Origin Story

In the summer of 1985 I woke up. You could also say that I became self aware, I came online, I self realized, the light bulb was turned on. I was 9 years old at the time and before that I think I was running on my pre-installed programming. Be a kid, play with trucks, splash in puddles, skip stones. I was happy enough as a child with a few exceptions so it was no great trauma that jolted me into being, but an awakening to what was possible.

I come from a series of small towns, we never lived anywhere with a population over 4 digits. In the early 80’s it felt even smaller. My parents split the year before and we moved around quite a bit, though always in the same small town area. I had a couple friends but at that age and before the connection of technology they were not a major part of my world. I spent large chunks of time alone as a result, drawing or playing with my action figures. I had an advanced reading level but normally didn’t find anything of interest in our school library. I recall being told to look in the section where the librarians had “books for boys” set aside. To this day I still am not sure why they would have segregated books by gender stereotypes. Pages upon pages of trucks and hunting and sports and construction. I had no interest in these, they didn’t feel exciting enough. So most of my time was spent internalizing, imagining other worlds and drawing the inhabitants of those realms or placing my He-Man and Captain America figures on adventures of my own creation.

That summer in 1985 I was on a kick of drawing anthropomorphic animal characters and more specifically all of their equipment. What sort of armor they might have, the weapon they liked to use. Backpacks, goggles, helmets, walking sticks. I would create a character and imagine where they came from and what sort of life they would live. I had notebooks full of animal people; tigers, dogs, wolves, eagles. I knew all of them, what they were like, what witty phrases they would use and who their allies and enemies were. At the time we lived in town on a small side street in a one bedroom home. My mother, my little brother and myself. I was entertaining myself with my drawings when my mother introduced a teenage boy as our babysitter for the evening. His name was Shawn and he was the son of my mother’s close friend. I had a fairly rocky history with babysitters, I had a habit of rebellion and didn’t like new people telling me what to do. Shawn seemed content to watch TV and ignore me though so that suited me just fine and I stayed with my drawings. My mother and her friend went out for the evening, they were avid dancers, and by full dark my little brother was fast asleep. Shawn continued to watch TV and I was drawing a wolf warrior with a curved sword.

“That kind of looks like it could be from D&D” he said as he glanced over. I was slightly annoyed he was peeking at my notebook but also intrigued by something that was similar to my work.

I had never heard of Dungeons & Dragons before and the acronym meant nothing to me.

“What is D&D?” I asked, my natural curiosity strong even then. To his credit Shawn did not treat me as a dumb kid that was out of the loop and I have been grateful for that everyday since.

“Dungeons & Dragons, it’s a game where you make up a character and pretend to do stuff like kill monsters and go on quests. Wizards, fighters, stuff like that.” Shawn explained as his eyes drifted back to the television.

I remember that moment, that exact second. The light came on in my head, I woke up. I have memories as early as 3 or 4 years of age, but everything before that moment feels incomplete or as if seen from a distance. I spent the next few hours grilling poor Shawn about every aspect of this new world he had opened up for me. I learned there were books full of rules and illustrations, manuals full of strange beasts and dangers. It incorporated drawing and imagination, playing a game, going on an adventure and creating worlds of your own.

The next day I sat down and drew a map of a fantasy forest, trails, dangers, names of specific clearings and little illustrations of the faery folk and monsters that lived there. Every milton bradley board game we owned was raided and I stole each six sided die I could find. Finally I created a character, a nimble elf warrior with a swift blade; I was ready to play. I stumbled a bit at that point, I was missing a critical component that Shawn had described as necessary; friends to play with. My closest friend then and now was Ryan, he lived across town but we often rode our bikes to each other's houses. I couldn’t wait to show my new map, the game I had imagined from scraps, the character. I was delighted to find that Ryan had also heard of D&D, his oldest brother played and had all the books. We spent days and then weeks playing our version of the game, it’s rules were very fluid and suited what we needed at the time. Soon enough though our eager young minds wanted more and this time it was Marc, the older brother that supplied the needed momentum. He gave us the basic books and a single set of old beat up dice. A treasure beyond measure.

The next decade was dominated by role playing games. We always gravitated to D&D but we tried our hands at anything we could get. Our circle of friends grew and our adventures became more and more complex, sophisticated, and meaningful. I found that there were fantasy novels all about Dungeons and Dragons and from there the wide library of fantasy and fiction opened up for me. My love of reading was born of my love of role playing. The memories I built in those games and in the books I was reading formed the bedrock of my young life and shaped who I would become as an adult.

I have ridden dragons over coastal cities of magic and wonder. I was a vampire prince of the city of Chicago. I have stalked the streets of a mega-city as a cyber enhanced samurai. I remember driving my dust covered hot rod through a dystopian apocalypse, searching for raiders. Piloting giant futuristic mechs and tunneling under dwarven strongholds, sailing pirate infested waters and gliding through cyberspace to defeat their intrusion countermeasures. These are the layers upon which I built myself, created my character.

My origin started with a small spark, finding out that my imagination was an outlet, that other people shared my passion. I still play games to this day, building fantasy worlds and filling them with imaginary people. Each story is one more part of my character, each memory I craft just as important as the ones that happen in this world.