Love means never having to make a savings throw.

My wonderful wife, over at inabottle.org, came up with the idea of having folks write an open love letter to someone and post it to her site. My wife is an extremely loving person and this is just her thing. It isn’t really my thing at all and not because I dont have real folks to express my love and admiration for. (I try to let those that I care about know it on a quasi regular basis.) It’s more that I find it hard to narrow it down.

With all of that in mind I have taken a look at who I am, and how I got here, and have decided to send an electronic Valentine to Gary Gygax. Yes the Gary Gygax that invented D&D. Yes, the Gary Gygax that recent passed away. Follow me on this one.

When I was 9 my friend Craig invited me over to his house and introduced me to D&D.  We played for 6 hours straight  and the next day I went out and bought the basic rule book at Toys R Us. Over the years playing the game introduced me to many new folks and many of them became hard and fast friends. In high school playing D&D lead to the creation of “the group” a core of people that met almost every weekend to game late in to the night. In those “The group” became my best friends and many of us have kept in touch to this day.  (Hi Byron, Hi Sue.)

While D&D has never fullfilled its sterotypical role of keeping me from getting laid, I do give it credit for keeping me from beeing a loutish, beer swilling jock. I simply had no interest in that stupid shit. I had friends to hang out with, pizza to eat, and dice to roll.

Fast forward to years later when I heard about this “SCA” thing. No, its not based on fantasy. No, its not D&D. But it is a group of people looking to escape into a world of history and pageantry.  I can honestly say that withough the D&D foundation the SCA prob would have struck me as VERY strange. As it was though I loved it and have met my beautiful wife and some of the finest people I have ever known through the Society.

Yes, I am still a D&D nerd, currently reading through the 4th edition books and looking forward to getting a game together.  Some folks at work play and others there  are getting dragged in. Oh yeah, work. The job I would not have known about if not for my wife, who I met through the SCA, that was interesting to me because of D&D…anyway, you see where this is going.

So thanks, Gary. Much love to you.  I know you did not create D&D alone but you are getting all the credit here. I hope the Mountain Dew is flowing and the dice are clattering wherever you are.

More Soon.