Niles

Everyone has a story inside of them. That's what my father-in-law told my wife and I shortly before he passed away. He self-published a book that we helped him put together. He banged it out on a typewriter while living aboard his fishing vessel, and I retyped the whole story in electronic format. I feel I have a story too and have always loved writing. I also had a dream to do a voiceover in animation. While I may never accomplish that, D&D allows you to tell stories and by golly, if you want to talk in character, you can. I feel I can imitate the way dwarves speak pretty well. My gaming group may say differently.

So I've been playing Fantasy Grounds for about 7 years now, with some great players. Some have left because of life commitments or schedules and some have hung in there. The players I have now I'm particularly excited about because I feel we're on the same gaming page. Teamwork defeats evil, not a one man show. I fused two campaigns together, Dragonlance and Greyhawk and also injected my own mythology into the whole mix. I've played more D&D now than I ever did in the old days. It's just not feasible to get a group around a real gaming table anymore and frankly, after using FG, it would be hard to go back to a real tabletop.

So what has transpired in the geek world from when I first discovered FG to now? Let's see...I'm anxiously awaiting the Extended Version of the Hobbit to come out on DVD. I liked the Hobbit movies but they didn't grab me like the Rings. Don't get me wrong, they're good. The entire story of the Hobbit is in there, it's just all the excess that I grew weary of. Like my friend Sam told me, he didn't need to see any more scenes of Legolas defying death and gravity, leaping from crumbling embattlements.

Star Wars Episode VII comes out this year and my ten year old son is a huge Star Wars fan. What makes the upcoming movie so exciting is that he is almost my age when I saw the first Star Wars movie (episode IV) and the new one will have the original cast in it.

I always thought Wizards of the Coast dropped the ball when they announced they were coming out with their own virtual tabletop and then didn't deliver on it. Of course the virtual table they were working on was the 4e rules (not a fan). So when they finally teamed with FG and developed 5e, I was ecstatic. 5e is back to basics and really more like the game I started playing so many years ago.

So many of the comics I read growing up have been turned in to movies. I've liked almost all of them. I'm a bigger Marvel fan than DC. The Avengers especially stands out as the best of the best.

Meat Loaf has given way to another killer band that I just can't get enough of. A friend at work played me one of their songs one night and I've been hooked ever since. Meat Loaf had epic songs, but these guys have epic songs about epic things. All their songs have a part that you always walk away singing. Beneath all the bombastic speed riffs and double bass drumming is melodic bliss and of course being a D&D player, the lyrics always grab me. So when I first heard the strains of “So far away we wait for the day, for the lives all so wasted and gone, we feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days, through the fire and the flames we carry on,” I knew I was a Dragonforce fan for life. You just can't hear their new song, "Three Hammers," and not want to grab a sword and go an freaking adventure.

And now my new gaming group is just about ready to enter the Demonweb Pits, back where we left off so many years ago. Will Lolth fling them to another world as well? Time will tell...

So there you have it. Geeks rule the world. What was so nerdy so many years ago, is the new cool. But what is it about all these geeky things that appeals to so many, and to me still, so many years down the road? I’ve thought long and hard about it and the conclusion I’ve come to is this: Every day we live, we’re one day closer to death. All these things I’ve mentioned that make up the geek puzzle of my life make me feel one way...invincible. And isn't that an epic feeling? Now, what's your story?


Excelsior!