The Planets Minerva: Introduction

So I’m engaged in a very dynamic and thus far successful Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I am the Dungeon Master - or D.M. (campaign referee), being the one with by far the most experience. The four character players are all somewhere in the 19 to 21 age range; all in university and are blessed with keen intensity, curiosity and imagination.

It is my hope that they will all take a turn being D.M. and creating their own stories of a scope that is appropriate to their more limited role-playing experiences. It would be a delight to see them grow in this capacity.

This campaign of mine, meanwhile, is rather epic. And of course it is only mine in terms of the world it takes place in, the background details and the choices that all of the non-player creatures make. The starring characters belong to the players and as such they are co-authors of this story as well.

The characters, like the players who created them (unimpinged by me), are all young. They are:

• Gu’ro’Baen; a blacksmith and nascent mage/fighter of half-human, half-orcish blood,
• his friend Armigus; a hugely strong fighter, fresh out of the military and also of half-orcish descent,
• Catherine de Montreard; a human ranger,
• and Zontar the priest, in service of Hastseltsi, god of racing.   

I intend to tell their story in this space, likely in more brief, summary form than regular prose, and perhaps also to add optional appendices to demonstrate the geneses and tools behind the results which make up our collaborative story.

The usefulness of this episodic blog pursuit is that it creates a record of shared DM/player perspective for our own use (we each maintain our own records of course). Perhaps it will also be of use to other D&D enthusiasts who may wish to witness the results of a particular brand of D&D: one with an old-school, highly-adaptable approach, loosely based on the original AD&D version, where many of the “rules” are a matter of interpretation by a D.M. who embraces a wide range of tools and possibilities from multiple D&D versions, and who firmly believes that there are no limits other than those of the imagination; and to witness the possibilities in terms of large-scale world-building that is possible when a referee has a lot of time to devote, a lot of experience, a lot of imagination, and a knack for combining original ideas with ideas borrowed from film and literature.

I suppose it may also be interesting to anyone who enjoys telling or reading fantasy stories or who has pondered getting into D&D as a hobby.

Others may learn to skip these episodes!