First Love
DMG Original Cover (1979)
I will always return to sword & sorcery.
Ever since cracking that first edition of D&D and rolling up some hack-and-slash monstrosity, I was consumed. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t realize that my fate had been sealed just yet. This was only the first wave of the fantasy assault which would shape me.
So, I wax colored polyhedral dice and dabbled with power gaming for a brief time. Beholders feared me. Illithid feared me. Even Demogorgon himself was no match for my pre-teen omnipotence. Then, I set this novel new game aside for a time and followed the fickle fancy of youth elsewhere. A decade would pass before I would find my way back to the allure of tabletop roleplaying.
My older brother had just finished reading The Sword of Shannara (1977) by Terry Brooks. His recommendation and my own budding interest in fiction beyond comic books were enough encouragement to try tackling this tome. With over 700 pages! An abridged Webster’s seemed less daunting.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of journeying with Shea, Menion, Allanon and the bunch, I envy you the opportunity to do so. Brooks has an enchanting ability to weave multiple story lines together with nail biting chapter closures. The pages fly by. So much so, that he is a go to author for me to this day. Some of the blame is his, but not all.
Lord of the Rings (1978)
The animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978) certainly played its role. I can see so many of those vintage images with poignant clarity, Boromir’s death scene, the battle with the Balrog and the haunting Ringwraiths. I still sing this little ditty more often than I care to admit.
Are you singing it now too? You’re welcome.
The final formative element to this love affair was the computer game Wizardry (1981). I was fortunate enough to have access to potent technology of the era, and I of course chose to spend countless hours dungeon crawling and mapping. Oh my god the mapping! Those of you who have crawled this path with me will remember the graph paper with a shadowy fondness. I still dream of it from time to time. Curse you Sir-Tech.
There are other elements to my gamer inside, comics and horror and sci-fi and holocaust and growing up in the arcade generation. Many of which I will explore here with fervor. Know this though, whether I dabble in a zombie apocalypse or digress into a Magic the Gathering montage, my wanderings will always find their way back to the beginning, to sword & sorcery.
That’s the magic of first love. That’s the heart of Sworded Tales.