My friend, the floor is yours...
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When I was in the 5th or 6th grade, I remember my brother going to his first rock concert. While it was something terrible like Twisted Sister or RATT, mostly I just felt left out. I was a pretty shy kid and hadn’t made friends as quickly as my brother after we moved. My ever-thoughtful mom went out of her way to do something special with me after we dropped him off, taking me to a bookstore to buy a new book.
I’m not sure what movie or influence had come out that drew me to the Fantasy section, but that’s where I found--and became utterly obsessed with--the DragonLance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Those books led to other trilogies, and science fiction, and ultimately to a degree in Comparative Literature. But it all started with a young boy’s soap opera with elves and magic and monsters to fight.
Characters like the emo wizard Raistlin and the heroic barbarian priestess Goldmoon lit my imagination on fire. I’ve loved good characters ever since, and try to challenge myself with something new every time I create one.
A few years into my fantasy obsession, I came together with two friends and one kid’s dad as our Dungeon Master, and things got very, very interesting. I emulated Raistlin with my own Sir Deryck, a pompous and conniving magic user who probably was evil enough that he should have been booted from the group. My other character was Hobbit influenced: a halfling thief named PhoLiar who was as good and lucky as any character I’ve played. He also drank a magic potion that wasn’t meant for him and developed the ability to run at will at full warhorse speed!
I played throughout high school with a steady group of friends. We shared DM responsibilities in three different gaming systems: AD&D, Marvel Superheroes, and Gamma World. We played even when it started to cause friction with the prospects of dating. While at the time I was aware how this wasn’t what the cool kids did, it was good for me in many ways.
When I went away to college, I stopped playing abruptly. I guess I never got over how nerdy it all seemed, even though I was passionately obsessed with every detail. Even now, I can recite details from the monster manual about the Beholder and the Manticore and the Ki-rin. Always wanted to meet a Ki-rin dragon-horse.
In my early twenties, I found myself living in close proximity to my childhood bestie and we started a new two-person campaign in which my character had a fated importance in the goings-on of the world. It was great!
When that ended, I did not play again for over 20 years. Now all these years later I see kids just like us on Stranger Things and realize how cool all it actually was.
For the current game, I know the DM from Burning Man and think she’s pretty rad. When she mentioned the new game she was starting, I was intrigued to give it a go again.
Because I still love good characters, I wanted to start with an interesting disadvantage: HALF-ORC! A character immediately hated most people they meet. And since most of my favorite characters (and people!) are women, my character had to be female.
A young female half-orc then… but what was her character class?
I have played all kinds of characters, including mages, fighters, thieves, clerics, and bards, but I especially like users of magic. So the character, who quickly became known as Voola, suggested she would like to be a cleric! No, a druid! No, best yet, a dual class CLERIC-DRUID! Voola would be something like an orcish shaman following nature medicine and magic, with a deep love for animals and plants.
The new campaign started out differently than games I played in the past. The players interacted with more humor than I was used to, and also better-acted their character. I’m really digging having an all-female player group. At the last session, we joked that this should all be on TickTock because we’re hilarious. That I felt eager at the prospect shows me just how far that middle school nerd has come, and I’m excited to keep going!
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