About the Mule: A Mission Statement, and Introduction

When I was introduced to D&D in 1979, it was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I was 13, and the world seemed vast and colorful, full of surprises. D&D had floated into my consciousness gradually; I'd heard of it, but had no clue as to where to find it, or, really, to even know what it was, exactly. Where I lived was a rural town becoming suburban, and hobby shops and bookstores were few and far between. Besides, I wasn't even sure what I would be looking for.

So it was like a bolt from the blue when a kid at school showed up with the Monster Manual. I didn't even know the kid, really, but I borrowed the book and took it home that night. I wasn't in the habit of borrowing anything, but this was too intriguing to pass by. That night, I was immersed in the book. I couldn't quite glean how to play the game using this book, but I knew I wanted to. I dutifully, and gratefully, returned the book the next day. That was my introduction to D&D "in the flesh," so to speak, and I was hooked.

Thinking back, it strikes me as odd that I never ended up gaming with the guy from whom I borrowed the Monster Manual. In fact, today I have no clue who it was, his name lost in the mists of time. I wonder if he stuck with it.

My imagination thus fired, I tried to figure out how to actually play. I had none of the books, and just a glimpse at this strange bestiary. I sat down and tried to recreate the monsters I'd seen in the Monster Manual, listing out all the creatures I knew from my already-ingrained love of mythology, fantasy, and science fiction. I thought I could divine the answers to my questions by doing so. That project soon proved fruitless. It was like back-engineering the Roswell saucer.

Luckily, I fell in with a few classmates who were similarly intrigued. Those early days were chaotic. What we started out playing was what would eventually be called Holmes Edition D&D. We tried to make sense of how the Monster Manual and the succeeding hardback books  - the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide - fit in. It wasn't long before we abandoned Holmes Edition and moved on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, embodied in those accumulated hardbacks. Oddly enough, though, I wouldn't get my very own copy of Holmes Edition until late 1979 or early 1980.

While each of us eventually had our own books, acquired at different times, it took me an agonizingly long time to get copies of my own. I finally got my hands on all three, completing the trilogy by early 1980. Still, by the end of 1979 we were playing full-on AD&D, or as close to it as we could get. Toss in some of the miscellaneous games we stumbled on then, from the Wild West of Boot Hill to the nutty post-apocalypse of Gamma World to the decidedly different "hard" scifi of Traveller, and it was an eventful introduction to roleplaying games. 

Let me swerve aside to mourn for the unmourned for a moment: I miss the late and apparently little-lamented Waldenbooks. That bookstore, the only one I had regular access to due to its presence on a mall that my parents were willing to frequent, opened up such a vista of learning and enjoyment for me. That was where I managed to lay hands on those three hardback D&D books, as well as many of the adventures, known then almost always as modules. A family-owned bookstore, the late and, around here, more lamented Baluk's, also became a conduit to further D&D books and, eventually, Dragon Magazine, as well as other games - it's where I found Traveller. But Waldenbooks was a stalwart part of my book-loving life for many years. And while it eventually succumbed to larger and more successful chains, for a while it could, and did, exist without also driving all the indie bookstores out of business.

Those early years had me scouring the bookstores and hobby shops I could get to, looking for whatever next book or module that would appear out of seemingly nowhere. I don't know who ordered the gaming stuff in these places, or what their method was. Looking back, it was pretty random. D&D exploded in popularity, so TSR's official material for the game was usually a sure bet to find. But more importantly, the game encouraged one's own creativity. The books became more inspiration for homebrewed material than holy writ to be adhered to.

So, now, this blog. Motivated by nostalgia for all of the above, as well as the advent of a new and widely-praised edition of D&D, I thought I'd jump into the D&D blogosphere. As the subtitle above says, this will consist of ruminations, as well as the exploration of memories and a few new ideas here and there. Why, as it also says above, "Old School"? Because that's a style of play I like, an era of gaming I look back on fondly. However, "Old School" means something different to everyone, and I'd like to try to define it for myself here, to perhaps grasp what it was that still appeals to me. Oh, sure, there's a ton of nostalgia involved. I know that. But there's something about fragile player characters, hog-nosed orcs, life-energy-draining undead, ten-foot poles, and (of course) pack mules, all inhabiting a dark and mysterious underworld, that fires my imagination more than almost any other game milieu. My intent here is to think back on what "Old School" is to me, and why I have that idea of what it is, and why it differs from that of others. But more on that later.