Hilarity: Conan the Musical

Has anyone seen this yet?

Somewhere, Robert E. Howard weeps...

So many blogs...

...so little...time? Attention span? Whatever...

Seriously, though...I've been exploring the blogs I like to read most often (see the "Scroll of Honor" in the sidebar), and I've been clicking on the lists of blogs that those people follow...and it was pretty much Alice in Wonderland time after that! I mean, how deep does the gaming blog rabbit hole go, man?! I guess it's just the old man in me that's shocked at the sheer seeming endlessness of the blogosphere...actually, just this specific part of the blogosphere! These are just the ramblings of a dude born in the 70s and whose first exposure to a web browser was good old Mosaic.

Carry on...

The Definition of Epic?

I was just over at Black Gate, a great blog for the magazine of the same name that you should definitely be reading (both the blog and the magazine). I read a post about Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series that shocked me. I can't believe that monster is almost finished! The last book in the series, The Crippled God, will be published early in 2011. I remember reading this review at SFSite years ago—OVER A DECADE AGO!—about a book you couldn't get in the US that was supposedly something totally new in the realm of fantasy fiction. And according to that long-ago review, Erikson had been working on Gardens of the Moon, the first book, for six years! So that takes us way back into the olden days of the early 1990s, folks! Unbelievable!

Anyway, it seems like two people at Tor are going to be re-reading the ENTIRE Malazan series and blogging their efforts (similar to what another person has been doing for the Wheel of Time series). Good luck and god speed to those intrepid souls! I've read Gardens of the Moon, and have the next four books in the series sitting on my bookshelf. I'm so intimidated by those bricks, they sit there and mock me, daring me to read their thousands of pages!

Whether or not you like Erikson's work, it has to be admitted that his books are truly a monumental achievement of epic fantasy literature. When stood up against the books of would-be fantasy masters Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, and the late Robert Jordan, I think many will agree that Erikson comes out on top for sheer scope of vision and the simple daring of attempting such a massive effort. Brooks may have published more books, and the books of Jordan and especially Goodkind may be just as thick as Erikson's, but I don't think they can match the magnitude of the Malazan series.

I have to admit that I'm very divided about Erikson's series. I have to admire him for his tenacity, and the fact that he has delivered on a promise to write ten books in his main series (there are several offshoot books written by Erikson and collaborator Ian Cameron Esslemont). He's nearly finished, making the authors of other (incomplete) series that are supposed to be "epic" fantasy look somewhat pitiful. This "crazy" Canadian guy (apologies to James at Grognardia ;-) has (somewhat) quietly taken the epic crown. BUT, when I consider trying to read his books, with their huge page counts and multitudes of characters and plotlines, I get a little wobbly in the knees. I picture myself as an old man finishing the last book and falling over dead. Sorry, I can be melodramatic (how strange for a roleplayer ;-).

Anyway, that's enough of my jibber jabber for now. In the meantime, I'd love for anyone and everyone to chime in about their thoughts on the Malazan series.

Artists: Larry Elmore

I've already mentioned here that Dragonlance is among those works that are at the root of my love of fantasy fiction (yes, yes, many eyes are still rolling at that fact, no doubt). Therefore, it's only logical that I love the artwork of Larry Elmore, whose work graced many Dragonlance novel covers and other published materials. Just looking at any of his art always fills me with a yearning to return to the gaming table.

I pose this question to you who may be reading: what artist or artists inspire you, fuel your yen to game?

Trog Days of Summer

I'm depressed.

Well, the holiday weekend is over. Back to work (what I affectionately call-as a marketing writer at my company-the "word mine"). And I don't think I've gotten much traffic on the blog as of yet! Logically I know it's to be expected, having just created the thing last week. But I was so looking forward to some comments on my last post. Oh well, blog and learn. Hopefully I'll get some more readers sometime soon. At any rate, I'm staring at a busy week this week, so it might take me a while to post the second installment of my gamer's testimonial. I know the zero to three people who are reading this blog are anxiously awaiting that ;-)

Well, that's all for now. I'll check in again when my overlords allow me a respite from toil.

What was your Gateway?

Hi again, to whoever may be reading this blog at this point. OMUtB is only a couple of days old, but I've gotten some nibbles from the blog community, so I am feeling encouraged! I have hope that I will be able to get someone to read this thing!

So, I made a promise to myself that I would try to post at least once every day (we'll see how that holds up), and since I don't think the second part of my self-indulgent testimonial will be ready today, I wanted to ask a question or two, to perhaps generate some conversation amongst those few who may be reading.

So, here goes:

In the first part of my testimonial that I've posted, I talk about how the reading of a specific book introduced me to fantasy fiction, and was also instrumental in my plunging into D&D. So I ask you:

What book, or books if you can't pinpoint one, was your gateway to fantasy literature? And I guess, by extension, let us know if this book/books also had something to do with your entry into the gaming world.

Now, I guess I don't necessarily have to limit this to just fantasy books/gaming. If you perhaps are a fan of, say, horror novels, what got you into that genre, and did it eventually lead to your getting into some kind of related gaming?

Sorry if I seem scattered...it's getting close to three-day-weekend time for me. And I haven't had my afternoon victuals yet, so the blood sugar is plummeting.

Anyway, I would love to hear from you! I probably won't post again until tomorrow (I hope), so until then, happy Friday and enjoy the holiday!

I, Gamer: A Testimonial in Three Parts (1)

PART THE FIRST: Portrait of the Gamer as a Young Man (Ages 13 to 19)

So, in reading many gaming blogs recently, I’ve seen several authors give accounts of their personal RPG journeys. Therefore, unoriginal and potentially boring as it may be, I think I will do the same. This is really more for my own benefit, when it comes down to it. I’m trying to codify my own gaming history to get some perspective, etc.

Here goes nothing:

My mother was into a strict Baptist thing when I was very young, and she therefore saw fit to indoctrinate me, her imaginative and bookish son, into said sect. Suffice to say that as I neared the teenage years and the subject of Dungeons & Dragons came up, she and the preachers at the church went all hellfire and brimstone and denounced it as a tool of the Devil. And of course, I was given the infamous Jack Chick tract.

And the smear campaign worked…for a while. Yes, for a while I was very VERY scared of Dungeons & Dragons, and how the game could supposedly lead my immortal soul into the clutches of Satan himself.

Oh, brother. Well, he who isn’t naïve as a child is a rare bird indeed, and much poorer for it.

But as time went on, certain elements within me conspired to eliminate my fears. First was the obligatory teenage rebelliousness. Second was my inexhaustible imagination, curiosity, and innate open-mindedness, fueled by devouring many books over the years (much to the chagrin of my blue-collar father and my macho older brother). And third was my best friend at the time, Pat, who happened to possess several Dungeons & Dragons books (I believe they were the 1E AD&D books with the revised covers). Pat was a Catholic, also, and I think the Catholic priests were much less rigorous than their Protestant cousins in their denouncement of Dungeons & Dragons.

Around the time that Pat was showing me D&D (this was the late 80s, around '87 or '88), I also discovered a book called Stormblade, a novel in the Dragonlance world (I’ve read/heard some controversy surrounding the supposedly “negative” influence of Dragonlance and other “shared worlds” on D&D, but that’s a discussion for another time).

Stormblade was a revelation for me. Something about the fantasy genre intrigued me like nothing else before. I had heretofore been mostly a fan of Star Wars and science fiction, but it felt like destiny for me to read that Dragonlance book. I had come home, arrived at my preferred genre. Here was an accessible story that appealed to the sense of adventure and escapism that I craved. The fact that it was derived from a Dungeons & Dragons game world only furthered my interest in the game. Of course all this was before the stigma of “gaming fiction” versus the works of the likes of Howard and Tolkien. Conan and Middle Earth were things I had heard of, but hadn’t delved into as of yet. And I’d never even heard of Jack Vance or Fritz Leiber at that point.

(I know there’s someone out there reading this that is really balking at the fact that a Dragonlance novel was my first real experience with fantasy fiction. Hey, no one’s perfect…)

Back to the game itself. So, after reading Stormblade and having listened to Pat’s rave reviews of D&D, I finally decided that I didn’t believe it was evil anymore. At this time I also had a budding desire to be a writer of fiction someday in the hazy future of adulthood. And therefore the shared storytelling aspect of D&D was also a great draw to me. I wanted in.

I started out as a player, creating characters to play in games where Pat was the Dungeon Master. But as time went on I grew ever more eager to take the reins, devise stories and characters, weave my own legends of valor for my friends to experience.

That was the golden age, a span of a roughly two years (13 to 15) when everything was new. I can see us around the gaming table in Pat’s room…me and Pat and our friends Jay, Dan, and Pat’s younger brother Sean. We spent hours upon hours poring over the D&D tomes in our possession. Whole weekends were devoted to the adventures we faced. We didn’t worry about rules, or the fact that none of our campaigns ever really had conclusions (or that said campaigns lasted no more than a month or two). We started fresh so many times and had a blast every time.

But time ground on inexorably, as it does. And our attentions were drawn further and further away from D&D as we journeyed through the teens. The distractions of high school drama, girls, and other pastimes like video games (which were getting better and better than the old Atari stuff we played when we were really young) and plain old TV ate up precious time (how we squandered it! Youth is truly wasted on the young!).

Between ages 15 and 19 D&D would rise and fall among our group in fits and starts. By my senior year in high school we had started playing D&D with two guys who were from the neighborhood but we hadn’t really been friends with. But we thought it would be a good idea to bring some new blood to the table. As it turns out, that really wasn’t a good idea.

These two had a very aggressive style of play that focused on player characters as just above the level of villains. They were fond of playing drow elves, for the most part. And they introduced us to the concept of the anti-paladin…which never made sense to me. I mean, isn’t a paladin of an evil deity still just called a paladin? Suffice to say that these two guys were “munchkins,” “roll-players," and “min-maxers” to the Nth degree. But since we didn’t know those terms, or they didn’t exist yet, we just called them “a-holes.”

But somehow we got roped in to their antics. And our roleplaying lives suffered for it. Specifically the D&D roleplaying we were still doing. We began arguing over rules, getting angry at bad dice rolls…all of the behaviors that reveal the fact that the pastime was no longer fun.

From 15 to 19 we had also branched out from D&D to explore other RPGs. We as a group became primarily entrenched in the Palladium game system. We played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninjas & Superspies, Heroes Unlimited, and finally Rifts. All of which served also pull us further and further away from the grandfather of all roleplaying games. We slowly began to disrespect our elders, so to speak, and an insidious disdain for D&D crept into our hearts. We began to see it as a kid’s game, in a way, and looked to other games like the Palladium offerings for a more “adult” experience.

By the time high school came to a close, we also turned our focus on the impending higher education experience. To which I was looking forward with great anticipation, having finally been freed from the prison of high school. True to dorky form, I had been tormented for my bookish ways for four years (except for some grudging respect I temporarily garnered for playing on the football team in 10th grade).

By the time I was 19, all roleplaying fell to the wayside. I spent the summer before starting college in sort of a vision quest of self realization. I was full of youthful fire, thinking existential thoughts and plumbing the depths of philosophy with a few close friends. I was an embryonic adult, and had no time for games. I was preparing to come out of my cocoon, to read “real Literature” (there was no doubt I would be an English major in college, my mind firmly set on the certainty of becoming a published author someday). I still loved to read fantasy literature, but was content to use that, rather than a D&D campaign, as my avenue of escape from the trials of life. And I was also determined to really develop a social life beyond the friends of my childhood and teenage years.

For the moment, I had left the gaming table behind…

Continued in Part Two!