the bone conductor

I think I spend too much time yelling at invisible people.

I don’t really have anything to add to that. Although maybe it would be wiser to wait until someone actually hires me before advertising that particular, uh… non-clinically-crazy-type, harmless and quirky in an amusing kind of way, thing… that I kind of, you know, got goin’… there.

Anyway, I just checked, any my wisdom is 8, so I might as well run with it.

Which reminds me, of course, of how surprisingly sad I am that it took his dying to make me realize how much I really owe to Gary Gygax. That Tycho kid at Penny-Arcade said it better (naturally, although I comfort myself with the knowledge that he has been practicing a bit more regularly than I have for a good long while now. That, and whiskey, is what I comfort myself with, technically), although he’s all young and stuff. I was 12 or 13, already a compulsive reader of sci-fi and Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories and most anything in the middle, having recently read TLTR for the first time - man, I was ripe for the plucking. My brother brought home the original rules set booklets (pretty sure there were three of them) from the hobby shop at the mall, Eldritch Wizardy (Baba Yaga’s Hut!) and the like, and some dice and some character sheets… and plucked I was, like a god damn E-string on Les Claypool’s bass. Or, more accurately for the time, Geddy Lee’s bass. I’d use some of the hardware from my first drum kit to help set up the play area, using the snare stand to hold the DM’s Guide for instance. That was really part of the awesomeness, setting up to play the game, building the perfect play area that 3 or 4 friends could sit around until 5 am, eating Ding Dongs and Cheetos and listening to Moving Pictures, and rocking the fire giant king’s face, getting all Vorpal on some dark elf’s ass.

By the time we were 16 or 17 and driving and stuff, we’d started making our own games, combining the overall depth and feel of AD&D with the combat system from DragonQuest and some stuff stolen from Champions, plus whatever comic book stuff we were reading then. But, you know, at a certain point when you’re 17 and have a license and, even better, another license with a somewhat different, more advantageous birthday on it (*cough*) there’s only so many nights you can devote to that. Plus we realized we were having more fun designing the rule sets and campaigns and characters than we were actually playing the game, which had already delivered a grievous injury to our enthusiasm by the time college, and everyone splitting up all over the place, killed it altogether. And, you know, since I’m ancient and stuff, I probably don’t need to mention that this was about a millenia before anything like Baldur’s Gate or NWN or any of that stuff was available (although conan on the apple ][ ruled so hard).

I still have my dice, and a few figurines, although I think I left my original set of the AD&D books at jorm’s place when we tried (with a remarkable lack of success, although the fried chicken was tasty) to play a module a few years ago. I can see the newer set of books on the shelf from here though; I picked them up when they came out a few years ago, even though I haven’t played since (outside of pc games, I mean). I guess it means that much to me, it was that important to me. How thoroughly goofy. Anyway, thanks, Mr. Gygax. Thanks for all of it.

I’ll deal with you invisible bitches later.