I started playing D&D when I was 12 years old. School let out at 3 pm at Clintondale Middle School, and I hurried the mile-and-a-half home as fast as I could. I sped through my chores, then grabbed the battered red box and dashed across the street to Jimmy’s house. Matt would show up a little bit later, as he lived a block behind us. Sometimes Kenny would walk home with us, but he always had to leave early, as he lived so far away.
We usually sat outside, because Jimmy’s next-door neighbor was my babysitter, and my sister was there. With spiral-bound notebooks and a battered Trapper Keeper, we created epic adventures for about an hour, then packed everything up and went off to our separate homes. We did this every day throughout the week. On Saturdays, sometimes we’d go to Kenny’s (he had a computer, so we’d play Zork!) or to Matt’s, but most of the time we’d meet in Jimmy’s basement and crank out new characters.
I was the Dungeon Master. Whenever we went shopping, I always begged my Mom to stop by the bookstore so I could look at the modules. Occasionally I would buy one, but we didn’t have money for me to get them on a regular basis, so I took ideas from other books, the movies we saw, or requests the guys had (“I wanna fight a red dragon!”). We played classic modules like In Search of the Unknown, The Keep on the Borderlands, and The Lost City. The Lost Island of Castanamir was a personal favorite (I just love the name “gingwatzim”), and Dungeonland and the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror were an amazing example of adapting something non-D&D to D&D.
As we got older, our tastes changed. I collected as much D&D stuff as I could – The Shady Dragon Inn, the Book of Marvelous Magic, Scourge of the Slave Lords, Swords of the Undercity – and I still have most of it today. Dragonlance brought the slew of modules that followed the books, and we all devoured them and played out scenes with our own characters. And then I moved away.
I don’t know if Jimmy, Matt, and Kenny kept playing D&D after I left…we’re all friends on Facebook but don’t really talk after 30 years. Matt’s a grade school teacher, Kenny’s an orthopedic surgeon, and Jimmy…I don’t really know what he does. Hmmm.
So 1986 was a lonely time in my gaming life. I continued to buy everything I could get my hands on, I colored all the pictures in all my books, and I transcribed everything to form cohesive documents that reflected my campaign settings. I logged countless hours on my electric typewriter and filled binders and binders with notes, character creation guides, and lists of names, places, and plot ideas.
My senior year of high school brought a glimmer of light to my dark, solitary gaming days. My wife-to-be set her sights on me and made herself like the things I liked, and I gained a D&D player. Her characters trekked through my worlds, slaying monsters in Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, as well as gallivanting between the crystal spheres of Spelljammer. Eventually, we added my sister and her boyfriend as players, then their friends, and by the time I graduated college, I had a full-blown gaming group.
I also had a wife, a child, and the burning need for a steady, full time job to pay the bills. Gaming took a back seat; we had the occasional game every couple months, but nothing on a regular basis like my school days. I continued collecting, rewriting, and spent a lot of my free time transferring my notes to the computer (I had one!).
Al-Qadim came out the year I graduated college, and I worked furiously to adapt everything I had to that setting, shoehorning it into Greyhawk (I’ve always preferred Greyhawk over the Forgotten Realms). We played in Zakhara, but no one loved the setting as much as me. Planescape came next, and instead of adapting it to Greyhawk, I adapted Greyhawk to it, linking all the other campaign settings.
Planescape triggered something inside me. The concept was mind-blowing, and at the same time so elegant. It felt “right.” From the moment I read the first boxed set, all my games were a part of Planescape, and they still are today. Players may not know it, but I do, and for some reason that makes me feel good.
My obsession with Planescape led to the World Wide Web and wizards.com. In the virtual reality of the internet I discovered other players just as obsessed as I was, message boards dedicated to every minutia of D&D, and chat rooms where people became the characters in their games. I could talk to the designers of D&D, give them my input, and maybe shape the future of the game!
Okay, a bit naïve, I agree, but to some extent, it was true. True enough that when they asked for volunteers to help moderate the message boards and guide discussions in the chat rooms, I signed up. By that time, I had three kids, more bills, and a wife wanting a distraction from reality. She signed up too.
Turns out, as any happily married man will admit, she was much better at the job than I was. What I had that she lacked was a passion for the subject matter, so we became a team that operated from one virtual body…WizO_Dabus. What was once volunteer became a paying job, and it’s a job my wife still does to this day. (It’s full time now, so I had to choose what path to follow, and I chose to stick with my present job.)
Working as a WizO was a glorious time in my life. I discovered EN World during that time, the Fear the Boot podcast, and attended Gen Con several times. I wrote several articles for Dragon magazine, and contributed to some 3rd party published works. I worked with the folks at planewalker.com to adapt Planescape to 3rd edition. I made a lot of friends all around the world, some of which I still game with to this day. It was the best, most satisfying job I ever had, and I miss it.
I miss gaming in general. I’m now 42 years old, work 50+ hours a week, have four kids, bills, health issues, and a wonderfully supportive wife. There’s not a lot of time for gaming. My tabletop group hasn’t gotten together in a couple months now, because the other players have the same issues. Life has gotten in the way.
I had to cancel my online game yesterday (Sunday), because my wife’s step-father died, and we had to attend his funeral. I have to bow out of my other online game today (Monday), because I have to work until closing, and I won’t get home until about a half hour before the game ends. This column is the only gaming-related activity I’ve performed all week.
I’m going through gaming withdrawal.
I don’t have a solution to my admittedly miniscule problem. Perhaps if I played the lottery, I could win millions of dollars and quit my job and just play D&D to pass the time. But that’s not realistic. Life is a constant juggling act, and wiser men have always said you make time for what is important. I guess it must be true, because I’ve attended two high school chorus concerts this week, taken my youngest daughter to school in the mornings instead of making her ride the bus, and chauffeured daughter #3 and her boyfriend around. I’ve taken the family out to dinner and then to see Iron Man 3. When I finish this article, I’m going to prep meals for this coming week, since my wife is wrangling Magic the Gathering players online.
Gaming is not the most important thing in my life right now, so it’s taken a back seat. It hurts, but it’s not life threatening (like the transient ischemic attack I had last weekend). When the time is right, all my books and notes and boxed sets and miniatures and maps will still be there, on the shelves, ready to go. Polis Thaelin will be back in the wastelands of Athas, Doctor Valran will still be shadowing the party through the moonbase, and the Age of Worms will still be advancing, slithering through the shadows of Greyhawk.
No matter what edition you play, what company makes it, or when you finally have the time to do it, gaming will still be there. If you’ve got friends, you’ve got the potential for a game. That’s what keeps me going. That’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
Game on (when you have the chance).
We usually sat outside, because Jimmy’s next-door neighbor was my babysitter, and my sister was there. With spiral-bound notebooks and a battered Trapper Keeper, we created epic adventures for about an hour, then packed everything up and went off to our separate homes. We did this every day throughout the week. On Saturdays, sometimes we’d go to Kenny’s (he had a computer, so we’d play Zork!) or to Matt’s, but most of the time we’d meet in Jimmy’s basement and crank out new characters.
I was the Dungeon Master. Whenever we went shopping, I always begged my Mom to stop by the bookstore so I could look at the modules. Occasionally I would buy one, but we didn’t have money for me to get them on a regular basis, so I took ideas from other books, the movies we saw, or requests the guys had (“I wanna fight a red dragon!”). We played classic modules like In Search of the Unknown, The Keep on the Borderlands, and The Lost City. The Lost Island of Castanamir was a personal favorite (I just love the name “gingwatzim”), and Dungeonland and the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror were an amazing example of adapting something non-D&D to D&D.
As we got older, our tastes changed. I collected as much D&D stuff as I could – The Shady Dragon Inn, the Book of Marvelous Magic, Scourge of the Slave Lords, Swords of the Undercity – and I still have most of it today. Dragonlance brought the slew of modules that followed the books, and we all devoured them and played out scenes with our own characters. And then I moved away.
I don’t know if Jimmy, Matt, and Kenny kept playing D&D after I left…we’re all friends on Facebook but don’t really talk after 30 years. Matt’s a grade school teacher, Kenny’s an orthopedic surgeon, and Jimmy…I don’t really know what he does. Hmmm.
So 1986 was a lonely time in my gaming life. I continued to buy everything I could get my hands on, I colored all the pictures in all my books, and I transcribed everything to form cohesive documents that reflected my campaign settings. I logged countless hours on my electric typewriter and filled binders and binders with notes, character creation guides, and lists of names, places, and plot ideas.
My senior year of high school brought a glimmer of light to my dark, solitary gaming days. My wife-to-be set her sights on me and made herself like the things I liked, and I gained a D&D player. Her characters trekked through my worlds, slaying monsters in Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, as well as gallivanting between the crystal spheres of Spelljammer. Eventually, we added my sister and her boyfriend as players, then their friends, and by the time I graduated college, I had a full-blown gaming group.
I also had a wife, a child, and the burning need for a steady, full time job to pay the bills. Gaming took a back seat; we had the occasional game every couple months, but nothing on a regular basis like my school days. I continued collecting, rewriting, and spent a lot of my free time transferring my notes to the computer (I had one!).
Al-Qadim came out the year I graduated college, and I worked furiously to adapt everything I had to that setting, shoehorning it into Greyhawk (I’ve always preferred Greyhawk over the Forgotten Realms). We played in Zakhara, but no one loved the setting as much as me. Planescape came next, and instead of adapting it to Greyhawk, I adapted Greyhawk to it, linking all the other campaign settings.
Planescape triggered something inside me. The concept was mind-blowing, and at the same time so elegant. It felt “right.” From the moment I read the first boxed set, all my games were a part of Planescape, and they still are today. Players may not know it, but I do, and for some reason that makes me feel good.
My obsession with Planescape led to the World Wide Web and wizards.com. In the virtual reality of the internet I discovered other players just as obsessed as I was, message boards dedicated to every minutia of D&D, and chat rooms where people became the characters in their games. I could talk to the designers of D&D, give them my input, and maybe shape the future of the game!
Okay, a bit naïve, I agree, but to some extent, it was true. True enough that when they asked for volunteers to help moderate the message boards and guide discussions in the chat rooms, I signed up. By that time, I had three kids, more bills, and a wife wanting a distraction from reality. She signed up too.
Turns out, as any happily married man will admit, she was much better at the job than I was. What I had that she lacked was a passion for the subject matter, so we became a team that operated from one virtual body…WizO_Dabus. What was once volunteer became a paying job, and it’s a job my wife still does to this day. (It’s full time now, so I had to choose what path to follow, and I chose to stick with my present job.)
Working as a WizO was a glorious time in my life. I discovered EN World during that time, the Fear the Boot podcast, and attended Gen Con several times. I wrote several articles for Dragon magazine, and contributed to some 3rd party published works. I worked with the folks at planewalker.com to adapt Planescape to 3rd edition. I made a lot of friends all around the world, some of which I still game with to this day. It was the best, most satisfying job I ever had, and I miss it.
I miss gaming in general. I’m now 42 years old, work 50+ hours a week, have four kids, bills, health issues, and a wonderfully supportive wife. There’s not a lot of time for gaming. My tabletop group hasn’t gotten together in a couple months now, because the other players have the same issues. Life has gotten in the way.
I had to cancel my online game yesterday (Sunday), because my wife’s step-father died, and we had to attend his funeral. I have to bow out of my other online game today (Monday), because I have to work until closing, and I won’t get home until about a half hour before the game ends. This column is the only gaming-related activity I’ve performed all week.
I’m going through gaming withdrawal.
I don’t have a solution to my admittedly miniscule problem. Perhaps if I played the lottery, I could win millions of dollars and quit my job and just play D&D to pass the time. But that’s not realistic. Life is a constant juggling act, and wiser men have always said you make time for what is important. I guess it must be true, because I’ve attended two high school chorus concerts this week, taken my youngest daughter to school in the mornings instead of making her ride the bus, and chauffeured daughter #3 and her boyfriend around. I’ve taken the family out to dinner and then to see Iron Man 3. When I finish this article, I’m going to prep meals for this coming week, since my wife is wrangling Magic the Gathering players online.
Gaming is not the most important thing in my life right now, so it’s taken a back seat. It hurts, but it’s not life threatening (like the transient ischemic attack I had last weekend). When the time is right, all my books and notes and boxed sets and miniatures and maps will still be there, on the shelves, ready to go. Polis Thaelin will be back in the wastelands of Athas, Doctor Valran will still be shadowing the party through the moonbase, and the Age of Worms will still be advancing, slithering through the shadows of Greyhawk.
No matter what edition you play, what company makes it, or when you finally have the time to do it, gaming will still be there. If you’ve got friends, you’ve got the potential for a game. That’s what keeps me going. That’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
Game on (when you have the chance).
