Greetings all,
As a regular visitor to this forum and a long-time fan of Ravenloft, I thought I should finally take the opportunity to introduce myself to this august body of Mist-led friends. And forgive me in advance if this bio is a bit long-winded
As hard as it is for me to believe (and I may be dating myself here), I have been wandering in the Mists for nigh on two decades now, having first been drawn into the Land not long after the debut of revered Black Box set. A school friend had introduced me to 2nd ed. and D&D fiction in the Dragonlance setting (The Legend of Huma and 2nd ed. PHB were my first treasured purchases), but it was not long before I became enthralled by the Mists.
My first exposure to RL actually came from the novels (Vampire of the Mists, Knight of the Black Rose and I, Strahd) rather than the gaming system - it was not until a year or two later that one member of our group introduced us to RL with a "weekend in Hell" run through House of Strahd (which then led us to an extended foray through Castles Forlorn, some "minis" from the Book of Crypts and beyond).
For a long while, I was able to largely avoid the temptation of the Dark Powers out of respect for our group's RL DM and his desire to "keep the curtains drawn" on the mystery of RL, but over time my resolve weakened and my research into the nature of the demiplane increased dramatically (read that as a significant amount of my adolescent income went to purchasing every RL product I could get my hands on
).
Thus, while I earned my roleplaying bones during the heyday of TSR in the early and mid-1990s (our gaming group dabbled in many of the published 2nd ed. settings over the years, with my interest being Planescape in particular), my corruption increased to he point that I could no longer disguise it from my friends and eventually I supplanted the old RL DM as the resident herald of the Dark Powers for our gaming group. I am pleased to say that my RL campaigns became a staple of the group's rotation for some time.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, however, and real life events eventually resulted in the dissolution of our gaming group as folks went their separate ways and (like so may of us) other pursuits abosrbed my time and attention (college, grad school, work, home). The vast store of my RL collection was consigned to a dusty existence in my personal Black Vault and I, dear reader, slipped into a self-imposed fugue as the Mists surrounded me.
However, the Mists have parted from time to time over the years and allowed my attention to focus on the Dread Realms periodically. I was awakened from my slumber long enough to witness the birth and demise of canon RL 3E under Arthaus' label and was able to secure copies of the entire line for the Vault before the village mob descended on the collection with fire and pitchfork in hand. Likewise, I continued to frequent the old Vallaki bookstore to purview its secrets before slipping back into a forgotten torpor once again.
Although I have not actively been gaming for many years now, I have kept up on the netbooks and other materials produced by the fan community and continue to enjoy the genre. I must commend the members of the FoS for their efforts to revivify the setting after the bookstore was shuttered for good - the value of your contributions and provision of a forum for fans cannot be overstated.
It is such a pleasure to see the continued vibrance and fan support for RL (especially the number friends from outside the US
) after all of these years and every year around this time, I feel the compulsion to open the Vault and draft a contribution for the QtR or here in the forums. In the future, I hope to be a more active member of the community and lend my words to the body of work enshrined here.
And a bit about me today: I am a 32 year-old resident of Virginia with one very patient fiancee and no dependents (pets or children). I currently live and work in the city of Richmond (a place with its own share of ghost stories) in a historic district about two blocks from the longtime home of Edgar Allan Poe (now a very fine museum celebrating the author - I encourage you to visit online at
http://www.poemuseum.org or in person if you ever find yourself in RVa).
It has been a pleasure (virtually) meeting all of you and I wish all the best.
P.S. - Many of you probably recognize my nom de plume, but for those who do not the references to "The Dark Pawn" and "Gwillam Dartram" are from the Dungeon magazine article "The Book of Souls" by Robert Mullin in #234.
