I am what the kids these days might refer to as a “Grognard”, which is a fancy way of saying “I’ve been rolling dice since before you were a gleam in your DM’s eye.” I’ve been wrapped up in role-playing games for most of my life, starting in the fall of 1982.

I was 8 years old, freshly minted in the fourth grade in the tiny town of Milledgeville, IL — a small Midwestern outpost with more churches than gas stations, barber shops, and grocery stores combined. Trendy it was not; even the Satanic Panic arrived on delay, like a TV broadcast from another planet.

Some enterprising middle school kid was selling half-scorched survivors of a book burning. Capitalism truly finds a way. Among the smoldering spoils was a copy of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, heroically missing its front cover. My allowance back then was a princely 75 cents, and I spent every last coin on that flayed and slightly crispy volume, which smelled faintly of accelerant for weeks. It was, technically, my first cursed magic item.

I remember reading it at the dining room table, surrounded by wood paneling and chestnut upholstery. Most of my memories of the 1980s are just different shades of brown, like someone turned down the saturation on the whole decade. My mother eyed this battered tome, wider than my shoulders, flipped through it, and observed, “This doesn’t have a lot of pictures.” She was right, of course. It was a wall of rules in dense two-column text, a sans-serif fortress of nerd-dom.

I grabbed it back, flipped a few pages, and made my impassioned, utterly sincere plea: “But Mom, it has tables!”

And oh, did it have tables!

The idea that you could make your own fiction, your own Hobbit, but with your own characters and your own disasters with your friends was a revelation. It quietly set some of the base rules for my life. I learned I’d rather cooperate than command… though sometimes someone has to be party leader. I’d rather build a story than bluff one, but occasionally I’m the only one at the table with the words ready.

Some of my best friendships were rolled up between encounters and initiative checks. Every August, my vacation is Gen Con: four days of playing and running games with people who also think “What’s your armor class?” is a perfectly reasonable way to start a conversation. My urge to tell and craft stories keeps pushing me forward, even when the inspiration check comes up low.

I want to share my stories and misadventures, and maybe slip in a little advice for those who aren’t quite full Grognard yet, but are definitely on the multiclass track.

– William “LegendaryBill” Balvanz