Well. A reintroduction is due, possibly, maybe:
A dog’s age ago, back when i was young and naive and I still thought Google really didn’t want to be evil, I set up this online space with the intent of… Well.
Before I did that, my social life had tracked the internet, more or less. In my 20s, I had no social life, save for work and my D&D group (more later), but near the age of 30, I found Usenet, and IRC, which gave me the first inklings of a social community (and helped me come out sexually as gay); from that tentative start, I got an invite to Livejournal, which expanded things considerably- it was at the time all goth girls and gay bears. Facebook ate LJ’s proverbial lunch (as well as much else that was good back then), but by then I had a family and a kid to show off, and so Facebook was fine, even if I was 20 years behind where my (straight) peers were with their families. And then there was Posterous, Twitter, Tumblr,.. and here.
I liked publicly posting bits n pieces of my life and my happenings, but family made much of it personal for all the others close to me, and so I lost the narrative that once I had. I was out socially in the physical world much more, so the personal need to connect online became distant. So I posted twice here, and then forgot about it.
Times change.
The other side of my narrative- well, the one that matters for my current intentions here, is Dungeons & Dragons. As a nerdy & somewhat socially autistic kid in the late 70s, I was smitten by the idea of RPGs even tho there was little to be found on how they actually worked in the small Utah town where I was growing up in. But I had very supportive if somewhat confused parents, and a wonderful oasis of magic in a mundane world: Marie Kaszmerick’s Bitter Creek Books, who inspired and supported many people though that grey world. I got a 1e Players Handbook and the Moldvay Basic Blue box for Christmas - TSR was pumping them out so fast that it came with cardboard chits & a coupon instead of dice. It was enough; by high school I had started a regular RPG gamers club after hours, with the wary approval of the faculty; even as we played, some of the first D&D is Satanic trials were ongoing in western Utah. We persevered and played on.
College in Phoenix, and i started a new group and drew out huge world maps using scotch tape and hex paper; after graduation, my gang went to California while I went back to Utah, to help deal with a family death, but two years later they flew me out, so that we could game again. While there, i aspired to find a good job and get on with life, and eventually this I did; my first home was in California was found as one of my group’s realtor’s wife played D&D, and thus thought I’d be a good fit in the room that they rented.
So my 20s were a steady job and D&D games with my college friends and my landlord’s group. It was steady, but as i said above, by the time 30 came close, i was keen to change. My 30s were a whirl in San Francisco during the first dot com boom; the games grew further and farther apart. By my 40s I’d met the love of my life, decided to have a kid together, and moved to Texas; i tried a few games of the current fashion (3rd edition, 3.5, Pathfinder, & 4e), but i was distinctly unimpressed, and I despaired of playing again.
Then, while wandering a local comic shop in Austin, I stumbled across a copy of Mad Mage. It looked fun. So I started a new group, and we played until i moved to New Mexico, and when the shutdown started, I polled around online and started several VTT tables: Dragonhiest and Mad Mage, Tomb of Annihilation, and my own homebrew Korredigan. I played other games online too: DCC, & Ryuutama, Forbidden Lands & Numenera. And I delved deep into the weblogs of old about the OSR renascence, and of the many other games around and about, and of the growth and diversity of 5th edition. This time, the hooks were set deep.
So here, and now: I am nearing 60, yet RPGs in general and D&D in particular are still very important to me. I currently run two tables alternating on Wednesdays, and on alt Mondays my old gaming group from California gather online to explore the depths of Undermountain. On alt Saturdays i run a Numenera campaign for a local group, and I aspire to start a mythic OSR style campaign soon. That last one, is the reason why I wrote all of this. #Dungeon23 has been a thing for most of the year, but now I have something to write about.
Hopefully anyways- we shall see.
