D&D and a Fixed Washer

The two most noteworthy, or at least uncommon, events of my week were that I played D&D twice (instead of once) and that my washing machine has finally been fixed after being broken for 65 days.

I first began playing the classic RPG game D&D (AD&D 1st Edition) in the early 1980s with a bunch of guys from work. We would get together about once a month at the house of whomever was serving as DM at the time. A single campaign could take over a year. When I moved about 1,000 miles away to take a new job, I had to stop playing. This was over 20 years ago, in the dark ages before high speed internet. But a couple years ago, some members of my old group (who had never stopped playing and were now, like me, all retired) talked about playing online using something called Roll20. It sounded like fun, and we’ve been playing about once a week ever since. Last week we played twice because, due to schedule conflicts, we can’t all virtually meet next week. This isn’t momentous news, but my life has become pleasantly dull, and this fell outside the norm.

The big news is that my washer is working again. The two new bullet points for the week were:

• DAY 61 (June 6^th) I receive an email from Whirlpool (MainCorr@whirlpool.com) apologizing for “for any delays in responding” but not for selling me an unreliable appliance that was clearly not designed to be repairable. In fact, they don’t directly answer any of the question I posed in my May 30^th email but instead simply repeat that “The manufacturer’s warranty is for repair and not replacement, return or refund.”
• DAY 65 (June 10^th) A repairman from Fields Service arrives at 2:00 pm. He’s the same guy who was here a month ago (May 19^th). The back of his small service van is full of boxes. He tells me all of them are for the repair of my washer. About two hours later, he tells me he’s finished, telling me he replaced every part of the washer except the outer shell, door, and knobs. He says it should now work. After he leaves, I throw in a load of whites, mostly towels, to check. It seems to work, but somehow I remain wary.

I also finished reading books 9 and 10 of the Skulduggery Pleasant series. Both were enjoyable. Pretty dull stuff, I know, but I’m tying to post something weekly, and I really don’t want to fill my blog with rantings about politics or religion or stuff like that. There’s more than enough of that kind of thing elsewhere.

Book Review – The Adventure Tournament by Nicholas Andrews

Title: The Adventure Tournament
Author: Nicholas Andrews
Publisher: Stray Pubishing
First Published: 2011
Genre: Fantasy Adventure

This is a Dungeons and Dragons type fantasy with a team of adventurers competing with others to overcome monsters in a series of contest events. A unifying thread of political intrigue and even a touch of romance provide the plot.

The heroes are likeable and the bad guys have motives beyond just wanting to take over the world (Mwa-ha-ha). The name of place where the story begins, Foeny Balognia, adds to the sense of comic adventure, letting the reader know this is not to be taken too seriously. There is nothing deep about this— no cultural satire or philosophical insights, but the prose, editing, pacing, and other technical details are done well, making for an enjoyable, light read.

My only issue is that serendipitous events, such as finding a ladder or a jar laying around just when such things would come in handy, or happening to be on the right rooftop that just happens to collapse at the right time, strained my ability to suspend disbelief. Other than that, this is a fine story. I can recommend it.

Dungeons and Dragons

I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for several years both as a Player Character and as a Dungeon Master.  The influence of AD&D on my writing cannot be overstated.  As a player I learned that the part of the game that was the most fun was actually playing the character, becoming the character, interacting with the fictional world that the Dungeon Master created not as I would as myself but as my character would based on their personality, knowledge, and background.  You could play the game by just knowing the mechanics, like what roll on a twenty sided die you needed to hit armor class two with a long sword, but it was far more fun if you had a history and unique personality for your character and allowed that character to emerge.  As a Dungeon Master AD&D helped me, actually forced me to develop a believable world with which players could interact and an interesting story for them to become a part of.  The first AD&D character I ever rolled up features prominently in my Warden novels (although the spelling of the name has changed) and a few others are there too with or without name changes.  If any of the folks in my old AD&D group (The Mutants of the Round Table) ever read these (assuming they’re ever published) please let me know if you recognize them.  I’d love to hear from you.