NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Adso" data-source="post: 4610887" data-attributes="member: 6706">Hi Mark, and thanks for posting. I received your book for Christmas, devoured it, and have now passed it on to some of my coworkers. Page after page of The Elfish Gene reminded me of my own childhood here in the States. The emotion and the sense of wonder you describe when you discover the game--or rather some facsimile of the game—hit the nail right on the head. I remember after playing my first game of D&D, going home and creating my own versions of it just so I could share my excitement before I went out and bought the Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide (I started a couple years after you). And it doesn’t stop there. I think you do an excellent job recapturing the wonder and awkwardness of growing up strange and with Dungeons & Dragons.The Elfish Gene is not an attack on gamers. While Mark is brutally retrospective of his obsession with D&D and fantasy (and something I think he still "suffers" from today...I do too, but I am not as regretful as Mark seems to be at times), and sometimes that forced me to look back with the same brush on my own teenage years—something that was sometimes painful and awkward—I think that's one of the things that makes this a fantastic memoir. Thank you, Mark, for writing such an entertaining look at your youth and providing me with some mnemonic milestones to reexamine my own. If you're ever out in the Seattle area, stop by the Wizards of the Coast offices. I for one would like to shake your hand, buy you lunch, and even tempt you with a game or two. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />I'm sure I'm not the only one.</blockquote>

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