My other life

For many years, before I became the witty, urbane, cool, sophisticated arts hipster* that I am today, I was, to use the sadly underused Australian vernacular, a dag.

I wore glasses and had long unkempt hair. I spent most of my school lunchtimes and recesses in the library, mainly to avoid being beaten up** by the footy players, farmers' sons, and other assorted rednecks who populated the small country high school I attended. I read The Lord of the Rings obsessively, a total of 18 times between the ages of 13 and 19, and taught myself to write in Elvish and Dwarvish script. I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons every weekend.

I eventually graduated to playing other role-playing games, such as the excellent and atmospheric Call of Cthulhu, based on the gothic fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (pictured, right); and the dark, baroque sword-and-sorcery game Stormbringer, based on the passionate pulp fictions of English fantasist Michael Moorcock.

Then I started writing for said games, and to my utter delight, they were published by Chaosium, a Californian-based company. I still have a photocopy of the first cheque they sent me; my first ever professional payment as a writer.

About eight or nine years ago I drifted away from role-playing; I was burnt out from churning out product for Chaosium and another US company, White Wolf, and the new edition of Stormbringer I'd helped write and develop, called Elric! after the albino anti-hero of Moorcock's most popular stories, was unceremoniously axed by the company because it wasn't selling (nor had they properly supported it and promoted it, but that's another story).

Two years ago though, I started to get back into gaming. It's hard to coordinate my regular gaming groups, between everyone's diverse committments, my work, their kids, etc. But god I love it. It's like opening an old diary, an old chapter of your life, and discovering that it's still fresh, more real than memory, more solid than nostalgia. I've even written a new sourcebook for Stormbringer, which Chaosium should be publishing soon.

Now all I have to remember is where I put my dice collection...


*This is patently untrue.

** This didn't work; I still got bashed regularly. "I'm bored," I once overhead one scamp say. "Let's go bash up Wattsy."