Rewind 24 years, we had a 12 year old boy that wasn't overly fond of reading. Said boy got a nasty flu and had to be picked up from school and kept home for several days. On the way home from school Mom side tripped to K Mart and the boy saw a boxed set of novels that caught his eye. Mom noticed this bought it, said boy started reading book one soon as they were in the car had the first book finished in about 2 days and was well into the second book. inside a week the whole Trilogy was finished adn I... er said boy started reading it all over again. The authors of the trilogy were Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis and that trilogy was not The Dragonlance Chronicles, or even the Legends (Twins) it wasn't Dragonlance at all it was the Darksword Trilogy - Which apparently as of a search I did last nigh now has a 4th book to it that I must acquire and devour.
I didn't even learn about Dragonlance for another 3 years. (I quickly devoured as many of those as I was able to get my hands on too.)
I have many Literary heroes but I've actually gotten to meet two of them up close and personal and have very brief conversations with them during GenCon - I haven't had a chance to go in years but of all the years of going my greatest thrill was speaking with them and getting my paperback copies of Chronicles signed - My wife gets mad at me because she'll reach up to grab one to read and I'll freak out (she's a cover bender and I try to keep my books decent - don't always succeed but I try)
Tracy and Margaret took a fat weak cowardly boy, and showed me that even I could be the hero of my own story through the characters in their novels (and the other authors that also had given their voices to Dragonlance especially Michael Williams with Weasel's Luck and Galen Beknighted). The characters spoke to me I could see pieces of myself in many of the heroes and some of the villains and they actually made me take a good hard look at myself and made me think of what I wanted to do with my life what path I wanted to tread to be the hero or the villain. That helped a lot with my life thank you.
Tracy his son Curtis and Howard Tayler (You might remember Howard's brief Pimpage in Those that Help - He's part of Writing Excuses which I apparently spelled his name wrong My apologies Howard)have recently released XDM Xtreme Dungeon Mastery - a very funny very astute look at gaming and bringing fun and excitement back to the table. In recent years the games I've attended I started falling asleep at the table (well we had 12 players and more than an agreeable amount of rules lawyers then again 1 isn't an agreeable amount because the freaking ARGUE all the time whoops this isn't my rant blog this is my pimpage blog need to reel it in here.) because of all the rules bickering and asking to be woken when it was two players before my turn so I can spend 20 minutes formulating my 6 second round and not delay anyone else (sometimes I still had an additional 20 minutes to goof off to boot)The games I've been playing in sorely needed this book. I sorely needed this book. Found out that a couple of DMs that I've gamed with and myself instinctively used parts of this book before it even sprang into existence. It's part satire, and part common sense with a little dash of uncommon sense with a sprig of HOLY CRAP THAT'S COOL with a little bit of [REDACTED]. I'll rate it further when I have a chance to finish the book and use some of it's secrets. (My brother-in-law managed to pick me up a copy at Gencon and had it autographed. It's been rainy so it stays safe at the house out of the possibility of a torrential downpour)
Sites for Tracy and Margaret can be found below.
All in all I just wanted to say Thank you to Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis for inspiring me to read, and to dream a little more while I'm at it.
http://trhickman.com/
http://xtremedungeonmastery.com/
http://killerbreakfast.com/
http://www.margaretweis.com/wp/
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