Autumn Is Gam(ing) Season...

No, not football. Tabletop roleplaying. It was autumn of 1977 when I fell in love with the Rankin/Bass Hobbit, and autumn of 1979 when I found out we were moving just as things were getting good with my local D&D group. More happily (and against the odds) it was autumn when we moved back (a different neighborhood, but with new friends) culminating in a season spent anticipating the Holmes Basic I knew Mom had gotten me because yours truly wasn't remotely subtle. Christmas 1980, the ending to a perfect fall... 

And so for me at least, autumn has always been (tabletop) gaming season; but why, beyond circumstance and random history, is it so? I suspect the following:

(1) Autumn is cooler. You start moving indoors for cozier entertainments. I'm sure this has changed, what with computer games and the mainstreaming of D&D; and, of course, I played over the summer months as well, although family vacations plucked various party members beyond recall, so maybe they weren't always the best months to be a roleplayer.

(2) October brings ghosts and goblins to every house for weeks ahead of the big night, and these channel the supernatural monsters in just about every dungeon.

(3) Christmas, the true culmination of autumn, brings many people's first gaming experience when not new additions to a pre-existing obsession. Birthdays and Christmas remain the perfect times to grow a collection. Games abound anymore. You can get a fascimile of early D&D for free (Basic Fantasy); but back then, rulebooks were precious comodities.

Of course, your experience may differ. Birthdays happen year-round, and the alchemy of circumstance means that everyone's gaming season has its own trajectory. 

And speaking of autumn, it's coming this week, and after a summer working on Mydwandr, finally available in hardcover, a break is definitely in the cards. Don't be suprised if Pits Perilous resumes a monthy format. Between Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield, there's finally time to relax and explore some digital worlds. Not to worry though, autumn's fantasy bona fides won't be forgotten. There's an excellent chance the cooler (and shorter) months inspire more, not less, gaming goodness. In the meantime, have the best of all possible seasons... 

But You're Not Doing It Right...

How often do we hear that online? Gatekeepers are hardly an endangered species, and they absolutely thrive in certain environments. This stuff rarely interests me; but it came up in a friend's feed last week, and since it involved something I am interested in, original Dungeons & Dragons, I couldn't resist tossing my hat into the proverbial ring. My friend, it seems, was fighting the right side of an argument with an anonymous online other, an argument about the pastime and its rightful execution. You know, the gatekeeper's refrain... 

Specifically, they argued that since OD&D saw itself as a fantastic medieval wargame, miniatures and map boards were mandatory. Theater of the mind stuff was wrong because a free and open-ended game demands restrictions, apparently. I call this indefensible (and decidedly wrong-headed), but there's a lesson here for fantasy's gatekeepers. First though, this argument can't go unanswered; and believe it or not, the stakes couldn't be higher, especially in a hobby where literally everything happens upstairs.

While D&D (in all its flavors) is a fantasy simulation, that's not really what made it great or allowed it to grow beyond its wargaming base. It certainly helped. A lot, actually. But it was its open endedness that allowed it to become more than some niche pastime known only to a wargaming subculture. Gygax saw its potential immediately, so much so that he brought it up, the ultimate hint, in his Foreword. You'll have no shortage of players, Gary promised, which included those not by any stretch of the imagination ardent wargamers. Spot on...

And you can't get past the Introduction before finding out that miniatures were optional, although recommended. To quote Gygax, miniatures are not required. Now Outdoor Survival, for its gameboard no doubt, completed the list of required items, suggesting that counters, cardboard or otherwise, were an assumed element. But common sense was enough to know that Gary wouldn't tether his cash cow to another company's product forever. Anyway, our requirements are down to a lot less than our online gatekeeper thought.

Now it's almost certain that miniatures figured prominently in many early games. There's the famous (if not legendary) plastic dinosaurs (not even in a loose sense) that inspired D&D's now-ubiquitous owlbears and rust monsters. But not everyone could afford miniatures, which weren't yet available in the variety of later years, leaving many groups to forego even their cardboard substitutions. Where I grew up, D&D was catching on in so-called gifted classes at school, where non-wargamers were drawn to its potential sans-accounterments...

It quickly became theater of the mind, and why not? Of course, this speaks to the evolution of D&D away from its original wargaming roots, validating the gatekeepers who might rightly observe that the game was no longer being played as originally concieved. Except that Gary, a practical creative, made the tentative nature of any so-called requirements certain from OD&D's opening pages. At any rate, playing the game differently is another thing completely, especially given how obviously accomodating Gygax and Arneson were.*

Take away D&D's miniatures, and you take away an option. But take away the ability to tailor the game and make it your own, and it's reduced to Monopoly with Avalon Hill influences doomed to nerd subculture obscurity. Anyway, I can't imagine denying our hobby that which sets it apart. The gate swings both ways, and it has no guardians, only clever custodians bringing their active imaginations to life. Appropriately, OD&D ends offering one final nugget of  wisdom: decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way...

*Gygax would later clamp down (hard) on his creation; but this was pureblood OD&D.