I began playing D&D in 1982 as a player and began "DM-ing" within a year of that. I have enjoyed buying and reading a great number of gaming books, magazine articles, modules, campaign settings and other things. Friends have come and gone, and I have spent huge amounts of time and money on a hobby the average person does not understand, and some people don't even approve. Why do I play D&D? The short answer is "For fun." The longer answer has to do with friendship, creativity and escape. Before I started playing D&D, I suffered from horrible recurring nuclear nightmares (it was the cold war at that time), and I was very withdrawn and shy. Somehow, D&D helped me beat fears and make friends. I learned to cope with my real life by having a satisfying imaginary one. This unique hobby game has books upon books full of rules, but the two most important rules I use are: no evil player characters, and no drugs. Though I have used pre-prepared adventures and even settings on many occasions, it is fair to say that 98% of the games I run use my settings, my characters, my villians and plots. I also make up a lot of my own monsters, spells, magic items and vehicles (among other things).
Each time a set of player characters retires, I begin a new campaign plot and setting or timeline, but I kind of build each world right on top of the previous ones, so there's a kind or chronology and a deeper history. My campaign settings over the years have had the following names:
Kelnorn, Rotalia, Sonaeed, Aarde
Each of these settings has developed more fully than the one before it. I have also had some memorable recurring villians (in chronological order):
Latham (a time traveller who later turned to good, and had to battle himself. Still appears on rare occasions.)
Signatious (who was excluded from the fountain of youth and enslaved and preyed on the elves of Aarde's moon, Sonaeed for their blood, which he used to make elixirs of youth)
Tenneous (who was defeated to a man in war and turned to construct building for a new army; insane, he made himself into a construct to seek immortality and his constructs became sentient--and evil. His Cult of the Immortal Construct lived after him)
Hurkendorn (who tried to rule the world through magical charms and influence over the powerful)
Jaramon (who believed non-elves were inferior, but make good guinea pigs for magical transmutation. His followers built the Temple of Transformation for this purpose).
Lord Leofeldt (a 1,750 year old grey elf Mystic Theurge who claimed the victory over Signatious for himself and founded the Purple Order of Sonaeed. Now believed to have been influenced by Drow and possibly mind flayers).
I would like to thank my original gaming group members for their friendship and a lot of great sessions, back in the 1st Edition days of the early 1980's: Todd Gentry, Rick Rutledge, Art Friese, Dave Hille and Shane Peterson. As the group began joining the military, going to college and geting married, the game was changing too. By 2nd Edition in the mid-80s I was still playing D&D, and though players from the original group still gamed when we could, new players were being added: Spencer Cole, Jason Gaston, Ivan Annis, Tim Ickler and Evan Thomsen. I have really great memories of those days and I want to thank each of you. At Mt. Hood Community College, I organized and ran a small (200 attendance) convention, where I met Paul Karczag, Timmer Dykes and his group, and others. Paul later asked me to help write part of Mayfair Games' "People, Places and Things" for their Role-Aids line, so David Pierik (that's me) is now a bona fide, published game designer (thank you Paul). In college, I played in and ran some great games with Art Hart and some guys from my fraternity, Theta Chi at the University of Idaho, my alma mater, and I thank all of you also. After college, I gamed in the Portland area for a while, then moved to Shelton, WA for my day job (I'm in advertising). For two years and two months, I was part-owner of a game store called Area 51 games, but business was not strong enough to justify keeping it going past the spring of 2001. Closing the store was a difficult, but necessary thing, filled with a lot of "what-ifs." Now, I have fewer regrets about the store because I made a lot of friends (many of whom I still game with now) and learned a lot about the gaming industry and about retail business in general, which is an asset for me in advertising. I think part of why I write this blog now is because I wrote a regular newsletter for the shop and wrote and ran a lot of games during that time.
My favorite game store now is a little shop in Shelton called Old Town Hobby, which I recommend for the basic stuff, especially if you're using miniatures and terrain. Richard Bidwell, the owner, has a great disposition and is very helpful. It's a family business that celebrated their 7th anniversary on 11/2/06. He carries a little bit of everything, and it was at my suggestion that he carry gaming stuff; about a year after Area 51 games closed he finally agreed to do it.
CHECK THIS HEADING ENTRY AGAIN, I'M GOING TO ADD MORE TO IT REGULARLY.
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