Of Swords & Wizardry

It's Swords & Wizardy Appreciation Day. On this day it's only fair to share one of the best evenings I ever had and Swords and Wizardry was part of it.

My family has always been into playing games, cut throat multi-board games of scrabble have been played into the wee hours, Diplomacy was played way back in the day, and Dungeons and Dragons was a regular part of our household for years. My father had been a regular member of my D&D group for decades.

One day back in December of 2009 my regular D&D game was cancelled becasue of a bout of scheduling-madness but my oldest son was really in the mood to play some fantasy RPG. I broke out my printout of Swords & Wizardry White-Box edition, and a level of the dismal depths and we rolled up characters using my variant races of Pygmy, Amazon and Cyclops.

The most unique part of the night was who the player were: my teen age son, my 14 year old son, my 12 year old daughter, my wife, and 5 month old son. The baby played a Pygmy cleric that could only speak the pygmy language and by convenient coincidence my wife played the only member of the party able to communicate with him. Of course my baby boy couldn't read, write or roll dice at the time but he got involved by the emotion and excitement of the group and was involved. He got into the fights and amusingly enough argued with my wife at one point over the course of action in the game. It was a magical evening for the whole family made possible by Swords & Wizardry.

Lot's of people play games as a means of escape, relaxation, intellectual challenge, but they are also a time to get together with people to build friendship and family.  Thanks Swords & Wizardry.