The Autumn D&Dr Special Day

First, a disclaimer: this image is the front cover of a fantasy novel I absolutely loathe. That said, the artist Larry Elmore gives really nice atmospheric pics, if nothing else. And it suits this post. Today is a special day for Wolfie and me: a few weeks ago, he told me he wanted a special father and son day, in early autumn, where we would go to a café, eat and drink autumnal stuff, then play Dungeons & Dragons and Minecraft. I'm not sure how he came up with this idea, but it's a day to celebrate the new season doing our favourite seasonal activities. As meteorological autumn has started, we decided that today would be the day. If it's a success, it might become a family tradition.

D&Dr at Easter

Easter has come and gone and for some reason tonight it got me thinking about the times when we could play at Dungeons & Dragons regularly, my friends, brothers and I. Easter, like Christmas, allowed us to have a long break when we could play more often, but generally we did not play all that much then. I don't know if this was coincidence, but Easter was around the time when the latest important mission was finished and we were running out of adventure ideas, or at least had not build on the ideas we've had to prepare a new mission. So most of the gaming sessions we had around Easter consisted of our characters staying in one spot (an inn, a forest, a monastery) our traveling from point A to point B, waiting for something to happen. They were gaming sessions very light on stories, but full of atmosphere and gave us plenty of occasion for character development. And we prepared ourselves for future menaces. In a way, they were like this picture from Larry Elmore, called Hidden Danger: there was something foreboding about these times. I am generally not keen on warrior chicks in fantasy arts, but I like this one all right.

Dragon Slayers

In the end, other things happened so I did not go to the autumnal walk. Not in the woods anyway, just in town. But I thought I would download an autumnal picture to put some colours on this blog. And it also struck me that I had not bothered... I mean told my readership about Dungeons & Dragons in a while. So I decided to do like last year and download an autumnal image from artist Larry Elmore which I associate with D&Dr. This one is called Dragon Slayers and Proud of It. Maybe one of my favourite of all his work. It has the forest in autumn in the background. But more interestingly, it is a hunting picture, with the green dragon instead of the deer and the bows, arrows and swords instead of guns. The two men by the dragon even look like modern hunters! You have here a classical D&Dr party: the fighters, the spellcaster and the priest (the one holding the warhammer, it is a dead giveaway he is a priest). Oh and you even have the treasure of the creature, a small amount of golden jewelry.

Like I mentioned last year, our first quest as a party (which was very different than this one, both in number and in character classes) was mainly set in a forest, in autumn. I think my brother PJ, who was the Dungeon Master, must have been influenced by this image: we had to fight at the very end of the adventure a dragon (although a black one) and he had plenty of gold and jewellery in treasure chests scattered around the room where he was dwelling. It was the first dragon we killed, becoming thus dragon slayers. Every time I look at this picture, I think about it.

Yuletide D&Dr

Well, this is my yearly Christmastime post about Dungeons & Dragons, to celebrate decades of times playing my favourite role-playing game in maybe its best environment, the time of year where it brings such atmosphere. I blogged about it before and it has since become more or less a tradition on Vraie Fiction. Last year, I even blogged about it twice, here and here. Like almost every time I do blog about D&Dr, I accompany the post with a picture by classic fantasy, sci-fi and of course D&Dr illustrator Larry Elmore. In fact, the post pretty much an excuse to have some of his art on this blog.

This image is from the cover of The Bloodstone Lands module from the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. I never liked Forgotten Realms, well in fact I never liked much of the already-made settings of D&Dr. I much preferred our created world. That said, the name of the lands is great, and what a tempting image, if one ever wanted to play in a campaign setting. This picture works so well. There is the snowy background, the beautiful winter landscape. There is even a pine tree, so you have your Christmas tree (albeit without lights or decorations) on the image. At the center of the image, you see a duel between a wizard and a fighter, the wizard seemingly the evil one, with his goat's skin used as a hood, and the top of his staff is also a goat's head. Goats obviously have devilish associations. So yes, I always loved this cover. And to fully enjoy it, or, why not, a game of D&Dr this Christmas, if you play it, I give you again O Come, O Come Emmanuel, a Christmas carol which I also associate with my favourite game. I often do with Christmas carols, but this one in particular, and as it is also a tradition from Vraie Fiction this time of year, here it is.

Halloween and D&Dr

I did not blog about Dungeons & Dragons for a little while and thought it was time to blog about it in relation with Halloween. This picture is of course from Larry Elmore and is aptly titled Eyes of Autumn. You can see what is probably a witch guarding her domain, holding menacingly a staff, her black cat (familiar spirit?) walking rather indifferently on the side. Beside her, a pumpkin, behind her, a menacingly looking scarecrow, whose head is reminiscent of a Jack O'Lantern. You ca see the eyes are shining, which would indicate that it is magically animated and could be an adversary itself. In a way, this image is reminiscent of Early Snow. In any case, Eyes of Autumn is fitting for this time of year, as it is not only heavily influenced by autumn, but also by Halloween.

Which leads me to the relation my favourite holiday and my favourite game have, at least in my personal experience. Back in the days when my brothers and I could play at D&Dr all year round, Halloween was a special time to enjoy the game. Of course, when one plays Dungeons & Dragons, the time of the year on the calendar does not necessarily fit the game's calendar, which is susceptible to change much faster. Nevertheless, in the early years we often managed to fit at least some of our gaming session with the time of year. The atmosphere, the monsters we fought, they were modeled after eerie themes and often belonged as much to the horror genre than medieval fantasy. We even had an equivalent of Halloween in our game, the Day of the Dead, celebrated on October 31st. In more recent year, in our current epic campaign, we managed to take hold of the artifact the villains wanted to invade the world on the 31st of October. Ironically we played this game during Christmastime. It was a great game, but I do miss the time when we were lower levels and could travel in woodlands, to find in the middle of nowhere a small cottage, inhabited by a sinister lady.

Dungeons & Dragons in Autumn

This is another lush drawing from former Dungeons & Dragons artist Larry Elmore, called Ancient Powers. I did not upload one of his works since April and thought now would be a good time. Warning: this post might be geeky. So yes, Ancient Powers is one of Larry Elmore's picture that I am particularly fond of. One of the reasons is that it has character and atmosphere. I could have written characters, as this is what they are. Often in medieval fantasy art, you have overly muscular heroes wearing loin cloths and scantily clad heroines, these people here are not like this. You have two spell-casters, the woman may be a druidess, a priestess of some sort or a magician, the thin, fragile looking man may be a mage too or a bard, judging by his colourful outfit (bards can cast spells in Dungeons & Dragons), watching over them is a strong man that does not display his muscles and who could also be a priest or a ranger. They are copying an ancient spell on a Celtic looking tombstone in a pseudo Celtic burial ground, while a dark clad figure is spying them in the mist by the dolmens. Oh, and it is set in autumn.

Autumn means many things for me, one of them being the season of the first D&Dr adventure of our ongoing campaign. We started it in late August, more than twenty years ago (21 to be precise). Usually, when you start a campaign, you make the time in the game coincide with the time of year in the real world, to keep things simple. Then things change, obviously, as time spent in the game goes much faster. But most of the first adventure we played was therefore set in autumn, and in a wide forest like the one on this picture. Furthermore, the mission our characters had was to find a ancient spell, lost somewhere in a ruined temple in the forest. I mentioned it on this post. So this image reminds me a lot of this first quest. Except that we did not have (yet) a personified adversary (a nemesis came on our second quest) and that our adventuring party was different. It was larger and there was no female in it. I played a ranger, PJ who was our Dungeon Master had nevertheless a character who was a Necromancer, Devadar my younger brother had priest of the God of War (and his character was ironically NOT named Devadar), there were two thieves, one human, one Elfic, one human fighter, one druid and finally one Dwarf fighter, who joined in later as an outcast of the nearby Dwarven kingdom. The group changed a lot since then. Anyway, this image reminded me of that.

Dungeons & Dragons in Spring

I have just been watching The Big Bang Theory, a ''new'' episode, I mean a new episode here in the UK, set during Christmastime, titled The Santa Simulation.The gang played Dungeons & Dragons, which is of course my favourite game, but also a game my brothers and I now play during the Christmas season, because it is the only time in the year when we can play now. Because of this, and for other reasons too, I associate D&Dr with winter. That said, we used to play all year round. We started our current campaign in August 1992. For a while, we played nearly every weekend. There were of course pauses, sometimes we stopped for weeks and even a few months, but we overall we played regularly.

Which brings me to playing the game in springtime. It was generally a quieter period than autumn and winter, the big playing time periods. It was also in a way quieter than summer, which yes was holiday time and with people away, but we had the few rainy days (sometimes not so few) and plenty of evenings. And in August, when people were back from holidays, everybody wanted to play to forget about the upcoming school year. But spring was different, we had ran a few adventures and PJ, who was and is still our Dungeon Master, needed time to prepare new ones. We were all running out of steam and imagination. I used to call this the ''between adventures times''. It was a time when our characters were mainly going from point A to B (in my case, as I was a ranger, from the city dwelling when often adventures ended to the nearest forest), buying new equipment and gems to light ourselves of the money we had, overall being fairly inactive. Sure, there were a few combats here and there: some players were impatient to get XP and more treasures, and the road from A to B was often a dangerous one. There were even a time when two characters cleared a whole dungeon from its monsters to turn it into their hideout. PJ used this time to flesh out the world and introduce elements of its history that would be the roots of future campaigns. So it was not a waste of time.

One word about the picture I uploaded to accompany this post. it is again from Larry Elmore. It does not look much like springtime on it, but I could not find anything really seasonal that both fitted and that I loved. There are plenty of pictures that are autumnal and wintery though. I like this one and it could fit for nearly every season. You see two adventurers being lured in a trap by a thief, while a werewolf is waiting for them. It appears to be a werewolf anyway, I have seen in a D&Dr card that it was a werebear, but it does not look like a bear, and besides werebears are good and certainly not treacherous like this lycanthrope. So yes, I thought this picture could illustrate my experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons in springtime.

This Christmas's Dungeons & Dragons

As my readership knows, he Holiday season wouldn't be complete without a good game of Dungeons & Dragons. My brothers and I played it yesterday, all afternoon and all evening. Unfortunately, our friends are all around the map, so it was only us three playing. But we enjoyed it all the same, after four long years of being unable to play, for various reasons. We are going to play again this afternoon, maybe even get very near to finish the very long campaign we have been doing.

The image here is from Larry Elmore. I find the dragon a bit weak looking, he is not my favourite drawn by Elmore, but the picture fit the Christmas atmosphere well. Elmore as always makes the scene dynamic and he draws great snowy landscape.

Christmas games and atmosphere

As my long time readers know already, I associate Christmas and especially Christmas carols with Dungeons & Dragons. So this year, like last year, I have decided to upload a picture from Larry Elmore accompanied by a Christmas carol. My brothers and I listen to Christmas carols before gaming sessions during Christmastime, sometimes during a game itself. It puts us in the right gaming mood. And the right seasonal mood too. They go hand in hand, Christmas, winter and Dungeons and Dragons. So I have decided to upload this picture, which I love, although maybe not as much as Avalyne the Life Giver. I always thought the mix of Orcs, giants, undead and Barbarians (Vikings?) was a tad odd. But one can make such alliance. All the same, it's a great picture. The evil sorcerer (he looks like a magic user) on his chariot, travelling through the snowy mountains, a nasty the Orc scout looking defiantly at the viewer (player-character?). Evil must be opposed, but this evil party might be difficult to oppose to.

 As it is almost tradition on this blog and because I think it fits the setting of the picture, I have decided to upload again O Come, O Come Emmanuel/Veni, veni Emmanuel. It is a carol I associate with journeys in the snow (albeit maybe more with this interpretation) and it is a good enough reason to upload it again.

Early Snow

Well... Not really. I am the first one to find it sad, but this post title has nothing to do with the current weather here. November has gone from cold to warm to cold, but never cold enough to have snow. There was fog, which was lovely, but no snow. Not yet. This is something I would love to see falling, it would give the place a nice feel.

When it snows in November, it usually looks like the picture on the right. This is what the post was referring to. Its title is, fittingly enough, Early Snow. It was drawn by Larry Elmore, who draw many Dungeons and Dragons pictures, among my favourite. This is one of them. It is simple, full of atmosphere. We have this solitary woman staring at us, a dagger in the hand. The surroundings are bare, she seems to live in a seemingly comfortable yet modest cottage (I mean it's not a castle), yet the clothes she is wearing belong more to a lady than a farm girl, with the rich colours and the fine embroideries. From a player's experience, I can safely assume she is a priestess of some sort or a magic user. Or a magical creature herself. She is a redhead, which traditionally indicates some tights with the supernatural... and a fiery temper. We don't know if she is holding the dagger to defend herself against potential hostile visitors or if she is a going to attack the newcomers out of pure malevolence. And the almost bare landscape, the tree in the background, which leafs are scattered around, underneath the thin snow, everything gives an impression of restrained menace.

Wintery atmosphere for Christmas eve

I didn't know exactly what to upload here or what to blog about as I am waiting for Christmas to arrive. This post is not very original: I blogged about similar subjects here and here. This picture by Larry Elmore is called Winter campaign. I have no idea what the context is, but judging by the clothes and weapons of the characters here I think they are meant to be Eastern European (or akin to them). In any cayse, it reminds me slightly of our own Dungeons & Dragons campaign: the characters travelling in the snow on horses, the raven/crow/corvid looming over them ominously (my brother had the raven as the emblematic animal of the big baddies in our D&Dr campaign), I wonder if he is part of the party or spying on them, the giant boar accompanying them... I think they are baddies, thinking about it. I might be wrong. But aside from this, the landscape, the setting and atmosphere here, the sense of dynamism Elmore creates so well, all this reminds me of our D&Dr campaign when we play during Christmastime.

As I said, before, I associate Christmas carols with D&Dr. I have already uploaded a song from Jessye Norman's Christmastide here. I have already put McKennit's version of O Come O Come Emmanuel. But as I mentioned before, I associate the interpretation of Jessye Norman with those moments when our characters travel in the snowy landscape, leaving their inn of their castle early in the morning, mounting their horses for a long journey. And now Christmas is coming, almost here, so this carol is fitting to all states of mind.

A (geeky) confession about Christmas carols

I know, I blogged about it before, but I have to mention it again for another post, in a complete rewrite of the first one two years ago: I associate Christmas carols with Dungeons & Dragons. Read: it puts me in the mood to play, I think also it is an excellent background music when we play. Of course, it depends of the particular interpretation. I wouldn't put Bing Crosby in the background, obviously. But there is just something about many Christmas carols that are I guess pseudo-medieval, and there is something about the role playing game that fits winter. The Viking legends that both Christmas and D&Dr feed from probably play an important role into this association. Maybe it is only because I only play D&Dr at Christmas now. When I can actually get home...

This is a drawing from Larry Elmore and it is called Avalyne the Life giver. I have no idea if it was drawn for a story or if it is just a title. I just love it since I first saw it in a Monstrous Compendium. A snowy winter day in a Nordic country, pine trees in the background, an evil giant vaguely Krampus looking (more on the darker side of Christmas here), death and life (heck, death and rebirth) on display, an angelic looking cleric, this is a picture for the season. We played similar scenes over and over again during our games.

So when I listen to Jessye Norman singing O come, O come Emmanuel in Christmastide, I always imagine our characters setting off for a journey on a snowy wintery day. La marche des rois (listen to it here) is also a song for those journeys our characters take, while Coventry Carol is for when they warm their bones by the fire in the night, eating a grub. I have decided to out here Loreena McKennitt's take on Veni, Veni Emmanuel in A Midwinter Night's Dream. Looking at some Youtube videos with the song, this one in particular, I can see I am not the only one making this association.