Looking Back to Move Forward

My first time was in the back of a station wagon.

It was hot, sweaty, middle of summer, sitting in the parking lot of a Kash 'N Karry grocery store. We laid out a blanket and looked at each other, unsure, none of us having had any experience with this before.

There were three of us. (Not till later would I realize that the more people there were, the better it was.) At first, it was confusing. But we took turns taking the lead, showing each other aspects of play, demonstrating - until settling back to let someone else teach us something different.

Over the next enchanting hour, we learned it took Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma to realize what an amazing rush this would give us...

And then my mom came with a full grocery cart and told us to hurry up and move those books and dice because the ice cream was melting.

D&D Basic Box Set (1977)

Of course, I'm talking about Dungeons & Dragons.

From the first moment I saw that cobalt box cover of a dragon sitting atop a pile of riches staring down a wizard and fighter at the ready, I was hooked.

I had read Tolkien's "The Hobbit" only a year before and immediately had dove into various fantasy and science fiction TV shows and movies to fuel my imaginative interests - Star Trek, Bass Rankin films, Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Robin Hood on PBS.

When we played, we played hard. Eighteen hour sessions over the summer. Sleep for six then back at it with a 1pm breakfast of soda and chips.

I DMed. My younger brother, Dave, and our friend Mike rolled three characters each. We lived in "The Keep on the Borderlands" for ages.

Characters rose in level and I purchased new modules. Scenarios increased in difficulty. I wrote scenarios and incorporated what I created to lead into other adventures I had purchased. After two summers of play, it was time to retire the party. I challenged them with "The Dancing Hut," a module in a Dragon magazine #83 featuring the deadly Baba Yaga. I altered it to give each character a special item and - in the end - ascension to godhood.

Then we rolled more characters to start anew.

Not all our play was D&D though. Sprinkled in were nights of Top Secret (a TSR spy RPG) and a little of the western-themed Boot Hill. Top that off with lengthy sessions of Avalon Hill's Dune board game and that was our summers.

But all the feelings from those times are not the best.

After time, I discovered something that would take me away from my fantasy time and into another magical realm - girls.

After that, we played D&D sparingly. My younger (but taller) brother and I played two-on-two football at a friend's house. Increasingly, I talked on the phone with friend who would be my first girlfriend. It took six months (yes, half a year!) until I had the courage to ask her out.

And then my fantasy life was consumed.

I left behind the longswords and orcs and traps and villains. I left behind the adventure and intrigue and escapism. And I left behind something even more important - my brother.

My original box set dice with a few Yahtzee d6's thrown in

With my time focused on the obsession of young love, I didn't look back. It was late-night dates and high school football games and make-out sessions in the back of a Chuck E. Cheese. I got a job at a theme park, went to college to get a B.A. in English - Creative Writing and started my first real job as a teller at a credit union.

I'd visit my brother occasionally - he served drinks at an Olive Garden - and, half the time, he was drunk behind the bar.

I didn't look back. I wrote a X-Files column for a fanzine. I tried stand-up comedy. To use my writing degree, I got a position as a reporter - then editor - for a small neighborhood newspaper. I quit to do freelance PR for small businesses and non-profits then joined a missing children's organization to write press there.

During that time, Dave got his first DUI.

When the nonprofit lost funding and I was laid off, I didn't look back. I freelanced as a writer, working for garden shop magazines, transforming press releases into staff articles. When that didn't pay the bills, my love of films led me to managing a store for Blockbuster. Then that corporation collapsed along with my eight-year live-in relationship, I moved to be closer to my parents who had retired to northeast Georgia.

Soon after that, my brother moved to here too. His girlfriend had died suddenly of complications with her blood sugar. He was devastated, drowning in sorrow and beer.

But I didn't look back. I tried stand-up again and - when that didn't feel right - took improv classes and joined a troupe for six years. I worked at Home Depot selling toilet parts, advising people on kitchen appliances and being the department manager everyone went to for help.

Old school, well read

And during that time, my brother withered from cirrhosis and died after an extended stay in the hospital. I got to say goodbye even though he was never conscious after being moved to Emory.

But I never really have let go.

I spend a lot time looking back now. I remember those carefree days - hours upon hours of summer - where our only worry was an orc ambush outside the Keep, or a devious vampire in Barovia, or a deadline looming to create an appropriate level dungeon before Mike returned to adventure with my brother and I.

I write now because I miss those times.

And because I miss Dave.

I dedicated my first DMs Guild module to him. It was the first D&D project I'd written in a long while. It felt right. And I wanted to start a blog about this process of writing adventures again after so many years and finding a way to contribute to the game that gave me so much in my youth.

This blog will be about a lot of more than that though.

It will cover inspiration, planning and creation of original work to share with likeminded people.

It will be about looking forward to a new campaign - a new campaign about oppression and death and chains.

And it will be about looking back. To past campaigns. To past summers. To chains of the past I've bound myself in.

My hope is it helps some of you in the way it has been helping me.

Don Smith is a writer who lives in Toccoa, Georgia. His DMs Guild account currently consists of a generic starter adventure for 1st-2nd level characters based in an outpost called Avarill (with plans to continue the series.) He is a fan of the online RPG show Critical Role, the writings of the late Harlan Ellison and microwaveable turkey dogs. He can be reached at his G-Mail account, dmsjr.mail.

He promises not all of his posts will be this morose.

© Donald M. Smith Jr., 2018. All rights reserved.