A D&Dr Christmas present

I was not expecting to blog about Dungeon & Dragons so early after my last post on the subject. But my youngest brother gave me an early Christmas present yesterday: he scanned our character sheets, the maps of the various kingdoms and lands we have made over the years and a number of other bits of data regarding the world we have created and he put everything into Dropbox. That might like nothing, but this is great: I am talking about almost 25 years of imagination on paper, now secure in electronic form and ready to be used. We won't have to wait until we are all in Chicoutimi in my parents' home for Christmas to play. I have to confess, I had suggested we did this before, I had asked for it for long, but feared I was being a pest (I probably was to be honest). All geeky pleasure aside, it is just a really lovely tribute to these decades. And I have decided to accompany this post with another image from D&Dr artist Daniel Horne. It's another one of my favourite, full of winter atmosphere. Yule is also, after all, a time of danger, even if it is imaginary one.

Yuletide's D&Dr

This image might look like it has been taken from a George Martin novel, but it's from a Dragon Magazine. The image is by artist Daniel Horne, who fueled my my brothers' and my imagination (and still does) as he was one of the artists used in the best days of Dungeons & Dragons. I don't think any other artist, except maybe Larry Elmore, does dramatic snowy landscape as medieval fantasy settings like Daniel Horne. In this one, the quiet beauty of a plain on a cold winter day is disturbed by the outburst of evil, in the form of an animated giant skeleton, jumping out of the snow like a jack-in-the-box. The heroine seems vulnerable, but not entirely helpless. Our characters have been in similar situations and they have always come through.

All this to say that this year, I am going to miss the annual Christmas D&Dr games. In a way, it is the right time to skip it, as we ended the campaign last year. Still, I miss playing D&Dr from time to time, but especially around Christmastime, when the season just adds some free atmosphere. And now that our big campaign is over, we can actually spend more time building the atmosphere and enjoying the scenery, letting our imagination run wild. I could so easily imagine our characters walking through these snowy landscapes, building a fire, resting by fir trees... Oh well, it's going to be for next Christmas.