Elven Rangers and Dorito dust
Elven Rangers and Dorito dust
In the summer of 1995 I found Magic the Gathering. My best pal Nate and I went crazy for it. We played many, many hours against one another using just the starter sets we had. Then we managed to get our parents to take us to the west side of Madison to visit Pegasus Games. At the time, it was the only game store we knew about.
We spent our entire allowance budgets on MTG card packs with one exception - we were mesmerized by this book in the store labeled Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition: Player’s Handbook. It had a picture of some warrior type with a winged helmet holding a sword whilst riding a stallion. He seemed to be riding into some epic battle. We were immediately hooked. So, we went in halfsies on it. This would change my life, and kick off a life-long hobby.
We spent the rest of the summer playing Magic and reading the book. It was apparently the second edition of something called a “role-playing game” and at 11 and 12 years old, we were completely and utterly lost. Yet, something about it kept us reading, re-reading, and eventually we realized what a “character” was, and we rolled up a couple. We “played” a couple times, but I rightly cannot remember how those early sessions went, mostly because we still didn’t really have a grasp of how this rpg stuff was supposed to work.
Growing up in a small town in the 90s, we were already outcasts riding around on our skateboards, wearing entirely too large pants, and kicking rocks in our beat to hell skate shoes. There didn’t seem to be any hope for finding others that were interested in playing rpgs.
Fast forward to freshman year in high school. It was 1998 now, and while Magic had a minor buzz in our town followed by the Star Wars CCG, Geek culture still wasn’t the norm. High school was crazy. See, we had two religious elementary and Jr. High schools in town, and now all of these kids from those schools were in the one and only public High school with us.
In Algebra class, I overheard two really nerdy looking fellows talking about something that tickled my brain a bit. I hadn’t gone to school with them in Jr. High, so they must have come from either the Catholic or Lutheran school. Then I heard them say something that triggered my memory: Armor Class. I knew that! It was from that esoteric tome that I had read two summers back over and over again. So, I interrupted them, asked their names(Ben and Adam) and found out that they were avid fans of AD&D. They invited me to join them that Friday night.
It was the most glorious fun I had ever had. They showed me the ropes, we made characters, and played until the sun came up. I made an Elven Ranger named Silvermane. He was 3rd level, and had a magical bow that created arrows when the drawstring was pulled back, and two times a day he could command the bow to shoot what was called a “Fireball” arrow. I was able to blow two separate orc tribes to bits with him, we fought a Minotaur at some point, and by the end of the night I had leveled up to 5th level, and now had a Pegasus friend for a mount. That night changed me, and set me on this path.
I spent the rest of High school playing most weekends for hours, I’m talking 12-14 hour sessions. We would seriously play until someone could no longer stay awake. Those sessions were fueled by subway, gas station junk food, and loads of Mountain Dew. Turns out Ben’s parents had been in college in Geneva around the time Gygax started play-testing the OG game, and as a result, his family had stacks of books. Our game was a mash-up of original, basic, 1e, and 2e. We took turns being the DM without ever really preparing a standard campaign. Our combined world was a mix of Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and the ever so amazing Planescape. Trips into Barovia, Mystara, and Greyhawk happened as well. It was glorious.
When 3e dropped, of course we hopped on. By this point our group had grown by a few members, but it was always us three at the minimum, and we were the only Dungeon Masters. The game now was a hot mess of material from every edition of the game that had ever been using rules from wherever and fitting them together however we saw fit. The internet wasn’t really a thing yet, so there was no one on Reddit to tell us how wrong we were at having fun.
This time formed my view of this amazing hobby. I’m kicking my blog off with this personal history to make a singular point: Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re playing YOUR game incorrectly. There is no such thing. The most amazing part of this hobby isn’t the latest and greatest ruleset, campaign setting, or module. It isn’t proving to one another that a specific rule does this or does that. It doesn’t exist on Internet forums, YouTube, or Discord. It exists at your table, surrounded by your pals, Doritos, pizza boxes, and empty soda cans. It’s in that one saving throw that causes all of you to stand up in anticipation as if the very fabric of reality depends on how it lands. It’s in the shared memories of fantastic realities that only truly exists in those moments at the table.
My name is Rodney Nedlose, welcome to my blog.
