I originally penned this article way back in 2014 for a site called, You Won Cannes. I don’t know what spurred me to write it. I can’t recall if something D&D oriented came out that year or not. Maybe it was just some random D&D related memory that popped up and took over. Well, here I am eight years later feeling the need to do an “update” of that article, hence the “Second Edition” of the title, because this time there clearly is something D&D oriented that’s urging me to do this. I’m writing this article in the wake of SDCC (San Diego Comic-Con) 2022, and guess what they debuted the trailer of? That’s right, Paramount/Hasbro’s big screen new Dungeons & Dragons movie, subtitled Honor Among Thieves that’s set to hit screens next March. Initially, I was not all that ‘whelmed’ by the trailer. I had the assumption they were going to go the more serious route, something along the lines of Lord Of The Rings, but they didn’t. However, after watching it a few more times, and a few more times through reactions on YouTube, I’m on board. I don’t want to talk too much about, for next year I hope to do a formal review of it once it hits disc, but just know, yes, I am now looking forward to seeing this adaptation. Big time.
Now, let’s get into a “rebooting” of this article, something I feel I can do better now eight years later. I have three memories of when I first bumped into this role playing game, but I can no longer remember which came first. I have a feeling though two of them, if not all of them, happened pretty close together, which is probably why I can’t tell which came first. At any rate I’m going to take a guess. Penning this article is a Gen-X’r who’s currently 53 years of age (sigh), so my experience with Dungeons & Dragons is the tried and true “paper and pencil” way of playing. I’m assuming D&D is still played with modules you can buy (do they still call them that), maps, graph paper, character sheets, a Dungeon Master overseeing everything? I also assume there’s a video game in existence now. It would be insane to think there isn’t. The early 80s is when I first discovered the game, the mid-80s is when I graduated to finally playing it, and I rediscovered the game in it’s new iteration in the early 90s, and that would be the last time I was ever into it.
But let’s first start when I discovered the game, then move on to those other two D&D chapters of my life. I think I was in sixth grade when this came into my life. Back then we had a magazine in existence called, Dynamite, made for kids, and in issue #82 there was a short article about the game.
Click photos to enlarge and read.
That photo there on the first page is how I always wanted to play the game, through the use of miniatures, and it wasn’t until high school when I started collecting D&D miniatures that I realized it wasn’t feasible, mostly due to money. Back then they were made from lead (are they still?) and came unpainted. I also had rudimentary painting skills, but managed to paint a couple of the dragons I owned rather decently. But it would take a lot of money, painting, and room to set up something like what was in that photo.
My second memory is the discovery of the game’s Monster Manual. I believe this might actually be my first encounter with the game. It happened in a hobby store. I don’t know why my mother took me and my brother to it, it wasn’t a place we routinely visit, but I think we went because we didn’t know what they sold and wanted to check it out. I came across this book on the rack called the Monster Manual. It’s been updated many times throughout the decades, but this photo below is the classic first edition! You can see a red dragon, unicorn, centaur, troll, owlbear and roper on the cover.
I’ve been into monsters since I can remember, monsters in movies, in books, in fiction, and I loved most of all finding encyclopedias on mythical monsters in the school library, and this “Monster Manual” felt like one of them. My mother bought it for me and when I got home I was perplexed by what all these statistics were next to each monster. I loved the descriptions of each, their fighting abilities, how they feed, how they hunt, etc., but these stats confused me. I remember distinctly being in sixth grade, because I often took the book to school, and showed my friends. They had no clue what those stats meant either. They eventually released a Monster Manual II and a third one, but that one was titled the Fiend Folio.
In that same grade I discovered what D&D modules were. And one specific one grabbed my attention: Queen Of The Demonweb Pits (now back in print!). We had a bookstore called, Lambs, we frequently went to. Most of the books I gravitated towards at that age were in a separate room with it’s own register. That’s where all the D&D books and modules were kept, in a cardboard standee. And this one day is when I spotted it! Below are the random images of it that burned itself into my brain!
The main reason it grabbed my attention was because of the spider woman on the cover. As a kid me and my brother were fascinated by insects and spiders and movies about them. In 1977 there was a made-for-TV movie that came along called, Curse Of The Black Widow, about a woman who transformed into a giant black widow spider and fed on random dudes. I reviewed the movie here, and the ad they ran in the TV Guide at the time also grabbed my attention. That’s when I learned of the Chinese spider woman myth touched upon in the film. I didn’t get my mother to buy the module for me, and over the next few days I became obsessed with the images on the front and back cover. That dude there hanging in the spider web was on the back cover. Eventually, she went back and bought it for me, and that’s how I got educated on Lolth, Queen Of Spiders (aka Queen Of The Demonweb Pits) and her “children” the Drow (aka Dark Elves), not to mention that creepy creation the Drider (half Drow, half spider).
At some point, either a birthday or Christmas, I got the D&D Basic Set, and eventually the Expert Set. I don’t believe I scored the Master Set until high school. From sixth grade to eighth grade I versed myself in all things D&D, by then it was AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) and I wanted to play, getting my brother and a mutual friend (Brian Hunt) interested, but for some reason I always backed out at the last minute. My main interest was being the Dungeon Master, I loved to create a story and put character(s) through it, but I guess I wasn’t quite sure how you played.
HIGH SCHOOL
For a while D&D remained in the background of my life, until a cartoon about the role playing game suddenly came into existence in 1983. It was a Saturday morning toon, back when toons were relegated to weekend mornings, and weekdays after school. The best toons were put on Saturday mornings, the substandard ones Sunday mornings. I was fourteen when D&D debuted and just entering high school. My brother and I watched it every weekend, and when VCRs became a thing and we got our first one in 1985, I began taping the show. It eventually hit disc in 2006 and I bought it. Seeing it as an adult was a tad disappointing mostly due to the 80s style animation. I watched a lot of action toons back then and not a lot of them hold up due to the now crude animation. Yet, I still own it, and will always own it mostly out of nostalgia.
When I switched high schools, spending the next three years at this new one, I met what would be my best friend for the next four years, Gerry Lee, and the first day he came up my house this particular Saturday in fall of ’84 he asked me about this role playing game he heard of called Dungeons & Dragons and was curious if I knew anything about it. I went over to the desk in my bedroom and opened the second drawer. By this time I had collected a lot of the books and basic and expert sets and showed him what I knew of it. That’s when I finally started to get serious about the game, and actually ended up playing it, mostly only with Gerry. He was the sole character I ran through my adventures, me being the DM of course. As I said I was never sure about some aspects of the game, until we ended up playing with a couple of other friends. But I wasn’t the DM for that outing. I was a character alongside Gerry and Aaron, and Aaron’s older brother was the DM, and that’s when Gerry and I learned how the mapping goes. See, I would create a map of a dungeon and set it down in front of Gerry, but how it’s really supposed to be handled is the entire map is only known to the DM, and the characters are supposed to map it out on their own on the graph paper from the DM’s description of what they’re seeing. For some reason I couldn’t comprehend that aspect until I saw it in action.
I didn’t lose interest in the game until Gerry went into the army in spring of 1988. During then his brother Toney and I started hanging out for a bit, and he mentioned he was getting into the game. I told him he could have all my stuff if he wanted. By then I had moved everything D&D related (miniatures and all) into two boxes and put them in the cellar. It felt good to give it all to someone who was just getting into it and knowing they would be put to good use.
One of the best things I can recommend to any newb getting into this game . . . it’s too bad Dragon Magazine doesn’t exist anymore. It was a mag dedicated to the game, but they covered other role playing games too. Just about every issue had amazing artwork on the covers, and the best thing I liked about it was every so often they would do a monster article, commonly titled ‘Ecology Of The Insert-Monster-Name-Here’ and the articles were insanely in-depth, more so than anything you’d find in any of the manuals. Sometime they’d even introduce new monsters. At some point they put out a couple of books collecting all the cover art from the magazine and even one that collected all the Ecologies. If you can find and afford any of the back issues these days, I recommend collecting as many as possible. I did discover a ton of issues in PDF format on the Internet Archive here!
AFTERWARDS
1991 was the last time D&D enters my life. I was dating this girl back then (Johanna May Egan) and just like what happened back in elementary school she and I were in a bookstore (can’t remember if it was one at the mall or a local one) when I come upon a NEW Monster Manual. It was 1989 when D&D rebooted itself yet again with a 2nd Edition, and with that reboot came a very cool Monster Manual binder (see below). I had money enough for the binder, but the perforated pages were sold separately. I collected as many as a could, but as you can tell by the thickness of it, this binder was designed to hold a plethora of monster facts and stats. I can’t be sure but I feel I may have re-bought a basic edition too, because I also have this vague memory of getting Johanna interested in the game, and she and I playing it.
We broke up the summer after and I think this was what killed my current interest in the game, and I think at some point I tossed that binder out, due to the fact it reminded me of her. Something I wish I hadn’t done. The only time I dipped my toes back into it was before I got a computer I was using the public ones down at one of the two libraries I frequented and something triggered the D&D memories in me, I can’t remember what, but I discovered there was an D&D website and I found an online monster manual and began combing through the photos. Some monsters I recognized and some were new. After Comic-Con dropped the new D&D movie, I went to Amazon to see what monster manuals are still in existence, found the most current edition, and shoved it on my wishlist, along with some other D&D artbooks I intend (fingers crossed) get some day when I’m no longer poor.
I also came across news recently, well, some old news from January I totally forgot about, that states a live action series is being developed! Excellent. But is it something more fantasy authentic, or does it carry the vibe of the movie? I would also love to see a new toon, but not anything like the one from the 80s. In fact there is a better D&D toon in existence, it’s an anime OVA (Original Video Animation) called, Record Of Lodoss War (1990) and it’s sequel Record Of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (1998). I saw the first chapter back in the day and it is indeed D&D anime style. Loved it.
And some more recent news that the role playing game is evolving yet again, with something called One D&D coming in 2024!
MEMORY MOVIES 