So what is this all about again...?

I'm glad you asked.

So, here's the thing: I started playing role playing games in 1980, more or less.

It was Junior High School, and I had already learned three important lessons:

1 – Kids hate fat kids.

2 – Kids hate faggots.

3 – I was both.

I was desperate, genuinely desperate to get some manner of human contact. I didn’t leave my room, unless I could help it, where I read some basic fantasy and SF – Tom Swift, Jr. Ursula K Le Guin, some Moorcock and Howard. Add to that comics (when I could get them) and a whole bunch of scholastic and library books of all types. But reading is as solitary as masturbation, and while I did both a lot, I was still desperate for more, even if I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. My room seemed much, much safer than the rest of the world.

Then I went over to the house of some friends of my parents, and this guy, who was like three years (OMG, three years!) older than me was there, and lying on the floor drawing something.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a castle for my thief!”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, it’s part of my Dungeons and Dragons game. Wanna come and play?”

I think you know the rest.

All of a sudden, I had friends. Wellll, maybe not Stand by Me kind of friends, but people who called me and asked me to come and play, people who didn’t constantly torment and ridicule me. People who kinda valued me. I was part of a group. I wasn’t a complete loser. Well, OK, maybe that part was bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

So here I am. It’s thirty-one years later. And, once again, I am about to play D&D with a group of friends. But not just any ol’ RPG. No, I am about to start on the granddaddy of them all, Original Dungeons and Dragons. With my wife (I’m bi, before you get all confused. That counted as ‘Faggot’ in 1980.), her friends, and some new friends. So this is my blog to document my return to Dungeons and Dragons, and the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement (more on that next time).

There is going to be a real mix on this blog between my ‘real’ life (whatever that is) and the gaming stuff. If that makes you uncomfortable, no problema, amigo, go your own way. There are plenty of OSR blogs out there that are chock full of gaming content. But I am not your average gamer, your average husband, your average GM. I think about lots of stuff besides gaming, even when I am gaming. So a lot of that will wind up here. If you do stay to check me out, you’ll get to see a lot about me and my friends, maybe more than you wanted. But, I do hope that I will never be boring, and that you’ll want to continue reading. See you tomorrow.