Dungeons, Dragons and Me
When I was like 13, I bought this book called "Dungeons & Dragons, Player's Handbook". It was a game, where you and your friends play together. One of the players has the job of creating fantasy worlds, from background story to the smallest details of how hard it is to find a hole in a specific wall in a cave. This player is called "the Dungeon Master", or DM in short. Each other player has to make up an imaginary character, whether a warrior or a sorcerrer, an elf or a dwarf. Then, the group of characters are going on adventures built by the DM. The game is run with specific rules and special dices with strange number of sides for each dice (you can read more about the game here). I became a captive of the game. It gave me feelings I never knew before, so thrilling and exciting. Only writing this page now gives me the shivers.
I dove deeper into this fantasy world addiction, to a point where I even left my computer aside just to invent a new world with new stories. It became so addictive that when I was 16 I abandoned it entirely. I quit. Went through practically rehab. I had to. It was not productive and could lead me to disaster.
Throughout the years I was "doing" fantasy worlds in some form or another. Each and every time it gave me back that amazing feeling I had when I just started. Here's what I love doing:
- Art: the photo at the top of the page was done by Larry Elmore, one of my favorite artists. Fantasy exists only in our minds, and it's endless but imaginary. Fantasy art is so great because it's giving it real shape and colors. It's bringing it closer to reality. It enriches the imagination, opens our minds to new worlds and new beings. Just by browsing through the drawings of my fantasy art books, I feel like I'm drowning again in the big ocean of magical worlds.
- Books: Dragonlance is a scenery, an imaginary story of the world Krynn, invented by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman along with the rest of their group, who used to play D&D together. One day they decided to write a book about their adventures. The Dragonlance Chronicles was the first book I read entirely without taking any break. About 500 pages of the most exciting adventures. There are many fantasy books, I read lots of them, but I love most the Dragonlance series and any other book written by Weiss & Hickman. The Elmore photo above, by the way, depicts a scene from the first book in the Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy.
- Playing: Well, I don't do group D&D anymore, but I did it quite a lot as a teenager. Too bad I can't make the time for ti now.
- Games: There are fantastic PC games in this category. Curse of the Azure Bonds was the first PC game I played for days and nights without stop, since it was so.. D&D! Then came many other games, and today, one of the most successful games of all times is World of Warcraft. I also have Dragonshard and some others, but I'm afraid that if I ever return to playing these games today, I'll never leave them. And that's just not realistic.
- Movies: The early fantasy movies sucked. No other word can describe them. The first one to hit the nail on the head was Willow (1988). I can also watch the 10 hours of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy every day easily and enjoy it. Conan the Barbarian was awesome too. But when will they make the Dragonlance movie?? (yeah I know there's the new animated version, but I want a LOTR-style film).
- Writing: I really loved making up worlds, stories and adventures. When I sell enough companies so I have all the time in the world, I'm going to write a book or two. Even just for myself.