40 Years Ago Today…

40 Years Ago Today…

 

December 25, 1981. Christmas morning in the small northern Indiana town of Chesterton.

 

A Christmas morning like many others, however, there would never again be a Christmas morning like that for me.

 

For that Christmas is the year I received the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, the “Moldvay” magenta edition. 

And my life was never the same again. 

In fact, that one single gift directed my life pretty much every day since that day.

 

I still remember opening the gift and setting it aside on the pile of other games and toys, then later that afternoon, belly filled and everyone going off to rest and recover in their own way, I sat down in the big chair in our family’s formal living room to check out that new game.

 

I’d seen it before, at several stores; I realized it was a different boxed set than the one I was used to seeing (the “Holmes” set). I’d even expressed interest in it before, but that one little book with the sacrificial victim on the cover (Eldritch Wizardry) put my mom off the idea of my ever playing such a strange game.

Little did my parents realize that this was that self-same game, in a new edition, written and illustrated in a child-friendly manner, and available at that most innocent of stores, Toys ‘R Us. I had read The Hobbit, and most of the Lord of the Rings (that part in Two Towers with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum was just soooo boring to a 12-year old…). I had consumed other fantasy and science-fiction books and movies in large quantities...

And so not recognizing it as “that game,” my parents thought that some game with a dragon on the cover would be a natural fit, and as they had a few dollars left in the budget they set for games and toys for me, they picked it up… on a whim!

 

I tore open the box, opened the book -- and never looked back.

 

I was the first kid in my age group/social cadre to get D&D, and so I of course became the first Dungeon Master of the group. Oh, the spectacular mistakes I made! Worst example – I did not understand monster hit dice at first, and just assumed that their hit dice were their hit points. So orcs had 1 hit point, ogres had 4, and red dragons had 10… monster kills were in the 100s before I figured out THAT mistake.

 

But the game was glorious fun. In January I picked up the D&D Expert Set. In rapid order thereafter I picked up modules B1 and T1, which introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the books of which I picked up at the Hallmark Books shop in Marquette Mall in Michigan City. I rapidly discovered that there were hobby shops dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons, among other things. I picked up my first issue of Dragon Magazine, #57, at B&A Hobbies, also in Michigan City, around that same time.

 

By April 1982 Dungeons & Dragons had become my life. My first non-D&D game was Gamma World 1^st Edition, which I received for my birthday that month. I also decided I wanted to design and write for Dungeons & Dragons, as I sent off a letter complete with hand-written monsters, to TSR; some months later, I received a “thank you, but” reply, my first rejection letter at age 13.

 

Needless to say, it did not stop me.

 

I was known as “That D&D Guy” in school thereafter. If I was not King of the Nerds, I was certainly somewhere on that court. I played D&D in the high school D&D Club (run by the Anatomy & Physiology teacher, Mr. Jim Strange), right up until a priest came in and convinced our principal that D&D was satanic.

 

I continued playing even when I lived in Germany for a year between high school and college; I even introduced gaming to some German friends there. I like to think that I ran some good games there, but between my half-assed German and all the beer, I never quite knew…

 

I continued playing in college. I ditched my German for Teaching program for Anthropology and Humanities, thinking that somehow that might A) be more interesting and B) help my be a better game designer, so I might get a job writing for TSR (silly me, what they wanted was designers with English degrees, to save $ on the editorial process). In graduate school I had a dual epiphany – I hated academia and I really, REALLY wanted to work in the Game Industry. Sneaking into my first Game Manufacturer’s Association Trade Show with some faked-up business cards sealed the deal.

 

From 1995 to 2012, most of my adult life was spent (WELL SPENT, so very, very well spent) working in the Game Industry. I never got paid full time to be a game designer – sadly, game designers have never been well paid, so I worked in peripheral support areas. Over the years, I worked for Wizards of the Coast, West End Games, WizKids, Chessex Distribution, Alliance Distribution, ACD Distribution, SCRYE Magazine, Comics & Games Retailer Magazine, and Chimera Hobby Shop, among others. To stay in the business I did anything I could – I worked in publishing, purchasing, marketing, advertising, public relations, sales, and warehousing – in manufacturing, distribution, and retail. I even got to do some design work, initially as a freelancer.

 

That work of which I am most proud, and which also sadly was my Waterloo, was publishing the Wilderlands of High Adventure under license from Judges Guild and working directly with Bob Bledsaw; closely followed by working on Lejendary Earth with Gary Gygax (the fruits of which died on the vine, and would never see print). I got to work with two of my greatest childhood heroes – for Bob and Gary had a stature in my heart and mind much as, say, Joe Namath or Reggie Jackson might have in the hearts of football and baseball fans.

 

It was amazing.

 

How many can say they lived their dreams?

 

All that was born on that one simple Christmas day 40 years ago. A simple box, a simple game, from which sprang forth a lifetime of amazing adventures, in the world of fantasy and in real life.

 

Life is a game. Roll some dice.

 

Merry Christmas.

[Found Treasures] Gamma World Map featuring the Yceea Campaign

I went to grad school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa from 1992 to 1994. While there I ran numerous campaigns with many gaming groups. One of these campaign was the Yceea Gamma World Campaign. This Gamma World setting had several influences. The two most prominent were from television and literature.

As one can see, the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series had a major influence, from the inclusion of a "New Chicago" arcology/mega-city in central Illinois. New Chicago, along with a dozen or more similar locations, were built by the Starmen, the Pure Strain Humans who arrived from interstellar colonies and re-colonized the irradiated Earth. The Starmen were the source of all Pure Strain Humans in this campaign, as all native humans were Mutants. PSH had spread throughout the lands, as the Starmen arrived centuries ago, had a civil war, and those who wished to live free from the kind but stifling benevolent tyranny of the City-State settled their own lands.

The other influence were novels by three authors: Donald Moffat with Crescent in the Sky and A Gathering of Stars; the excellent Budayeen Cycle by George Alec Effinger; and of course, the Horseclans series by Robert Adams, notably mentions of the Khaleefate of Zahrtogah. And so most of the Earth, or at least, the campaign area, was dominated by a vaguely Islamic-style culture, with Ahmeers and Sooltahns, Mahleeks and Khaleefs; as with the Khaleefate of Zahrtogah, rulership was usually held by those with the most potent mental mutations...

I haven't yet found any of my notes from the campaign, just this map. I hope something printed remains; all my notes were on the first computer I ever owned, complete with a dot matrix printer. I think I might have even typed up some notes on a typewriter I still owned. But almost 25 years later, it is unlikely that much else remains. I might just rebuild it from the ground up for a Mutant Future or Mutants & Mazes campaign...

Scale is 8 kilometers per hex, or about 5 miles per hex.

As usual click to embiggen...

[Gamma World/Mutant Future] New Map of Central Gamma World

So as is pretty obvious, I've been in a slump lately, creatively speaking. Other than that Outdoor Survival map I worked up two months ago, it's been... a while, since I've done anything. I'm trying to get the mind working again by futzing around with Hexographer once again. This time I've put together a Gamma World/Mutant Future/Mutants & Mazes map.

The map is loosely based on the second version of the Gamma World map included with the 2nd and 3rd edition of that game. I took the map, tilted it 30 degrees ("The war blew the world off its axis!"), and cut out the central lands to give me a base for a 30 hex tall by 50 hex wide region (with wide, wide interpretation). Then I just added bits here and there, slapped on some names, and Bob's your mutant uncle!

I have no plans on doing anything more with this map, so feel free to run with it if you want for your own campaigns. The names provided are either names of the ruined cities or of the regions; there are no names for any of the modern towns or tribal locations. Much of the West is nameless, as the tribes there are few and far between. The scale, by the way, is 30 miles per hex (more or less).

If you want the original Hexographer file or a larger PNG, just email me...

As usual, click to embiggen...