.
Red Hood’s Revenge – Jim C. Hines. The subject of another GeekDad review, and my favorite in his Princess series so far.
Locke & Key: Vol. I, Welcome to Lovecraft – Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
My Best Friend Is A Wookiee – Tony Pacitti. A Star Wars memoir from a younger fan’s perspective, growing up when the originals could only be seen on TV or videotape, and coming of age in the prequel era.
Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins. The kick-ass conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy. Reviewing it for GeekDad earned me some serious bonus parenting points because it meant my daughter had it waiting for her when she got home from school on release day.
Dreadnought – Cherie Priest
Clementine – Cherie Priest. Both of these are set in the world Priest created for Boneshaker, though neither is really a sequel in the strict sense. I like this universe.
The Odious Ogre – Norton Juster. With illustrations by Jules Feiffer, this reunited the Phantom Tollbooth words-and-pictures team for the first time in almost 50 years.
Oddball Ohio: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places – Jerome Pohlen
A Western Journal – Thomas Wolfe. Inspiring me to revisit my cross-country road trip in journal form.
Little Fuzzy – H. Beam Piper. A classic of which I had no knowledge until Scalzi announced his upcoming take on the book.
Brody’s Ghost, Book 1 – Mark Crilley
Armor – John Steakley. A different, brain-cramping (in a good way) angle on the space-trooper genre tale.
Silly Rhymes for Belligerent Children – Trace Beaulieu (Illustrated by Len Peralta)
Bloom County: The Complete Library Vol. 3 1984-1986 – Berkeley Breathed
Dungeons & Dragons Essentials – Dungeon Master’s Book – James Wyatt. As someone who only recently returned to D&D, I hadn’t really begun to think about taking on the DM’s role yet. This book, though, made for a great and encouraging read in that vein – thanks Kato and Wendy! – but I also got an awful lot out of it as a new player still kind of learning the finer points of the game mechanics and structure.
Dungeons and Dragons and Family and Friends
Back in May, still buzzing from the gaming high I got at PAX East and in the wake of reading Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I took my first steps back into the world of Dungeons & Dragons, a place I hadn’t visited since middle school.
I created a character, found myself half-dreaming scenes from his family history, got excited about buying dice, and eventually sat down at the table for my first real D&D adventure.
But the best part of all was sharing the three-session adventure with Jenn & Kelsey, and out of that came this piece I wrote for GeekDad this week.
Click the picture to visit the article at Wired.com's GeekDad.
Some other bits and pieces not in the GeekDad post:
- Kato observed on the first night that the females at the table outnumbered the males, so screw that stereotype.
- I found myself thinking more than once that I can remember my parents at 39 and couldn’t for the life of me imagine them sitting down to play Dungeons & Dragons. Then I thought of all the nights they got together with the neighbors and played cards or Scrabble, or later on when my brothers were older and we all played Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit with friends and family and I thought, “No difference. Game night is game night. Period.”
The whole experience – inspired in particular by Ethan Gilsdorf and Michael Harrison and Natania Barron and made possible by our awesome friends Kato and Wendy – just went far beyond my expectations as both a player and a husband and a dad.
I can’t wait to get the next adventure under way.
In Which the Adventure Begins Anew
An elf, a halfling, a half-orc and a human walk into a bar. The halfling starts smart-assing a nasty dragonborn. And that’s where the fun begins.
(Okay, technically, the half-orc was already in the bar, but why clunkify the setup?)
Photo by Wendy, map by Kato, surrounded cleric by Aoife.
So I returned for real to Dungeons & Dragons on Saturday, Jenn played for the first time ever, and our daughter may join the party next time around. All in all, a seriously amazingly fun afternoon.
Kato & Wendy were not only superbly gracious hosts (honestly, I may run out of superlatives and have to start making them up, so be warned) – I mean, they gave all three of us sets of dice in our favorite colors as a “Welcome to the Game” surprise – but they also made our adventuring an absolute joy.
For starters, Kato is, it turns out, a truly kick-ass DM. He created this one-shot adventure from scratch, starting it in the town of Fallcrest and taking our characters’ brief background stories and weaving them into the setting with a great setup. And as things unfolded, he struck a fantastic balance between enthusiasm and teaching the rules and keeping things moving.
Wendy, being an experienced player, just rocked her half-orc fighter – whom we met when she stepped in to keep that dragonborn from turning my big-mouthed halfling into ground chuck – and got into character and the game without Jenn & I feeling out of place.
From the perspective of someone who last “played” D&D in middle school (and the quote marks are because there were only two of us, and neither of us really wanted to learn all the rules – we just dug the maps and the monsters and the dice, so it was mostly just exploring and fighting monsters and always winning), this new version of the game was awfully easy to learn. I remember back in the early 1980s, for instance, things like how scarily plausible it was for a first-level magic user or cleric to die with one roll of a d4.
I couldn’t help but think that if we’d had this d20-based system of checks and skills and attacks back in the early ’80s, maybe my friend Mike and I would have put more effort into playing by the rules and gotten as much enjoyment from actual gameplay as we did from designing ancient forts and unexplored lands on graph paper. And using the miniatures and a battle mat definitely made combat far easier this time around.
When lowered our weapons after our first group encounter and decided it was time for pizza, a few hours had passed in the roll of a die, and we were just having a blast.
Already well into the evening, it made for a good stopping point, and our friends Keith & Marcia popped by around the same time as dinner, so we all spent another few hours hanging out.
As excited as I was about playing D&D again, I was really wondering what Jenn would think, and desperately hoping she’d have a good time. While I’m not going to speak for her, I will say that a) a certain cleric has a lovely Irish accent and b) when we got in the car to head home, Jenn almost immediately started saying things like, “I wish I’d taken a closer look at that scroll,” and “You know, I should have used my Elven Accuracy to re-roll one of those attacks.”
I tried to send a psychic message to 12-year-old me, somewhere in the rear-view mirror with his Basic D&D Set, rolling up characters he’d never get to send on their own quests: “Have fun. Don’t worry: Someday, you’ll get to play again and it will be awesome.“
Thank you, Kato and Wendy: Natural 20s all the way.
Dice dice baby.
Even though I know I didn’t have to, I really wanted to buy my own dice for my upcoming return to Dungeons & Dragons. I had to run errands today after lunch, so I drove to the local comic shop where I picked up the d10s we use as Munchkin level counters, and yes, I will admit I was excited about buying my first set of polyhedrals in a couple decades.
So I get there, and the store’s closed. Because it’s Tuesday, that’s why. Well, I’m already out here, and even though I know full well that Jenn & I could come out tomorrow, I’ve had my mind set on new dice, and so I start trying to think of another nearby gaming or comic shop. (Yes, there’s a Toys R Us across the street, but I wanted to shop local, and I really wanted to build my set individually, mix-and-match style, and I figured a big store might only sell RPG dice by the matching set.)
The only comic shop I know by name is the excellent Bill’s Books & More in Canton. It’s well out of my way, and I’m not even sure they carry dice, so I call information and get their number, and here’s where I love the networking knowledge of geeks: Sure enough, Bill’s doesn’t carry dice, but they offer me the names of two shops that do – one of which, of course, was the Closed-for-Tuesday store in the plaza where I’m sitting in my car on the phone. But the staff at Bill’s also points me in the direction of Universal Comics, less than 10 minutes away and a local spot for Magic: The Gathering tournaments. Seemed just the kind of place that would have some dice on tap.
Aaaand, bingo: There they were, available in compartmented plastic bins and separately-packed monochromatic sets. The owner put the variety trays on the counter in front of me and I just started picking dice – one set for me, and one for Jenn, at her request. I tied hers together with a green scheme, choosing different patterns and shades and a transparent emerald d20 for good measure. My set was more scattershot – I just sort of went with what caught my eye – but I like ‘em, and they’re my dice.
After totaling the purchase and doing some unneccessary but customer-friendly rounding down, the owner said, “I notice you like green,” and he tossed in a swirled green pip die with the store’s name in the ’1′ spot. The guy knows how to earn a new customer.
At home, I spilled my new dice into my hand and rattled them on the desktop next to my also-relatively-new-but-bookmarked-with-sticky-notes Player’s Handbook.
I picked up the largest die – it’s deep purple-and-black speckled with bronze numbers – and what flashed through my head as I cast it onto the book cover was, “How cool would it be if -”
I didn’t even get to complete the thought:
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