A Nerdy Confession

Last year on this day Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax passed away. In honor of his life and in thanks for his awesome creation I have began preparations on a new adventure. Alas, even though I'm nearly ready to kick it off I'm still waiting for two more people to join the party. (Hint hint.)

I began playing Dungeons and Dragons at the ripe age of six, possibly seven. One night when I was at a friend's sleepover birthday party his dad introduced us to the game. For us young minds he greatly simplified the rules but the essence of exploratory wonder in the game was still there. We spent all night until four in the morning tromping through...well...dungeons and fighting off...well...dragons. We used chess pieces to represent our characters and he would draw out each room with a dry erase marker on a clear, plexiglass board. Since then I've returned to the game whenever I could as long as I enough friends who also played or were willing to learn. Throughout most of high school I played with the same group and now I'm slowly finding people to join in on the festivities.

For those who don't know, Dungeons and Dragons is a game that you play at a table with paper, pencils, and dice. Each player creates a medieval, sort of Lord of the Rings-esqe character and specifies information about that character such as basic statistics, (quantifying their strength, intelligence, etc.) their race, (human, dwarven, elven, etc.) and their personality. There is a special player called the "dungeon master" who creates a world populated with towns, magic, and monsters. The players' characters then interact with that world through the dungeon master by taking on quests, exploring dungeons, and fighting said monsters.

In short, Dungeons and Dragons is interactive storytelling.

So, Mr. Gygax, thank you for providing many great years of fun and interactive storytelling and for touching the lives of many.