Adventure Awaits

I have always been drawn to fantasy. Steve Jackson has a lot to answer for. If you don't know the name, he used to do 'choose your own adventure' books: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain; City of Thieves; Deathtrap Dungeon. There were more. Many more. Those were my favorites. In a world of dwarves, elves and magic, the impossible became real.

I guess it was that last part of it that really caught me. I could be anyone. Do anything. It was a release from the chains of life, the burden of reality. The only limit was what my imagination could come up with. A hulking barbarian armed with unparalleled strength and fury. A shining knight entombed in steel, unmatched in swordplay. A crafty wizard with a plethora of spells to overcome any obstacle. Stuff your fireman, astronaught, or helicopter pilot; this was what I wanted to be.

After a while I wanted to take my friends with me on these journeys. It was the 1980s, we were teenagers, and we branched out into an RPG (Role-Playing Game) called Dragon Warriors. Now I could become that armored warrior I so admired, or the spellcaster, or any one of the other character classes available. Dragon Warriors was the go-to game throughout most of my school years, and as my game group all aged into young adults life started to get in the way of our adventuring careers.

Lucky for me my older brother was into Dungeons and Dragons. It was the grown-up version of Dragon Warriors, and the same guys that got together twice a week back then still do get together now, although only once a week. Part-time adventurers, you see, but adventurers through and through.

For those of you not in the know (er, how?), Dungeons and Dragons (or DnD, as it's affectionately known) is essentially a board game created by a genius by the name of Gary Gygax. It is now on its 5th Edition, but our group has stuck with 3.5 because a: we have invested heavily in it (ie bought all the books. I personally have nearly 40, and that's not all of them) and b: are probably too lazy to start again. I use the term board game in its broadest sense; there isn't really any pre-set board or counters, but more on that later.

One of the players is the Dungeon Master (DM), and behaves in a fashion not unlike the bald dwarf from the cartoon series. The DM is in charge of the adventure. Having drawn out a dungeon map (which essentially serves as the 'board') and populating said dungeon with all manner of beasties (from moderately over-sized rats to monstrously-sized fire-breathing dragons, depending upon the power-level of the players) who have treasure, the rest of the players (who each create their own unique 'counter' called a player character, or PC) get to explore what the DM has created. This has generated a term for PCs: kleptomaniac murder-hobos, because they wander around killing monsters, take their treasure to sell, but rarely purchase a home with their ill-gotten gains and just live in an inn.

The PCs may find themselves in a number of different situations. Maybe they have to fight a bunch of orcs, or get past a deadly trap, or try to change the mind of a merchant in the city. Success in anything is determined by dice. Lots and lots of dice. Six-sided, four-sided, twenty-sided, and many in between. Even d100's (two ten-sided dice rolled together, one for tens, one for units) when you need to know a percentile. We all have our favorite dice, and arguments have arisen because someone took someone else's dice. It's important to have the 'right dice'. You can't appreciate this very personal aspect of the game until you have played it. You wouldn't use someone else's towel, would you? There you go.

And all this is played out, largely, in the imaginations of the friends sat together around a table with pen and paper in hand (or, these days, at a laptop because we're not allowed in each other's houses at the moment - adventuring parties adapt to overcome all obstacles!) The PCs tell their DM what they want their characters to do, and the DM tells that player what dice roll is required to achieve it, if any.

However, to make things more dynamic, and to return to the idea that this is a board game, the DM has a sheet upon which he or she can draw the map of the dungeon they created. The sheet is covered by squares approximately an inch across, representing a space 5ft square. This outlines rooms, passages, secret doors, locations of traps, and anything else the PCs encounter to scale of the PC counters. To represent the PCs' counters, upon this map are placed FIGURES (I heard your excited gasp. You can't hide it.)

Figures are 25mm or larger models made up of one or more pieces. Usually, character figures are single-piece models and the larger monsters, ogres, giants, dragons, require assembly. The earlier models used to be made out of lead, but nowadays plastic and resin are safer options. Most require painting, and this is a skill in its own right. Ever tried dotting the pupil of an eye three millimeters across? It's not easy. I don't know how many times I ended up with a cross-eyed hero. Having done many figures in many years, I tend to do a lot better these days.

I have many more hand-painted figures. Cases full. Not all of them have large swords, honest. I have figures from different manufacturers; Citadel Miniatures, Games Workshop, Wizards of the Coast, Ral Partha, to name a few. My mum used to call them metal-mickeys, probably because at the time there was a TV show of the same name. Most of the older figures can fetch quite a few bob on Ebay now. I like to paint with a brush with bristles, as opposed to an airbrush. I have never tried airbrushing, though I have seen the results of the use of such tools from friends with much better skill than I and wouldn't mind having a go with one. Just to see what it's like.

Of course, with things how they are at the moment, figures are kept in boxes. While there is something eminently satisfying when the DM leans over the table and lays on its side the figure representing the bad guy, we aren't allowed to do it. As mentioned before, we now play online across a platform called Roll20. While it will never totally match the fun involved in getting together with your mates round a table and throwing dice - actually throwing real dice with your hands - it's actually pretty cool.

So we have PCs travelling through dungeons full of monsters, but where do these dungeons exist?

There are many 'worlds' - or campaign settings - on offer, but the more regularly visited ones are: Forgotten Realms (where the renegade dark elf, Drizzt, originated, written by R. A. Salvatore), Eberron (by Keith Baker, and my current campaign setting), Krynn (from the Dragonlance stories by Weiss and Hickman). I have spent time adventuring in each of these worlds, using one DnD system or another, and as either player or DM I have loved - and continue to love - every single minute of it. I cannot imagine a world without dungeons, dragons, or Dungeons and Dragons.

And when I cannot play DnD, I write DnD. Not in any official capacity, but I am currently embroiled on a fantasy trilogy I have called The Runechild Saga.

I started this story many moons ago, and it's first incarnation was a single book that I printed on A4 paper. What a rush that was. To actually hold what I had written in my hands. I proof read it, intending to send it to agencies and publishes, but thought, "What if I did this?" and, "I should just add that", and many other edits. That tiny manuscript has now spread to become three books. Quite large ones, I feel, but please consider that I have spent the last twenty-five years writing these books.

It wasn't all easy. Sometimes I could stare at the monitor for hours and have only half a page to show for it. It's very frustrating when you have these moments, and you can't let them get to you. Writing a book is like anything else: you have to have constant activity or it just STOPS. Nobody is going to write it for you. If you play computer games, if you build houses, the only way to get that achievement, or to complete that wall, is to repeat the action that started you off. Shoot the other players. Lay another brick. WRITE ANOTHER LINE. Anything. It doesn't matter whether it's immediately useful. It might lead to ideas that are immediately useful. It might lead to ideas that lead to other stories in other books. Just write something. Most of the plots in my books came from fragments of other bits that I wrote. I knew where I wanted the characters to be, so if I couldn't think up how they got there I wrote about something else, like what they did when they got there. By doing that, and having things happen to them, I got ideas of how they got there to have those things happen to them. Then it got easy, and I would sometimes bash out three or four chapters of stuff. It was like the words were already written down and I was just making them visible. Strangely enough, it all linked up and made absolute sense (to me, anyway). I would read the passages later and literally be amazed that I managed to come up with it at all.

The first two books are available on Amazon, and I hope to have the third - maybe not final - installment out for Xmas. Though this remains a fragile hope, for I still have to work full time - life gets in the way, as always, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Now having a real, published book in hand is something else. I have contributed to the world's culture. These items will exist long after I have gone. The books are self-published and may never be best-sellers, and if I get a fraction of Harry Potter's fame I would be very happy. Irrespective of my success with my stories, I have created something that will be FOREVER. They cannot be unwritten. There is a sense of achievement attached to that sentimentality that can never be equaled.

And it's all because of D and D and metal mickeys.