It started with my father reading to me before bed: "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" and "The Hobbit." Later came "The Lord of the Rings" and then my eternally borrowed copies of the novels of Burroughs, McCaffery, and Anthony. I explored Prydain! saved the Enchanted Forest from destruction, and trained in the ways of the wise ones. I loved books beloved by my mother as well, especially Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books and of "Julie of the Wolves" by Jean Craighead George.
Each story was more than a story to me. I had conversations with the characters while I washed dishes or sat on the school bus. I could curl up for hours and completely shut out the world. My mother nicknamed me "the book with legs." When I was a character I was strong. Beautiful. Talented. I was no longer a skinny girl with glasses and braces. I could be a hero for being smart instead of being ridiculed for being "teacher's pet." Stories were my safe place. The best Christmas gift I've received is a set of leather-bound copies of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" just like the ones my father read to me from when I was a child.
Stereotypically, my father is an engineer who played Dungeons and Dragons, though back then it was still called AD&D He was the Dungeon Master. Sometimes I was allowed to watch as he ran the campaign. My favorite part of this was playing with his dice, which he kept in a Crown a Royal bag. I built towers and walls and made patterns on the tabletop. Occasionally he would ask me to roll dice for him, and I always used my favorite ones, a set of translucent D20s in jewel tones of red, amber, green, and blue. I called them gem dice and pretended they were a ruby, a sapphire, an emerald, and a yellow diamond. They were impossible to read, but I liked them so much that my father put up with my using them to roll "to hit" in battles.
I also became enamored of graph paper and mapping. I would take my father's pads of graph paper out of the buffet in the dining room and wander off with his "Monster Manual" and "Player's Handbook" and spend hours creating pieces of a world of my own. I was in high school when my father decided I was old enough to join a campaign as a player. I made my first character, Melissa, a half-elven fighter/thief. When I left for college his books went with me and I never gave them back. In fact, this afternoon, I'll be using those books as I DM for a group of friends as they delve into the mysteries of the magic of my world, Belhaven.
