DISCLAIMER: To the untrained eye, the following is akin to staring full on into the Geek Abyss. Like a metaphorical deer caught in the headlights, it looks back, startled, and bellowing at you to get the hell out of the basement and shut the door, it has friends over, they’re busy. But has the pizza guy shown up yet?

Fair warning that this will ping the Geek Meter to 12, to hell with 11. Might be best to just move along.

I had the opportunity to play D&D 4th Edition on Father’s Day. I’d preordered the the core books months ago, and they finally arrived last week, along with the first published adventure for PCs that would take them from level 1 to 3. I was very excited, despite very mixed reviews. Maybe because of the very mixed reviews.

My own background with D&D goes as far back as the Red Books that made up the Basic set. Then on to AD&D 1st edition in fourth grade, flirted briefly with 2nd ed. in high school, explored 3.0 which I played on a D&D MUSH (though never got to try it table top), and then I drifted away by the time 3.5 shipped. However many of the arguments against 4th edition were identical to the ones I remember hearing when 3.0 shipped. Then, 2nd edition AD&D was hailed as the truest, bestest D&D experience and 3.0 was just a dumbed down version for the unwashed and uneducated masses. So I’ve read as much about 4th ed. compared to 3rd.

3rd edition is the “Windows PC” to 4th edition’s “Mac.” 4th may not be as tinkerable (and thus as breakable) as 3rd, but good God is it easy for just about anybody to boot up and get something productive done, while have fun doing it.

I was the Dungeon Master. My previous experience with DMing? Nil. I’ve spent over a decade playing and running online MUSHes set in White Wolf’s WoD universe. I’m well versed in keeping a 30+ person sphere (primarily and solely WtA), juggling multiple plot lines, individual story arcs, and 15+ person combat scenes. But table top? Never ran a game before. I was nervous as all hell. The brand spanking new system certainly didn’t help. Yet, it went like butter.

It did help, I think, that I’ve also recently gotten into City of Heroes, my very first MMO. I quickly picked up on systems and approaches within 4th edition that were near identical to those within CoH. Given many reviews of 4th ed. have likened it to WoW, I’m assuming these conventions are common through out the MMO universe. Conventions like the Minion/Lieutenant/Boss tiers, handling of powers and abilities, aggro (yes, in 4th ed. there is now aggro to be had) and so on. But what others recoiled at, I thought was a brilliant embracing of modern game systems and techniques that were developed solely to enhance the game play experience in a multi-player environment. And it was simple to understand for my wife and 10 year old daughter whom had never touched a twenty sided die in their lives.

Many have criticized 4th edition’s seemingly mandatory need to utilize maps and miniatures. They cite that in previous editions, gameplay could be regulated solely to the imagination, and that 4th edition felt too much like the boardgame for an MMO. This argument perplexes me because the concept of mapping out a dungeon on graph paper is as old as D&D. The use of hex maps and miniatures or tokens has been a long established possible approach to D&D, and many of the systems and rules are written with such things in mind (ranges, movement rates, etc). One can happily eschew maps and counters in favor of handwaving or guesstimating to their heart’s content. I chose to use maps because I’d never tried this approach before. I loved it, as did my players. It made tracking action on the battlefield incredibly easy and quick, and it better allowed everyone involved to more easily understand and deploy their various powers and abilities.

For the curious, I used the poster map that was included with the adventure portfolio. While searching for something more cost effective then miniatures, I discovered the wide world of tokens. The ones in the photo come from these folks who, as promotional material for their many other fine offerings, created and released for free download, a set of tokens specifically created for this adventure. I downloaded them and then printed them out on glossy photo paper. Worked like a champ.

Lastly, many have argued that 4th ed ultimately offers up a much shallower gaming experience then any other previous edition of D&D. I disagree.

The party is made up of three adventurers. A dragonborn paladin (marked by the yellow circle on the token), a half-elf rogue (green circle) and a human cleric (orange circle). They are in the process of leaving a nearby town, traveling to investigate and resolve a threat to the town involving a number of nasty little critters called kobolds. Their first encounter, as they initially traveled to the town, saw them ambushed on the road by a number of the creatures. Upon leaving the town, fearing another ambush, they left the open road and opted to make their way through the surrounding woods, hoping to either avoid another attack or at least ruin any element of surprise. Unfortunately, they failed to spot the lurking kobolds they suspected were waiting in a bush, but luckily were not caught and surrounded on the open road. Instead, they had enough time to withdraw into a nearby clump of trees which offer some measure of cover from attack. Standing back to back to try to avoid being surrounded, though at a tactical disadvantage, they nevertheless assumed what is probably the best defensive formation for the situation, even as their foes rushed to engage them.

The red fellow on the far left is the “boss” of the group, capable of firing off nasty energy orbs from a distance, and imbuing his minions with unholy vitality. The PCs are in the process of figuring out how they might best deal with him. The two best armored of the fiendish group have effectively cornered and engaged the paladin, deducing him to be the largest threat. The two on the bottom are more lightly armored and armed skirmishers who are working to keep the rogue and cleric off balance just enough so as to allow their ‘boss’ and the better armed of their number, the ability to wear down and pick off the PCs one at a time.

And so the battle goes. Each PC assuming their various roles. The paladin functioning as the ‘big gun’ and meeting his two challengers blow for blow, while forcing their attention to remain on him for fear they may grow tired and go after easier prey. The rogue has been managing, through skill and lots of luck, to hold his own against the lighter infantry (the kobold immediately below him as been knocked prone), while the cleric (as any MMO veteran might guess), effectively ’spams’ heal spells as best as he can, working to buy the party as much time as he can. Dice were rolled with equal anticipation and dread, the players thought through possible tactics and teamwork opportunities together and good worked to once again triumph over evil.

Growing up as I did in a tiny town, geek was a generational thing.  Given a set of births over a given year, only a tiny percentage end up being dorks, and with the population set in Medicine Lodge as small as it is for a three year radius I was that geek.  D&D tables were impossible to come by as attempts to play would almost degenerate into team killing or an extended argument on what the “point” of the game was.  Being raised on save games and linear side scrollers, a game was something that was supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  The few times I was able to sucker anyone into sitting down and rolling a character, invariably the nebulous goal proved to be the campaign’s demise.  “There’s no end?” they would ask, perturbed.

“That’s kind of the idea,” I’d reply, ineloquently describing the perpetuity that really no other game could provide.  A game with no end at that young age was fascinating, as infinite as an adolescent’s comprehension of life.

In the Biblebelt, Dungeons and Dragons held a very particular mystique.  They even had comics on that shit, warning us of it as a gateway to devil worship it provided.  The occult was something that was often talked about in Sunday School, but generally unavailable where we were raised.  The sex, drugs, and heavy metal the editorial page of the local newspaper steadfastly raged against were commodities of the big city.  That kind of stuff one could only find in Wichita, the metropolis that inspired fear with the speaking of its name.  While Danzig and coke weren’t accessible until Internet access, the PBH and DMG could be picked up discreetly under the guise of being “like the Tolkien books.”  It was as close to Anton LaVey as Kansas kids were going to get, and that closeness to the devil was badass.

It wouldn’t be until college when, upon the discovery of other dorks, a real campaign could be had.  They were epic, all-night struggles on the Infinite Staircase fueled by ramen and Mountain Dew.  For nearly two years we played, the six of us played the same party taking our characters (and maybe ourselves) from the depths of n00bness to ascending as benevolent gods.  Tieflings and mind flayers, beholders and golems, and even the occasional dragon would met our party and, eventually, we would figure out a way to best those that stood in the way of our search for that something that makes dorks band together.  From those nights came the legendary stories of Larry the Fighter, the Hand of Vecna, and the devil’s inventory of magical items and gold.  Characters shifted between good and evil, between tank and dps, sawing off our own hands for the ability to do something cool.  And, in a battle with a terrasque, my favorite D&D character Aleksandr died.

By this time the five man party was all nearly 23rd level, far too powerful for our  good.  Our DM’s patience exhausted, he found the nastiest creature in the Monstrous Compendium and set us off on a five part campaign leading us unknowingly to our doom.  At the climax of a nearly eight hour dice rolling session, Aleksandr’s hit points finally hit -10, and the entire table suddenly got very very quiet.  Our cleric had already used his third resurrection of the day.  We had expended the rez stick we had relied on formerly.  There was no rule in the Player’s Handbook that could save us now; we had finally lost a character permanently.

While I wouldn’t speak for the rest of the party, it may have been the first time any real sense of mortality had struck me.   I’d nearly gotten run over by a car once before and sent my ma into hysterics.  My grandfather had a heart attack in front of me.  One cancer or another had struck frighteningly close to home, but in all the possibility of a final end had never really grokked until then at that table.  The emotional investment that we all had by then was enormous, and we were all shocked as much by the realization of our own shock than by that which was caused by Aleksandr’s death itself.  The involvement had snuck up on us; we had no idea we cared about these figments of our imagination so greatly.

The lessons of life and death as taught on a tabletop, the simple fragility of humanity manifested in unambiguous dice rolls.  The metaphor was staggering.  Sometimes, we discovered, there was no rolling your way out of what was coming to you.

It would be years later when most of us at that table would be struck by tragedy terrible and intensely personal.  When the bitter taste of reality we had in our campaign would be something we’d have to swallow to survive.  Did D&D prepare us for surviving those days?  Of course not, as nothing really can.  But did we lose a bit of our youthful innocence?  Did we become less foolhardy?  Did we slightly gain in realization of the very finite length of the relationships we cherish?

We did, I think.  And the man responsible, Gary Gygax, died yesterday.  He may be the first loss of the geek community worldwide.  We’ve lost some to tragedy and senseless accident before, but Gygax may well be the first pioneer of the games that shaped our identities to pass from natural causes.  The first of the folks that made geek what it is to die at a ripe old age with a life of accomplishment and fun.

We’re placing our flowers on the grave, in our own way.  And in a wake held around the Internet, we’re posting our favorite stories of this pastime that became for us an unexpectedly central part of our identity.  They say that the best teachers are ones that prepare students for the day when they will be gone.

It was around 1985. I was 9 going on 10. My younger sister had begun playing travel (or ’select’ depending on where you live) soccer, my father was coaching her U10 team. I’d talked my mother into bringing me to the local Waldenbooks so I could do some shopping for some reading material to keep myself busy on the trips out to this soccer game or that one. I’d already steeped myself in plenty of fantasy literature at that point ranging from devouring any and all cultural myths I could get my heads on, though the favorites were the standards, Greek, Roman, Norse. I’d read the Hobbit, and the entirety of The Prydain Chronicles, and other similar genre-specific works. And of course I was enraptured with Choose Your Own Adventure. So, I knew what I was looking for, in general. But I didn’t find it, whatever it might have been.

I walked out of the store that day not with a book, but with a box. It was a red box. Inside the box were two rule books (both red), a bunch of oddly shaped dice, and a wax crayon so one could color in the numbers on the dice. I learned about hit points and armor classes and saving throws and stats. I played through the solo tutorial where my brave Fighter attempted to come to the aid of the ill-fated Cleric who would end up being savaged by the undead. I’d discovered Dungeons and Dragons and had just been handed the keys to an imagination I didn’t know I’d had. And it was wonderful. D&D Basic (and Expert, Master then Immortal) gave way to AD&D 2.0, which itself sowed the seeds for future games like TMNT, Paranoia and the World of Darkness. Through it all there was the ever present Apple IIe or Macintosh, thanks to folks like Lord British, Sir Tech, SSI and Sierra (see! there were games for Apple machines! Lots of them!). And of course the consoles, from a Nintendo, to a Playstation, to a PS2, to a GameCube to the Wii I “bought my daughter” for this past Christmas.

Dungeons and Dragons was born a year before I was, in 1974. No other game, I think its safe to say, has been as influential to the hobby. Certainly, no other game has influenced me as deeply or as broadly. For lack of D&D, I would perhaps not have spent hours upon hours in the company of like minded friends, creating stories and building memories that we cherish to this day. For lack of D&D, Rob and I might have lacked any sort of initial common ground upon which to build a friendship when we first crossed paths four years ago. For lack of D&D, I might not have had the opportunity to try and save the world time and again with my wife (we usually fail, sorry world). For lack of D&D, I might not have the latest edition of Talisman set up on the kitchen table, paused for the moment because it’s a school night and my daughter had to go to bed.

Would gaming as we know it exist today without D&D? It’s likely, in the same way that if the Beatles had never existed, would we have still discovered and embraced the concepts they introduced and pioneered, both musically and technologically? Probably. But as with anything, there had to be a ‘first’. A Big Bang. Dungeons and Dragons was that Big Bang for the gaming world.

It is the eve of the fourth edition of D&D 34 years after the original. This is an edition that bears signs of evolution inspired by MMOs, even as those MMOs were originally inspired by it. Influence comes full circle and it seems to have paid off for players, dungeon masters, and just everybody who’s ever lived and loved with a pencil in one hand, and a d20 in the other.

Sadly, those on hand to witness its release a little later this year, will not count a very special man among their number. Gary Gygax died today, failing that final saving throw, rolling that ‘Natural 1′ that ultimately awaits each of us. In his memory however, I’m grateful that I can, in my own quiet way, thank him for all the friendships, all the memories, all the stories and all the well-spent hours that I’ve been able to enjoy gaming in any medium throughout my life. Thanks to Gary Gygax, my life has simply been that much more fun. I don’t know how to say thank you, enough.