I hesitate to label myself a D&D nerd, or a role playing game fanatic. I hardly fit the stereotype. Yet that first encounter with D&D is still very memorable. It was a magical moment. As a six year old I listened, fully enthralled, as Eric described our characters making their way up a stony forest path, stumbling into a trap and set upon by goblins. Eric was ruthless as a dungeon master. Within minutes all of our characters lay dead on the hard, cold ground. His dad, Uncle Dick, made the oft-hand comment that Eric should take it easy on kids as young as us. I don't recall a stitch of who or what our characters were, but to a six year old, the scene Eric painted was better than any movie or storybook. There was that narrow path littered with rocks, a dark and cloud filled sky, a biting wind carrying dry leaves and scattered rain drops into our faces, and a forest of bare trees with the winter closing in.
Eric and his family lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. At the time we lived in Spearfish, South Dakota. On that long car drive home we played D&D for hours on end. We had no rule books or dice, just paper, a pencil, and our imaginations. We tore paper into little scraps and numbered them from 1 to 20. This served as our dice. We would take turns being the dungeon master, whose main job was to draw simple cave maps. There would be a few winding tunnels connecting several caverns, each of which had a monster living in it. Because my twin brother and I had an awful fear of spiders at the time, giant spiders featured prominently among our very small cast of monsters. One cavern would always hold a chest full of treasure, but our main goal seemed to be to kill the giant spider. The characters we created on that car ride were always simple fighter/warrior types. I guess they had two or three statistics - hit points, armor class, and the damage that a sword or dagger might deal. Once we arrived back home in Spearfish, we only played D&D a few more times. Our Mom bought us (or found us) a used rule book, and helped us read through it and create characters. This is the now famous (among role playing circles at least) Holmes Basic rule book published in 1977. We were mostly absorbed by the book's equipment lists, perhaps because our supply of weapons and armor had been so limited on that car drive.
As I said, we only played a few more sessions of D&D at that time. Our parents kept our lives full of activities: hiking in Spearfish Canyon or Lookout Mountain, exploring old gold mines and mills, riding bikes, skiing, soccer, a wide assortment of art projects (my Dad is an art professor), plus getting dragged to all manner of folk dance gatherings, foreign exchange student gatherings, art faculty meetings, and so on. Left to our own devices, our favorite activities were to explore vacant lots, throw rocks, play in the dirt, and hunt for insects, reptiles and frogs. With all of this helping us grow up big and strong, who needed D&D?
One memory that always floats back to me on a breeze is the sound of my Mom's voice calling us home to dinner; "Tor, Leif, Soren." Tor is my older brother by two years. Leif is my twin brother, older by six minutes. Being the youngest, my name was always last to be called. This is when we were youngsters living in Spearfish, meandering around our neighborhood as the evening came on. "Tor, Leif, Soren. Time to eat dinner." Mom's voice was loud and clear, but always came from far away. I love the sound of that call.
Also in Spearfish, everyday at 6:00pm the fire station would sound the alarm. You could hear it anywhere in town. We always knew when it was 6:00pm.
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