Dungeons and Dragons was God's gift to me

I believe every person should give role playing a chance.  Now, I'm not talking video games or weird sex acts, but if I was: I'd suggest Final Fantasy 6 for the former and I won't judge on the later.

What I'm talking about is table top, pencil and paper, old school, role playing.  Now, I know Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) isn't "old school" since it's in it's 4th edition of rules, that uses miniatures and a very simplistic video game like rule set.  I've never played 4th edition but I've read enough about the beta testing done in the Star Wars: Saga Edition to know: it sounds fantastic!

I know there are a lot of Evangelicals (Evangelicali?) out there that believe DnD is the devil wrapped in a nice candy coat.  I could say the same about American Idol, or actually candies coated in candy (MnM's I'm talking to YOU!).  However, I will say this: DnD never made me get into witch craft.  I got into witch craft because I thought it could bring me power.  It didn't bring me anything, because magic should be left to those like David Copperfield, David Blane (who may be the devil), or this guy.  I never said magic was fake, because it's not.  I've seen magic in the eyes of a toddler who sees someone dressed as Cinderella and believes that person is Cinderella.  That's real magic.  Witch craft isn't that, it's about being selfish, but I digress.

DnD never made me want to own swords (Braveheart did that), nor did it make me want to dress up in armor and beat people up with real weapons (seeing medieval reenactment did that), nor did it make we want to kill a dragon (seriously, if they were real, who would want to kill one?!).  It did make me use my mind, it did make me be imaginative, and it made me think outside the box that sits in the corner filled with boredom.  I created worlds, and filled those worlds with people, who lived, who did things, who were all constantly moving, and even though it sounds crazy, my players loved every moment of it.

When I was six, I noticed a silver briefcase sitting in the closet of my father's train room.  I asked him about it and he showed me, and at the time I had no clue what it was, but he told me, that when I turned 10, he'd teach me about it.  I kind of kept my eye on the briefcase, never really opening it unless he wasn't home, and even then only once or twice.  Inside were some books with really cool pictures, a small wooden box with some small metal figures and some weird looking dice, and a handful of pencils.

A week after my 10th birthday, dad came into my bedroom, with the briefcase.  He gave me the smaller book, it was thinner, soft covered (compared to the three hand bound ones with the crazy pictures in them), and had the brightest red cover on it, with this awesome looking dragon on the front.  He told me to read it, a lot, and in a week we'd talk about what I learned from it.

Now, let's back track between 6 and 10 for a bit.  Dad worked around computers as far back as I can remember.  He worked around people who coded for the fun of it, and played computer games.  My first recollection of watching someone play a video game was Sierra's "King's Quest".  I had gone to work with dad, because they had a yearly family picnic and he'd take me to work with him, and around 2 we'd go to the picnic.  Those were the bests days I could remember because I was surrounded by all these cool electronic things I couldn't play with.  This was in the mid 80's.  Now, back to King's Quest.  One day, one of dad's co-workers was playing this game, and dad had a meeting he had to go to, so he asked Steve to watch me and, I quote "watch your language around him, he picks up stuff quick".  Steve was playing King's Quest, and I watched him, closely.  So closely, that years later when I would buy the collector set, I remembered what Steve had done, and it made the game much easier.  Anyway, if you've never played King's Quest, the command were very basic, and had to be point on, just about.  So, here is Steve, standing in front of the king, trying to figure out what to do next.  He's trying everything he can think of, and suddenly he's about the freak out and types "Talk to potato head!" and I loose it.  I start laughing, over and over.  That day on, I knew Steve as Potato Head.  Well, with Steve frustrated in the game, he goes "Here, try."  I did.  I learned that there are alligators in the moat around the castle.  A few years later, I watched as dad's office beat King's Quest 3, in a delightful celebration.  I also watched them take very detailed notes.  They described each screen in detail on large sheets of graph paper.  They made notes about where items were hidden, what screens to avoid, what screens the witch appeared, and the concept of those maps, the games, and the fun would ever be burned into my memory.  So, let us fast forward back to when I was 10.

Here I was, reading a starter guide to a game that I didn't need a computer to play.  All I needed was a pencil, character sheet, dice, and a dungeon master.  In this briefcase were the tools I needed to play Dungeons and Dragons, and dad, having played for some time, would be my Dungeon Master.  The week was over, and we talked about the rules, what each race and class contributed to a character, and how the adventure in the book would be my first, but I had to get to it, first.  He wouldn't just throw me into the cave, I had to find it first.  So, we rolled up my very first character, Silverblade the Human Fighter, and off we went.  I came before the king, and was told to search out for a lost relic of the kingdom.  This relic was last seen north of the kingdom, in a cave by an explorer who wasn't brave enough to stick around when things got rough.  Dad took a piece of graph paper and drew out a rough map of the kingdom and he decided to do a King's Quest style adventure, where each direction I took brought me to a new choice of direction, mainly.  My directions from the king were simple: go north to a cave, bring back the relic inside, and stay alive.  So I headed north and came to my first learning point.

On this path north, the trail forked.  One direction went north west, the other due east.  I had forgotten the fact that the king told me the cave was north, so I suddenly felt like I was aiming in the dark, so I decided to go east.  I went east, fell into a tap laid by bandits and died.  Well, I would have died, if he wasn't trying to make a point.  He told me I should make a note of every important detail the king had told me, so he routed off the king's whole speech again, and took me back to the form in the road.  North west, or east.  "The path goes north-west, though, not north." "close enough, though."  I had to think in terms of an adventurer coming back, half scared out his mind about the horrors of this cave.  He wouldn't have been like "You go up one screen, then take the north-west path..."  Lesson Learned.

I made it to the cave, made it pretty far until I reached the final room, had grabbed the Staff of King's and was about to leave when something blocked my only exit.

Between you and the archway you came through is a peculiar creature. Standing a little under three feet off the ground and from your torch light, appears to be five feet long.  It looks like an overgrown tick, but only has four, mammal-like legs, two long antennae, a bony looking shell, and a tail, that's tipped with what could be called a propeller.

I paused a moment.  I started racking my mind through the book, because I remembered the propeller from one of the pictures.  It then hit me: Rust Monster.  I may or may not have pooped myself.  He saw the fear in my eyes, and he may have grinned, I was too much worried about loosing every bit of equipment I had bought in town.  The Staff of King's was wooden so Rustie, as I named it in my mind for the moment, wasn't interested in it.

In the end, I pulled my dagger and attacked.  It was a stupid idea, but while it ate at my dagger, I bolted with the staff.  It chased after me and got a hold of my armor, which I stripped and left for it to feed off.  Luckily I had made very tight notes of my route in.  Once back at the castle, I returned the staff to the King, who repaid me for my lost armor, weapon, and then ten fold.  My story spread through the kingdom.

Now, don't get me wrong, this quest didn't happen in one sitting, it happened over a few weeks, once a week, and is one of the strongest memories I have of my dad.  Everything else is nothing, compared to these moments.  My time, playing DnD, sitting on my bed, tops everything else between us.

In my own time, I began reading through the other books.  They were the First Edition rules: player's handbook, Dungeon master guide, and Monster Manual, which had the best artwork on their covers.  These three books readied me for not only my continuing education in DnD but also readied me for middle school.

Between then and sixth grade, about a year and half, I read through those books, mainly because the game time dad and I had became far and few between.  In this time, however, I began to build for the first time.  It started with a dungeon, then the areas around the dungeon, then the towns around that, then the shops in the towns, then the people who worked in those shops, the people who ran the towns, then I ran into a small problem, I needed a king.  I had built this world, populated it, but needed someone to run it, so I built a legend into Silverblade's storyline.  I upped my character, I was sure I'd never play him again, into a myth-like person.  He was never seen, except when things were getting deep, but on the eve of a mighty war, he disappeared.  When war broke out, people began to worry about war, not myths, and his legacy nearly died off, until everything seemed to look bleak.  He then reappeared, took down the big-evil, and stood as the kingdom's new champion, ready for the throne, but it wouldn't come to pass.  He didn't believe in that kind of power.  It was then a monk, from a far off land, would visit Silverblade, seeking information about the Staff of King's but instead became very interested in the sword Silverblade had found during his adventures while war broke out in the kingdom.  Taking the sword into his hands, the monk read the inscription on the hilt, a lost language stating the wielder of sword is the true king.  Silverblade had returned with the fabled Excalibur.  The monk, on a hunch, took Silverblade to the ruins of an old castle, Camelot. A king had been crowned, and the throne had a warm body in it again.

This world would become my playground for years to come.  In sixth grade, I found a group that played DnD, at school, and through middle school, we played as much as we could.  Having so many players in our group, we decided to have two main Dungeon Masters, but my the end of 8th grade, I had been given soul responsibility.  In these three years I spent more than my fair share of time building more, creating more, and pushing my players in ways they would never forget.  Okay, maybe that last part was pure ego speaking; they've all already forgotten, I'm the lone mental one.

During these three years gave birth to two of my favorite characters: Diesel and Drake Longrock.  They were identical brothers, tall, large, wore black, and were the mercenaries hired to kill Silverblade.  I brought them in, as hired bodyguards of the king, himself, and there they plotted.  Drake was actually the bad guy, in the beginning, but I favored him, and later would change Diesel's name to Mordock, but then back to Diesel as I began to use the Longrock brothers in a book concept.  Drake was found out to have had Diesel under mind control, and was the mastermind behind the whole assassination attempt in the first place.  The players had kittens.  I was 12 when I had come up with this.

My first major operation was the following year, I was out of school for about 9 weeks, and had a lot of free time, in between school work.  I continued to create, build, and when I returned to school I unleashed a new fury upon my players.  Silverblade's wife, Mim, who was a high priestess elf, had been kidnapped by a group still loyal to Drake Longrock, who was now imprisoned.  In the final battle with the kidnappers a new evil arrived onto the scene: The Lich King: Vecna.

The name Vecna was not original, by any means.  I had taken the name from the Dungeon Master's guide.  In an appendix (Appendix J, I believe) listed a boat load of artifacts that could be fully customized for any campaign.  Two of those artifacts were named after Vecna: The Hand of Vecna, and the Eye of Vecna.  These artifacts had a small back story about a powerful wizard who had gone mad with power.  His final attempt at greatness was to become immortal, which he did (in a way) by turning himself into a creature of the darkness: an undead.  He would rule until his right hand man (pardon the pun) Kas would see the error of his own ways and struck Vecna down, scattering his body pieces.  Vecna was the bad guy, and I made him worth his weight in darkness.

Diesel, who had traveled with my gamers, sacrificed himself so the group could escape with Mim.  Diesel would never been seen again, by any players until years later.  The group mainly survived, one player's character died during the escape in a "I rolled a 1 to attack..." followed by his weapon releasing the draw bridge chain he was standing on, dropping him into lava.  This happened while battling skeletons on said draw bridge.  He rolled a 1 (on a d20) to attack, then I had him roll to 'attack' the chain, which he rolled a natural 20, which doubled his attack points, which I had him roll, a 12 on a d12, 24 points of damage to the chain, which I then decided to check the chain's strength, giving it a chance to survive, which I rolled a natural 1.  The chain snapped, and the bridge began to fall.  I had the players roll to jump.  He was the only one to miss the jump roll, and the grab roll.  The bridge had collapsed, which stopped the flow of creatures towards them.  They had the idea to do the same thing, but to wait until everyone had cleared the bridge.   Some plans go off without a hitch; theirs did not.  -  That was my last live game until after high school.

I continued to create, to build, to enjoy my time in time time of uncharted creation.  I had already birthed a world, filled it with legendary character, and seen the rise of the greatest of evils.  Now I turned my attention to the coming war, the Great War, as prophesied by the same monk who revealed Silverblade as king.  I took to the internet, chatrooms, but that never held long.  Online, players thought they should always have the last say, and many acted like brats.

After high school, a friend had seen me out, reading through my newest acquisition: a 'Tome of Magic'.  He told me he had loved playing DnD with his brothers, but they had moved out of the house, and he was always up for a dungeon crawl.

My time had come again.

It started, one weekend, with just him.  When another friend had asked what the hell we were doing.  I explained the basis of role playing, and for the first time I had to create a class: ninja.  I had seen the ninja class in magazines, and online, but I never felt it was sharp enough, so I created one from scratch.  Then there were two characters, and the ninja's pet ferret.  The ferret, whose name escapes me, was a genius addition to the small group.  I created a small character sheet for it, giving it thief-like skills, which came in handy more times than not.  Before two months had gone by, we were clocking in 12+ hour games, multiple days a week, and soon the group had grew to eight.  The max I played with at one time was twelve, which was unbearable because one of the players claimed he was a better DM and refused to follow my rulings.  So I killed his character... In his sleep...

By the time the group scattered, I had more hours played than I had in middle school.  My world had grew, new enemies were born out of need for them, but the burning to continue had risen to a feverish pitch.

It was only a year, or so, after this group disbanded that I had returned to God.  Months later, I moved out of my parents house, and then a few months after that, I began to struggle with my past.  I quested the need for role playing, and that night I got an answer on the television.  Unbeknown to me, I had misinterpreted the answer, and jumped to thrown everything I had away.

I had spent hundreds on gaming supplies, dice, books, paper, pencils, character sheets, copies, etc.  I had a lot of stuff, and some guy on TV told me it was the devil's toy, and I jumped at such an answer.  In retrospect, I think the sudden change helped me along, but now I kind of wished I had just locked it away until I was mature enough to understand the reality of what gaming is and what gaming could be.

Christian TV personalities will denounce anything mentioning magic as evil.  You mention magic, it says in the bible that witches should be stoned.  Actually, it says false prophets should be stoned, so you TV personalities need to watch what you're prophesying!

I also know the years I had, developing these worlds, characters, and what not, allowed my mind to hone itself.  If my imagination gets a little unbridled, it can be dangerous, but at the same time it can be beautiful.  God gave me this mind, these worlds in my head, and no mater how crazy that sounds, I love the ability to think on the fly.  To be able to create up details that bring forward a world of its own.

All in all, I believe it was God and my dad who gave me the chance to pursue Dungeons and Dragons.  They both molded my mind to think outside the box, and to think on the fly.  The game sharpened my abilities, and to this day I'd never trade in a moment of that time for anything.

God gives us all abilities that we waste, and knowing God is happy to see me using my imagination, makes me happy.  I'd rather use my gifts, than waste them away on useless ambitions.  If I use the gifts God gives me, for God's use, then He is joyous.  I may not have been using my gifts then, but now I can move forward and do His work with what was not mine to use.