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Niles

Confessions of a 50 Year Old Dungeons and Dragons Player Part V

Rating: 5 votes, 4.20 average.
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!

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Updated July 21st, 2015 at 08:03 by Niles

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Comments

  1. The Rouse's Avatar
    Hi Niles,

    Great story! Never did I think I would find a post that was about both DnD and Meatloaf! Like you years ago, I also am just coming back to a hobby that had come and gone during my life. This time with my 11 year old daughter right next to me. We saw the starter set at Walmart and she asked me if I knew what it was. I explained to her how this had been my favorite hobby and explained what roleplaying is. Her face lit up, so we bought it and are playing the mines if phandelver with her sister. I'm also introducing some coworkers who are mmo gamers to the game. That's how I found Fantasy Grounds.

    I enjoyed the parallels of your story with my own. I look forward to reading more of your blog and becoming active in the community.

    Thank you for sharing your journey!
  2. Wrayyth's Avatar
    Perhaps I should tell my story, playing since 81. DMing across most genre since 83. Our stories are the Same yet oh so different. He was right, we all have a story inside us. Some of us have many.
  3. LordEntrails's Avatar
    Did you guys ever make it into the Demonweb Pits? Do tell!
  4. Wrayyth's Avatar
    I did, twice. Sadly, I did not succeed in either case.... One character was lost to the mists and the other died at the hands of a female and male couple of white dragons... It spelled the doom of the group because i was playing the only healer.... Oddly enough, it was the efforts with the giants that i enjoyed most....
  5. Niles's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails
    Did you guys ever make it into the Demonweb Pits? Do tell!
    We made it to the Pits and defeated Lolth, but since we played Dragonlance first, I decided to teleport them back to the past to play out their beginnings in Greyhawk, after battling Takhisis. When they reached Lolth, they defeated her but they also got flung back to Krynn again. So I had created this "time loop", where each time they were teleported either from Krynn to Greyhawk or vise versa, they lost their memories. After they defeated her, for the end game scenario, she flung them through the portal to Krynn, but this time, I brought them right outside her palace in the Pits where they were met by Fizban. He told them they had been stuck in this time loop for 10,000 years and the only way to break the time loop was to let Lolth win. Even though the group couldn't see the logic in the moment, the group either trusted Fizban and sacrificed themselves or fought bravely but were defeated anyway. But they were rewarded. Loth flung their bodies to a world called Earth at the beginning of this world's time, where they were resurrected by Fizban. As a reward for having fought Lolth for the last 10,000 years, they were given immortal bodies. As time progressed and the modern era dawned, they evolved in to the Avengers (my favorite superhero group). What else are our D&D groups but medieval super heroes?

    The logic of letting Lolth win was that no one besides my group would ever come along as powerful as them and challenge her. So in having absolute power with no one to challenge her, it got rather lonely at the top. And besides she always relished their battles throughout the centuries. Leaving Greyhawk, she sought another world to devour and hopefully another group to battle. I've always loved the old TSR old school modules, but I always loved making the stories my own even better!
    Updated January 27th, 2017 at 04:31 by Niles
  6. LordEntrails's Avatar
    Always best when the DM and PCs makes the stories their own, ��
  7. rob2e's Avatar
    Great stuff. Look forward to our lunch IRL on Saturday. Have you seen this? https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...AVED-)-MY-LIFE!
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