Recently I rediscovered the wonders of fantasy role playing games. I bought the Pathfinder Beginner Box on a whim at Christmas, remembering fondly my years of playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid. There’s something deeply appealing about role playing games. They are, at their heart, a form of collective story telling. The characters and the tales created through the game rarely fail to fire the imagination.
I spent a good portion of my childhood playing D&D. We played the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set as a family game around the kitchen table. My dad was the Dungeon Master for that first campaign. My mom was a thief, my brother a wizard, and I was a fighter. In the years that followed, I spent hours lying on the floor making detailed dungeon maps on pads of graph paper, reading the books, studying tables, copying artwork, and playing long rambling adventures with my brother, filled with deadly monsters, secret doors, and fabulous treasures.
In those early days, I didn’t know much about crafting stories (or the undead for that matter), but years of working on the craft have made writing and running adventures that much more exciting and fun. I’m currently working on a 12 part full-blown campaign featuring characters of already storied proportions. The first installment, “Shadow of the Necromancer”, is finished and play-tested. The fist section of the second installment, “The Great Goblin Invasion”, is written and we’ll be playing it this weekend. Polish up your polyhedral dice. I can’t wait!
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