THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 56

Role-Playing Games have been an integral part of my life ever since before I could actually read. I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in my older friend's living room. Not even the big Godzilla Shogun Warrior toy with flicking tongue & shooting fist he had could distract me from the mystery of this imagination game. I can remember wondering if the clear plastic polyhedral dice in the crown royal bag were gemstones to play with because they didn’t look like any dice I had seen up until that point, where were the gold coins? Playing a game with pencil, paper, dice & a pile of books was completely novel to me. The books were equally mysterious & didn’t look like anything I was familiar with. I remember spotting the alluring, contrasting colors of the Erol Otus art for the 2nd edition Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set in shop windows & feeling a charge of electricity in me even though it wouldn’t be until 1985 that I bought the game in the far-more boring Red Box for myself. The idea that you could use a structure to my imagination that gave my thoughts discipline & scaffolding to build off of was tremendous. Role playing gave me a vehicle for mind over matter & the world in micro translating to the world in macro. I got addicted to the idea that I could just make up worlds & everything inside of them. That idea by itself is tremendously powerful. I have done my best to bring these things that exist in my brain into the world & not just be content with these things rattling around in my brain or on paper. These ideas are the core of the real magic I would find. I started looking for more clues to this mystery as I grew older & looked through other, older, mustier occult tomes. This is a lot of heady talk for something that’s just a game, but I’ve taken these things, even if just games, seriously.