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Someone asked the question on ENWorld's forums, "Did Books get you into D&D, or vice versa?" I decided to post my stance, and I liked my post enough, that I wanted to share it with you guys.
BEGIN POST:
Oh yeah!! That's me alright!
I forget exactly how, but I began to develop a ravenous appetite for any mythology I could lay my hands on. (I'd seen the D&D cartoon, true, and loved it, but moved on without discovering D&D.) Anyway, I'd read anything: Greek/Roman, Norse, Arabic. I could not get enough mythology.
Perhaps that was why my aunt took me to a book store, and let me pick up a couple of novels to read. I wasn't really sure about any of the lines, and she didn't push me to LotR (thank goodness -- I find them dry, but generally well-written), so I decided to pick up Darkness & Light by Thompson and Cook (Dragonlance Preludes, Volume 1), and Waterdeep, by "Richard Awlinson" (that's the name that is on my copy of the Avatar Trilogy
).
On the way home, we discovered that I had picked up book three of the Avatar Trilogy, so she took that back to swap for Shadowdale. The time I had with the Dragonlance book was all it took, though. Forgotten Realms has since always played second fiddle to Dragonlance for me.
Then, in 1991, I was visiting my mother in California. I'd been devouring fantasy fiction as fast as I could get it (no, no classics yet as some put it, but I still love the Elven Nations Trilogy), and somehow or another, I realized that it was tied to a game. I was at a mall out there, and saw Dragonlance Adventures for sale. I picked it up, and realized I needed something else to use it. I grabbed the D&D Box Set they released in '90 (the BIG black box, with the Easley-drawn red dragon on the cover), and the Dragonlance Taladas box set.
I began to have an idea of how to play, but it wasn't until I got home, showed off my purchases, that one of my friends revealed that he'd played AD&D all through the 80's. Needless to say, it was from there that I was hooked on RPGs. To this day, I still have that DLA, though it is horribly worn. Unlike the quoted poster above, we used that book for material, even though we technically were playing 2nd Edition.
---
In a strange reversal, I believe that I can credit D&D for introducing me to authors like Lovecraft, Howard, Leiber, and Burroughs. (I *LOVE* Howard's Conan stories. In fact, I sneer at any Conan story written by another author, and John Carter is my hero.)
BEGIN POST:
Oh yeah!! That's me alright!
I forget exactly how, but I began to develop a ravenous appetite for any mythology I could lay my hands on. (I'd seen the D&D cartoon, true, and loved it, but moved on without discovering D&D.) Anyway, I'd read anything: Greek/Roman, Norse, Arabic. I could not get enough mythology.
Perhaps that was why my aunt took me to a book store, and let me pick up a couple of novels to read. I wasn't really sure about any of the lines, and she didn't push me to LotR (thank goodness -- I find them dry, but generally well-written), so I decided to pick up Darkness & Light by Thompson and Cook (Dragonlance Preludes, Volume 1), and Waterdeep, by "Richard Awlinson" (that's the name that is on my copy of the Avatar Trilogy
).On the way home, we discovered that I had picked up book three of the Avatar Trilogy, so she took that back to swap for Shadowdale. The time I had with the Dragonlance book was all it took, though. Forgotten Realms has since always played second fiddle to Dragonlance for me.
Then, in 1991, I was visiting my mother in California. I'd been devouring fantasy fiction as fast as I could get it (no, no classics yet as some put it, but I still love the Elven Nations Trilogy), and somehow or another, I realized that it was tied to a game. I was at a mall out there, and saw Dragonlance Adventures for sale. I picked it up, and realized I needed something else to use it. I grabbed the D&D Box Set they released in '90 (the BIG black box, with the Easley-drawn red dragon on the cover), and the Dragonlance Taladas box set.
I began to have an idea of how to play, but it wasn't until I got home, showed off my purchases, that one of my friends revealed that he'd played AD&D all through the 80's. Needless to say, it was from there that I was hooked on RPGs. To this day, I still have that DLA, though it is horribly worn. Unlike the quoted poster above, we used that book for material, even though we technically were playing 2nd Edition.
---
In a strange reversal, I believe that I can credit D&D for introducing me to authors like Lovecraft, Howard, Leiber, and Burroughs. (I *LOVE* Howard's Conan stories. In fact, I sneer at any Conan story written by another author, and John Carter is my hero.
)
