I have been sitting on this for a while. The idea of a preface — not a blog post, not a campaign note, but an actual preface to a collection of short stories — things I have written in the margins of forty years of games. The stories that lived in my campaigns, in worlds I have borrowed or visited in other people’s games, alongside the worlds I have created. Campaign notes that became something longer. Characters I could not let go.
What follows is a draft of that preface. It is rough in places; I have tidied the more obvious slips and smoothed a few sentences that tripped over themselves, but the voice is mine and I am not trying to sand it down into something it is not. Notes on what I have changed and why appear at the end.
The Preface (Revised Draft)
The Fallen Gate sticks in my mind like no other — a gate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of willing adventurers have crossed in the years around and since 1985 when I first came across it. The Fallen Gate that lay before the ruined keep in the Borderlands, the Borderlands of Krynn on my first occasion. (The Learning DM has a good piece on the Red Box if you want the history.)
That was my first encounter. The Dungeon Master was Richard — his last name forgotten to time, as so many of these fleeting schoolyard friendships are, and at the time his skill as my first Dungeon Master very much under-appreciated. We were sat around a table in a seemingly always sunny schoolroom, in a now long-gone English primary school (rebuilt at the turn of the millennium but still a perfectly functional school). The multicoloured dice that came with the classic red box — the box where that gate and ruin appear in print — bounced across the table as my first scribbling on a character sheet brought a now long-forgotten dwarf rogue to life. The dice represented my attempts to evade the infamous Carrion Crawler, who should always be found below that Fallen Gate. Well, at least for those in the know. All of this watched over by the ever-present Religious Education teacher, Mr Rimmington. I often wonder if he had a good rest of his life after we left his presence. His impact on mine lasted forty years, at the very least. Oddly, I do not remember who else was at that table, yet the next school year was spent with them and Richard, at the very least.
Some time later — not quite a decade, but the best part of one — I sit at a covered snooker table. The Dungeon Master is now Jay, the players my friends and a cousin. This time that gate has fallen in an unnamed world of fantasy. Friends who, thirty-something years later, I still follow on social media and interact with occasionally. But back then we were swapping adventures, games and Friday evenings with each other. Dragons, Marvel superheroes, Mutant Turtles, spies and ninjas — all manner of adventures.
Later again, but not much: the Dungeons and the Dragons are mixed with Games Workshop’s armies of models, and nights of Vampire: the Masquerade and World of Darkness among other games. Some days we even dress up and carry latex swords on daring adventures into the woods and fields alongside like-minded players. That gate now lies in Toril, in the Arrowdale, while seemingly the Carrion Crawler is encountered in the land Erdreja. These friends are older — some still the same, others new — and nearly thirty years on I again still follow some on social media. Some I wish I did not; our politics are vastly at odds with each other.
Not long after those games, I am running live role play for a living — or am I living to run live role play and avoid the real world? Maybe a little of both, if I am honest. The dungeons are real, formed of woodlands, fields and hastily constructed and dressed tents across the United Kingdom. The dragons are animatronic, alongside masked players bringing all manner of monster to life.
Those were a good handful of years before health issues and a return to the real world. Via university, where the Dungeons and Dragons returned to the table alongside Call of Cthulhu and the vampires and werewolves and a vast array of game genres. The gate remained in Toril. New friends, new adventures, new stories. Twenty years later the adventures may be somewhat forgotten; the friends are not — even if they are not all still with us. (Vague, I know. Those who know, know.)
The games are oddly digital after this. Older gaming titles which we celebrate through work, a host of older digital games reborn, a host of formerly pen-and-paper games finding new life on the desktops, phone screens and tablets of a new generation — celebrated by their ageing fans. Some old friends play the same games again; some new friends get dragged into the world and we all laugh together.
Then there is a break: a handful of years with no games. Some love, a lot of work, culminating in a period where, as a world, we all watched things slow and stop. Then the games came back for me. I needed them; they helped me. People helped me — because the games are no use alone without friends to play them. The keep is still in Toril, and then it shifts to the Misty Vale (Dragonborn). The games of Vaesen and Blades in the Dark accompany Candela Obscura.
It is not the game that offends, but its gatekeepers and purse-keepers — so the system spreads, mixing with those that have popped up before. Tabletop gaming is a phenomenon: from bars to play in, to online communities to play with, and the ability to consume it like television with Critical Role, Natural Six and a host of others as entertaining as you could wish. I still keep physical books. Maybe it is age, comfort or familiarity — I do not honestly know. But whichever thing it is, it is forty years of play, games, friends and adventures to think back over, all starting from that Fallen Gate, in a run-down keep in some borderlands.
There is a lot of life between these adventures. A lot of stories and creativity.
Hopefully this preface gives you a look behind my veil — what has, over decades, driven repeated attempts at short stories that live in my campaigns, in worlds I have borrowed or visited in other people’s games alongside worlds I have created, campaigns I have drafted. Never quite able to find a whole novel, perhaps, but a collection of short stories that visit the worlds I have visited over time.
Notes on the Draft
Writing is revising, and a preface especially so — it is the first thing a reader sees and the last thing you should be precious about. Here is what I changed and why, in case it is useful for the next pass.
Spelling and straightforward errors. “Hundreds” for “hundreads,” “phenomenon” for “phenominum,” “manner” for “manor” (twice — all manner of adventures, all manner of monster), “superheroes” for “hero’s,” “break” for “brake,” and a rogue double apostrophe in “it’’s.” These are typos, not choices; they go.
“Prescience” to “presence.” Mr Rimmington watched over proceedings — he was present, not psychic. Probably. A straightforward substitution.
A missing phrase. “Not quite a decade, but the best part of” ends in mid-air in the original. I read it as “the best part of one” — a decade — and added accordingly. Worth checking that is the intended meaning before it goes to print.
Capitalisation of proper names. The Fallen Gate, Borderlands, Dungeon Master, Carrion Crawler — these are proper nouns in the Dungeons & Dragons sense and warrant capitals. I have applied that consistently. If you are deliberately keeping them lower-case for effect, that is a valid choice; just make it a deliberate one.
The game titles. Vampire: the Masquerade, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Vaesen, Blades in the Dark, Candela Obscura — I have italicised these throughout, which is standard for published game titles and makes the text cleaner to read.
Sentence rhythm. A few of the longer sentences in the original were tripping over themselves — multiple clauses with no obvious landing spot. I have broken a handful of these up or redistributed the commas without changing what is being said. The voice is the same; the sentences are just slightly less breathless.
What I did not change. The deliberate informality, the parenthetical asides, the “those who know, know” — all of that stays. It is the voice. The preface should not sound like it was written by a professional; it should sound like it was written by someone who has been playing games for forty years and is trying to explain what that means. Which is exactly what it is.