By the James

Yes, I'm stealing Andy's blog title but since the very fact that I have a blog is due to some sort of hero worship I don't feel bad about it. Imitation is both flattery and plagiarism.

He was going on about Justin Timberlake, as he is wont to do and while I'm sure the only thing I can be as enamored with as he to Justin is my daughter, I still read everything he says about the man with wide-eyed Ich werde gänzlich beeindruckt. Then he began talking about Dungeons and Dragons and I say to myself: "HOHO! Here's something I can work with!" Flattery and plagiarism, you know.

Now I started with the D&D thing well before Mr. Skeleton... it's hard to say how much longer as the only proof I have about his age is certain life events he has struck. These watermarks put him in his early 20s. He is physically unreadable. My now brother-in-law who was then a very good friend said that we were going to play Dungeons and Dragons. Now, the only thing I knew about D&D at the time was that it may have been Satan Worship, which I was OK with actually. The whole Christianity thing had well fallen apart for me by then (the fact driven home the summer before when the girl I was seeing asked me if I was going to go to Heaven, and I physically and verbally shrugged. Turned out I just didn't care) so I was interested in looking at new avenues.

Turns out, obviously, that if we had met with Satan during the course of our adventures we would have attacked him. To my recollection, Jeremy (the b-i-l) was running it and Jeff and Mike were with me. They handed me a sheet of paper with Jeremy's never to change handwriting all over it and they told me I was playing a Cleric. Now, I was 13 and I had no idea what a Cleric was. They told me it was like a Wizard or Mage (I knew what a Mage was... thanks Final Fantasy). Now, let's be fair: Clerics are very much like those things. Or at least they were in 2nd Edition. They got more Clericy in 3rd edition and then much less like Wizards and more like we all thought Clerics were, but actually weren't, in 4th.

The actual events of the night are blurred by time but I do remember lots of Lil' Hugs and a King and a cave. Using... entangle on a Goblin? I don't know. But thereafter the hobby began to permiate my life and now there is probably a polyhedral die in every room in the house. I have played with a multi-tude of people, several I don't know the names of any longer, or if ever. I also skipped out on a game because everyone wanted me to play a Half-Dragon but I wanted to play a Human Sorceror who would prestige class into... that Dragony Prestige Class. I don't remember.

The RPG as an industry is falling apart. While I want to lay the blame at the feet of the d20 system and the OGL, it was really people's disinterest in Vampires and the burgeoning MMO scene that did the most damage. Vampires? Yeah, White Wolf was a steamroller, a cultural phenomena in the 90s. Goth kids who didn't know anything about D&D were picking up Vampire: The Masquerade because they had to. Then, as they grew out of the Angst, they were looking at other systems because they enjoyed the game. Sadly, I played very little during this time, though I continued to study. I started probably a dozen Werewolf games in the last 15 years, but none got anywhere. I attribute it to me knowing too damn much about the game. I am the only one who likes it enough to run it, and then it just gets bogged down as I try to infuse the contents of dozens of books on a nightly basis. I would really, really like to play. That will probably never happen.

Amanda asked today about playing Diablo. My heart leaps with joy. More on that as it develops.