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October 16, 2004
Happy Birthday, Dungeons and Dragons.
It's thirty years old, today. How about a song for the birthday boy? Lyrics below the cut.
Clutch - 24 Earth Years
If anyone has a better copy of this unreleased outtake, I'd love to get my hands on it. Not often you hear a decent hard rock song about roleplaying games.
And to drive my nerdiness home, a few liner notes of my own.
-- Neil Fallon, Clutch's vocalist, claims he played a "druid wizard halfling" in the 1980 version of AD&D. This was impossible; Druids and Magic-Users (what they used to call Wizards back then) weren't available as a multiclass combination for demi-humans, and halflings couldn't be Magic-Users anyway back then. Of course, he could play that combination with modern rules. But it's not 1980. So Neil's either lying his ass off, or cheating his ass off. Not that I mind. He's probably too busy rocking to care about this nerd shit, anyway.
-- "Gygaxanor" is a reference to one of AD&D's creators, Gary Gygax.
-- "d20" is the bare-bones mechanics of AD&D. It encompasses die-rolling, stats, leveling, feats, etc., and it recently went open-source, meaning anyone who wants to make a roleplaying game using d20, can. d20 stands for "twenty sided die," the standard die used. Am I a loser yet?
-- The old AD&D didn't take place in Middle Earth. It was just a shameless rip-off, as most fantasy settings are. Hobbits appeared in the first printings of the rulebooks, but the Tolkien estate forced AD&D to change the name of the race to "halfling," and change the Ents to "treants." (Strangely, Orcs were okay.) Current halflings, by the way, are nothing like Hobbits. They're scrawny, wear shoes, have wanderlust, ride large dogs into battle, and have these really weird, pointy skulls. I hate 'em. Ugly.
-- Mazes and Monsters Was a super-cheesy, made-for-TV exploitation flick aired at the height of the ZOMG D&D = SATAN-WORSHIPPING panic of the 1980s. It did star Tom Hanks, and he did go insane as a combined result of too much "Mazes and Monsters" and the goofy, magical properties of the cavern he and his friends played the game in. (I am totally serious.)
AD&D was the Harry Potter of the decade; Christian groups claimed it turned kids on to the occult, and distraught parents claimed that the death of their child's character drove their child to suicide. Hilarious. There's still a (dun dun dun!) Jack Chick tract about this threat, and a lol-tastic page about the movie (with sound clips and video!!) is here. To this day, some gamers use the phrase "gone Pardeux" to describe a person way too into their character.
The hysteria was enough to convince TSR (AD&D's publishers) to change any occurance of the word "demon" and "devil" in their rulebooks into "tanar'ri" and "baatezu" for the second edition. We're now on edition 3.5, and they're basically back to being demons and devils again. You lose, holy rollers.
PS: Actually, the kids in Mazes and Monsters weren't roleplaying. They were LARPing. (Live Action Role Playing.) Tabletop roleplayers don't wear costumes. Funnily enough, to the best of my knowledge, There WEREN'T any LARPs back then.
There you have it, folks. TOM HANKS INVENTED LARPs. IS THERE ANYTHING THAT BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL MAN CAN'T DO.
Wow. This is pretty pitiful, isn't it? My apologies.
Lemme cap it off with a picture of a AD&D character of mine. Slightly NWS, so linky dinky.
That's right. I still do it. STONE ME PLZ.
Bet you were expecting some half-naked, D-cup elf chick, huh? Nah. I got tired of that Pretty Pretty Princess shit when I was four.
Clutch - 24 Earth Years
I don't know, but I've been told I'm about twenty-four Earth years old
And come my next birthday it'll be a quarter century
I don't know, but I have heard a gnome from the old world say these words:
"Take a look what the cat dragged in; a red woodpecker and two of my kin."
Back in 1980, we played the AD&D
That game was harder than the Elfstones of Shanara
My character was baffling, a druid, wizard, halfling
On top of that he was master of psionic powers
Bring on the hordes, we have the sword
That smote the Goblin of Gygaxanor
Pray that the sisters name us as victors
Of the twenty sided die, yeah
I don't know, but I've been told I'm about twenty-four Earth years old
And come my next birthday it'll be a quarter century
I don't know, but I have heard a gnome from the old world say these words:
"Take a look what the cat dragged in; a dead woodpecker and two of my kin."
Long ago in Middle Earth
A man could measure all his worth
By his blade and by his staff
And by the runes on his epitaph
Go mount your horse and ride up north
To seek the Baron of the Frozen Berg
Ask for assistance in the resistance
Of the twenty sided die, yeah
I don't know, but I've been told I'm about twenty-four Earth years old
And come my next birthday it'll be a quarter century
I don't know, but I have heard a gnome from the old world say these words:
"Take a look what the cat dragged in; a red woodpecker and two of my kin."
Saw Mazes and Monsters
Tom Hanks completely bonkers
He spoke what he doth speaketh in Elizabethan
Sad lad, he really couldn't handle starting from scratch on the very first level
But he died the death of a warrior
Our legend grows yearly by way of a local song
The bishop and castle move in defense of pawns
I'm rolling, I'm tumbling a twenty sided die
Our legend grows yearly by way of local song
I don't know, but I've been told I'm about twenty-four Earth years old
And come my next birthday it'll be a quarter century
I don't know, but I have heard a gnome from the old world say these words:
"Take a look what the cat dragged in; a dead woodpecker and two of my kin."
Posted by Spike at October 16, 2004 09:07 PM
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