Getting "Out There"

This is going to be quick and disjointed. I have some ideas for some deeper pieces come up here in the future, but I wanted to get this down because I think it’s important.

This weekend I took my family out for the Friday night. We stayed in a hotel that was a little…misleading in the advert. It actually turned out to be something more like what Tom Waits might describe, and the “pool” was about as big as a hot tub. The kids weren’t too happy, but we made the best of it, and then we went to The Sentry Box the next morning, the “biggest game store in the world” as I was on the hunt for a Castles and Crusades book, which I didn’t end up finding.

While there I decided to peruse the rest of the RPG books. They have…a lot. Everything from GURPS to Rifts to Traveller to Cy Borg (Which was 70 fucking bucks for a little hardcover…aye carumba.) loads of novels, and miniatures, wargames, boardgames, etc. Sentry Box is the prime location here for all this shit, and it seldom disappoints.

But while I was hanging out in that aisle, a fella there who was poking through D&D books noted how much there was to look at and we struck up a conversation. He was there with his daughter, probably a pre-teen or teen like my own daughter, and she was looking at a Tiamat figure. He was telling me about how he ran a D&D group at his high school for about 25 kids across several different campaigns, and mentioned one his players was a metagamer, the worst kind, who knew all the stat blocks in the Monster Manual and expected teach to abide by those constructs.

I showed him books like the Creature Codex, which contain a lot of unique monsters and said “if you grab something like this, write the stat blocks down, and don’t let him know where you got ‘em.” I should have added another trick in my arsenal, which is to take a stat block and just create a new monster around it so that players don’t know what the fuck they’re dealing with. At this point, if I play with anyone who has even a remote bit of experience with the game, I don’t use creature books as anything but a reference, and typically make everything up myself. But that is a lot of work, and probably not practically for a guy who is not only a teacher, but is also running several games at any given time.

We chatted a bit about the hobby, and then my kids got antsy so we left. But it kind of illuminated something important to me - there is a big world out there. More than ever, you have tons of people interested in D&D. And the best place to find them is probably shops such as Sentry Box.

I have talked before about my anxiety issues and agoraphobia. I haven’t gotten into hypochondria, or other mental afflictions I’ve developed over six years of being sick and in hospitals and clinics, but I have been more on top of addressing these issues lately because frankly, I need to get back to work. And the tech industry is unkind to people who are away from it for any amount of time. As a hobbyist I have luckily collected enough junk that I’ve been able to squeek by without any financial support, but those coffers are running dry. So I have been forcing myself to get out there more and do uncomfortable things to try and beat this through exposure.

This conversation didn’t last more than ten or fifteen minutes, but it’s always nice to talk shop with someone out in the wild. When these things pop up naturally they have a different feel then in an online space. It’s not remotely the same as interacting with people face to face, and I love that this guy is bringing the hobby to a bunch of youth and showing them the ropes. It pays to just get out there sometimes.

Speaking of “out there”, the giant beaver in AD&D might be one of my favorite creatures in the Monster Manual. We went to Boston Pizza for lunch and about two hours later I got hit by what I can only describe as a knife in my small bowel, so I had plenty of time to sit in silence and reflect on life. It happened to be the nearest piece of reading material I could find at the time.

I love beavers. I used to go down to Fish Creek early in the morning, around 5 A.M. because there were a family of them there, and I would just hang out and watch them. I am known partially for my love of beavers. They are God’s greatest creature, foul as they are interesting, and the ambassador of the Canadian peoples. They cover their own fur in ass oil as a sealant. We could all be so resourceful.

In AD&D they are also intelligent. And they will trade things for gold with players. I’m so enamored with the giant beaver that it has made me rethink my entire game setting. I know this sounds ridiculous. I was initially modeling the primary areas of it after England, but I think it’s time someone did Canada justice. We have deep, endless boreal forests. Prairies, deserts, mountains, oceans. People talk about representation and inclusion in D&D and I am on board with their assertion - we need more beaver representation. Moose bites can also be pretti nasti if Monty Python has taught me anything. This is the second post in two posts I’ve mentioned moose, but it’s only because I saw a lot of moose when I was young. Where I lived, getting killed by a moose slamming into the front of your truck on the highway was a very real problem.

Why the fuck hasn’t anyone I’ve played with run a game with giant beavers? What did I do to deserve this?

Don’t answer that, actually. It’s not important.