The Story of Josh Part Thirty Two … “Roll for Initiative Bitches!”
We are sitting on the beach drinking orange juice and vodka. The Bearded Therapist is in a good mood, he has asked me to come back east with him and visit his home and his family. I ask him if that isn’t a conflict of interest. He nearly dies laughing as chokes out,
“Have you forgotten I’m not actually a doctor?”
I laughed sheepishly and took another drink … then I began to talk.
This is a therapy session and as always the doctor (even if he is a fraud) is in.
My first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) occurred when I was about five. I was spending the night with my Maternal Grandfather and his new family and my step uncle Bert asked me if I wanted to play a game.
I practically idolized my uncle Bert when I was a kid and if he asked me if I wanted to shave cats with safety scissors I would have given it try. Of course this worship didn’t stop me from running him over with a go-cart when I was trying out his homemade track in one of the farms fallow fields.
And worshiping him didn’t mean he was the smartest guy in the room. At his Brother Ernie’s birthday party one year we had a scavenger hunt and one of the items was a ducks feather. That year that had been raising ducks and the section of the barn where they lived was carpeted in feathers. We could have harvested a hundred in thirty seconds and avoided the evil fucking ducks. But to Bert this was not in the spirit of the game and he approached one of the bigger ducks. With the rest of on his team looking on he jerked a feather from the ducks tail.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
The duck swelled up, spread his wings, and then it screamed. I swear to god I had no idea that ducks could scream. It charged Bert and proceeded to bite the shit out of him as he was paralyzed with shock. That was bad enough but his anger was more than enough to rile up the other ducks that then began to flock and attempt to attack our group. There was no loyalty or cohesion amongst us and we fled with an “every man for himself” mentality. The chaos continued until we escaped the barn and sought refuge in the house.
Like I said, not that smart.
So that night we sat down at the bar that was the centerpiece of their living room and Bert brought out these books with the most amazing covers. They were decorated with monsters and warriors. I was enthralled. That night I rolled up my first character and played my first game.
I was hooked.
My mother bought me the first of many boxed sets of D&D (the classic red box) not long after that and I began to craft my own adventures and draw my own maps. I could go on and on how D&D changed me, how it expanded my imagination and allowed me to sculpt my own worlds. It would be more than fair to say that D&D helped create the writer that I have become. I collected books when I could, I watched the television show like an acolyte, and I had the toys … fuck I wish I still had the toys, especially my Nightmare Figure.
But it was only a couple of years before I left D&D as my Role Playing Game (RPG) of choice. I wrote the following in 2006 when it looked like Palladium Books was going to go out of business.
I considered editing this because upon rereading it made my teeth hurt. But these essays are about the truth and this was the truth about how I felt in April of 2006. RPG’s have always been important to me and that hasn’t changed despite the experiences I have had in the industry, and because of them. Some of the best people I have ever known have been met around a table as we slung dice and killed dragons.
With the exception of some work related crap that is no longer relevant in my life I have only had one negative reaction to my love of RPG’s. But fuck it was a dozy.
I was always kind of close with my extended pool of cousins on my mom’s side of the family when I was a kid. Most of them were and still are very religious but back then I still loved Jesus and enjoyed things like vacation bible school in the summer. But after I moved in with my grandparents and my life became more and more Kafkaesque I began to question everything and think for myself.
My grandfather was in the union and every couple of moths they would have a fish fry to raise money. I always volunteered to help with the fry so that I could go for free. During one fish fry I was working the drink station, really just changing tanks as they came empty. I was plugging along when one of my cousins, let’s call her Lisa, that I had always been very close to as a child came up to me. She was, and I suppose still is, about twelve years older than me. She proceeded to berate me for playing RPG’s and tell me that I was going to go to hell if I didn’t stop.
Yet another example of “Not very smart”.
An interesting postscript to that little encounter, I know that she went to my mom before she confronted me directly and mom laughed in her face. My mom has always supported my hobbies even if she never understood my fascination. When we lived in Saline she would type up my characters on her Smith Corona electric typewriter (that’s right electric fucking typewriter, it even had a little digital display where you could type out a few hundred words to make sure they were right before the mechanism imprinted them on paper) whenever I wanted her to. She was pretty cool like that.
The Bearded non-therapist asks me if my cousin was born that dumb or did she learn it and I laugh, it’s not really that far from the truth.
And I believe that is all of the time that we have today.
“Have you forgotten I’m not actually a doctor?”
I laughed sheepishly and took another drink … then I began to talk.
This is a therapy session and as always the doctor (even if he is a fraud) is in.
My first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) occurred when I was about five. I was spending the night with my Maternal Grandfather and his new family and my step uncle Bert asked me if I wanted to play a game.
I practically idolized my uncle Bert when I was a kid and if he asked me if I wanted to shave cats with safety scissors I would have given it try. Of course this worship didn’t stop me from running him over with a go-cart when I was trying out his homemade track in one of the farms fallow fields.
And worshiping him didn’t mean he was the smartest guy in the room. At his Brother Ernie’s birthday party one year we had a scavenger hunt and one of the items was a ducks feather. That year that had been raising ducks and the section of the barn where they lived was carpeted in feathers. We could have harvested a hundred in thirty seconds and avoided the evil fucking ducks. But to Bert this was not in the spirit of the game and he approached one of the bigger ducks. With the rest of on his team looking on he jerked a feather from the ducks tail.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
The duck swelled up, spread his wings, and then it screamed. I swear to god I had no idea that ducks could scream. It charged Bert and proceeded to bite the shit out of him as he was paralyzed with shock. That was bad enough but his anger was more than enough to rile up the other ducks that then began to flock and attempt to attack our group. There was no loyalty or cohesion amongst us and we fled with an “every man for himself” mentality. The chaos continued until we escaped the barn and sought refuge in the house.
Like I said, not that smart.
So that night we sat down at the bar that was the centerpiece of their living room and Bert brought out these books with the most amazing covers. They were decorated with monsters and warriors. I was enthralled. That night I rolled up my first character and played my first game.
I was hooked.
My mother bought me the first of many boxed sets of D&D (the classic red box) not long after that and I began to craft my own adventures and draw my own maps. I could go on and on how D&D changed me, how it expanded my imagination and allowed me to sculpt my own worlds. It would be more than fair to say that D&D helped create the writer that I have become. I collected books when I could, I watched the television show like an acolyte, and I had the toys … fuck I wish I still had the toys, especially my Nightmare Figure.
But it was only a couple of years before I left D&D as my Role Playing Game (RPG) of choice. I wrote the following in 2006 when it looked like Palladium Books was going to go out of business.
“I feel as if I have been kicked in the gut.
Palladium has been one of the few constants in a life that has not always been happy or safe.
In 1983, when I was 6 or 7 my Stepfather got me my first copy of PFRPG because he knew I loved D&D. I was hooked in 10 minutes. I have run hundreds of campaigns and thousands of "One Off's" over the years.
My home was broken early and my father was a raging alcoholic and my mother was a prescription drug addict. My little brother and I spent my lonely and scary nights when we were left home alone all night, becoming heroic elves super powered heroes and eventually those awesome Ninja Turtles!
As I got older and, thank the gods ~yours and mine~ we moved in with my grandparents with our new baby brother. It was there that my dark and moody preteen self discovered After the Bomb and I still say to this day that it changed my life. My love of the post-apocalyptic genre and survival against the odds grew from this game. I still run it to this day.
I got a little older and moved in with my now sober father and my stepmother who barely tolerated me and my "stupid games". Robotech was my game of choice, until Rifts.
Rifts inspired me and caused me to flex my creative muscle to a degree that I thought impossible. It made me a writer and a dreamer.
I got a little older and moved to Dayton Ohio after graduation to return to the only loving home I had ever known, with my grandparents.
For a few years I ran some pickup games and read all the books that came out. When I was married in 1996 and was blessed with 3 wonderful stepchildren and then 2 more of my own I saw in them the same love of games and fantasy in their eyes that I am sure once shined in mine.
My children dabbled in games for several years, and my oldest read my books voraciously.
Last January it all changed and I began running my wife, my kids, my baby brother, and several of our friends into a game that has flourished till this day.
To put it very simply, Palladium has spent 23 years of my life making me HAPPY!
I considered editing this because upon rereading it made my teeth hurt. But these essays are about the truth and this was the truth about how I felt in April of 2006. RPG’s have always been important to me and that hasn’t changed despite the experiences I have had in the industry, and because of them. Some of the best people I have ever known have been met around a table as we slung dice and killed dragons.
With the exception of some work related crap that is no longer relevant in my life I have only had one negative reaction to my love of RPG’s. But fuck it was a dozy.
I was always kind of close with my extended pool of cousins on my mom’s side of the family when I was a kid. Most of them were and still are very religious but back then I still loved Jesus and enjoyed things like vacation bible school in the summer. But after I moved in with my grandparents and my life became more and more Kafkaesque I began to question everything and think for myself.
My grandfather was in the union and every couple of moths they would have a fish fry to raise money. I always volunteered to help with the fry so that I could go for free. During one fish fry I was working the drink station, really just changing tanks as they came empty. I was plugging along when one of my cousins, let’s call her Lisa, that I had always been very close to as a child came up to me. She was, and I suppose still is, about twelve years older than me. She proceeded to berate me for playing RPG’s and tell me that I was going to go to hell if I didn’t stop.
Yet another example of “Not very smart”.
An interesting postscript to that little encounter, I know that she went to my mom before she confronted me directly and mom laughed in her face. My mom has always supported my hobbies even if she never understood my fascination. When we lived in Saline she would type up my characters on her Smith Corona electric typewriter (that’s right electric fucking typewriter, it even had a little digital display where you could type out a few hundred words to make sure they were right before the mechanism imprinted them on paper) whenever I wanted her to. She was pretty cool like that.
The Bearded non-therapist asks me if my cousin was born that dumb or did she learn it and I laugh, it’s not really that far from the truth.
And I believe that is all of the time that we have today.
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