I love Dungeons and Dragons.
Does that make me a huge nerd? I guess that depends on what you think a 'nerd' is...
Is it 'uncool' to roll an 18 on your lucky d20 then hit for max damage, finishing off a Main Bad Guy's minion on an attack of opportunity before he reached your lightly-defended sorcerer that's using you as a meat shield? Because that feels awesome.
Is it a nerd-crime to spend an entire two-hour gaming session slowly realizing that the boisterous tavern you and your buddies have entered is a high elf gay bar? Because that s**t is unforgettable.
Am I doomed to live in my parents' basement for the rest of eternity, because of the time that my party found out the main baddie was a mind flayer and I —not my character— felt a fleeting moment of genuine terror? (My Will Save was quite low, you see, but beyond that...)
These are the moments every DnD gamer lives for. Sure, there's treasure hoards, magic weapons and smokin' hot gnomish babes. There's guilt-free killin', item quests and the dopamine-fueled high you get from advancing a level.
But all those things are present in Diablo 2 and WoW. DnD has something that even these well-designed video games lack.
I love DnD even when my Lawful Good players act like Kleptomaniac Aragorns.
I love DnD even when my player-killer DM traps eight of us in a five-foot tunnell against a beholder that automatically hits with all ten rays every round and is immune to his own anti-magic cone.
I love DnD when one of my players' characters with an intelligence score of 10 somehow has an encyclopedic knowledge of the secret weaknesses of every monster in MM5.
I love it because DnD offers something that Diablo and WoW and even Baldur's Gate simply can't.
The characters.
The characters are the engine that drives all roleplaying games. In real life I'm a mild-mannered, overworked new dad with an old pickup truck and an unhealthy obsession with hockey. I have a few copper pieces, a disobedient two year-old minion and a Wisdom score that somehow gets lower the older I get.
But for two hours every week, all that changes.
Ever negotiated with a green dragon for your freedom? Ever peered helplessly into a magical mist, not knowing if there's a creature out there waiting for you? Ever tried to charm your way into the Blood Duke's daughter's well-guarded bedchamber?
Ever done any of those things in Diablo 2?
Look, now that I'm a married dad in my mid-30s—as are most of my friends—it takes a complex system of babysitters, promises to multiple wives and plenty of shifting work schedules to even play one session of DnD.
So a year ago I did the next-best thing: I wrote a book. A dark fantasy novel in which I could play around with all my favorite DnD characters over the decades, in the most bad-ass settings and facing down the most impossible-to-kill enemies.
I wrote about my favorite DnD character I've ever played: Steed, the charming, sociopathic barbarian, a natural leader and unabashed sexual deviant with a mouth that gets him into trouble at the worst possible times...
I wrote about the DnD character I was in college: Ash, the single-minded, righteous paladin-wanna-be who's religious devotion and stubborn idea that he knows exactly how the world works is about to be shattered by his first taste of the Real World...
I wrote about the DnD character I was in my teens: Simon, the bookish, socially awkward wizard who believes he can find the truth of things in books...
I've included NPCs that talk and act and make mistakes like real, actual human beings. Large-scale battle scenes that don't have the cavalry charging over the hill at the last second to save the day. A system of magic that (I don't think) has ever been explored in fantasy before.
And naturally, I've included an over-the-top sex scene when you least expect it. My wife had some awkward questions about that one. And my daughter's not allowed to read it until she turns 37. Maybe not even then, unless she brushes her teeth and eats her vegetables every day for the next 35 years.
I never wanted to be a writer, but—as it turns out—I love writing epic fantasy. And I never would have even attempted it without Dungeons and Dragons.
