My first introduction to D&D and tabletop role-playing games in my small, somewhat conservative town was through other media based on or heavily inspired by the games, or media that inspired the game's creators. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, books about the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages and Merlin and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Rennaissance artists, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, books about Drizzt Do'Urden, Gauntlet arcade machines, Final Fantasy games and their monsters, Magic: the Gathering and its art, and of course picking up and pouring over boxes for Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale but never getting to play since my family didn't have a computer to play them on. Then, sometime around the first grade, I (and my dad) saved up enough money to buy a PlayStation 2 and eventually Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance followed by a pile of other RPGs and strategy guides and a used copy of the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook, hoping to learn the rules and play through The Sunless Citadel with my small group of friends and maybe even adventures in Middle-earth.
'D&D was a huge inspiration for me growing up' would be a huge understatement. It gave me countless hours of entertainment, helped my very reserved younger and older selves connect with future friends, inspired me to draw hordes of dragons and a trove of fantastical suits of armor and weapons and arcane artifacts, and spurned me to write dozens of stories on rainy days. As an adult, I have mostly engaged with D&D through watching recorded play sessions (the original RollPlay being the first campaign I watched and immediately loved), absorbing the work of other artists, and reading or listening to others talk about the game's rules and designs as opposed to reading the books cover-to-cover, making art and maps and adventures, and playing the game myself.
However, more recently I made my way back to absorbing little content from others and creating content myself, mostly in the form of extensive house rules, monster and map designs, short adventures, and writing short- and long-form articles about the game as a ghost writer for an obscure website tucked away in some dusty corner of the internet. Now, that obscure website and business — as far as I can see — is completely gone and, with it, all of that probably-not-good-enough-that-I-should-fret-over-it work I did for a few bucks.
With that and no other work to occupy myself with, I had to find and carve out a new place for me to retread the ideas and inspirations behind those lost articles as well as dig up and work on a smorgasbord of unrealized ideas for grand adventures, epic fantasy series, and campaign settings from my across my entire life, and share with, hopefully, somebody who finds some value in it.
Ichortide is a blog centered on reestablishing lost articles and musings about Dungeons & Dragons and, predominantly, the worlds of Dark Sun and the Forgotten Realms, as well as embarking on new explorations within those and other worlds.
Welcome.
However, more recently I made my way back to absorbing little content from others and creating content myself, mostly in the form of extensive house rules, monster and map designs, short adventures, and writing short- and long-form articles about the game as a ghost writer for an obscure website tucked away in some dusty corner of the internet. Now, that obscure website and business — as far as I can see — is completely gone and, with it, all of that probably-not-good-enough-that-I-should-fret-over-it work I did for a few bucks.
With that and no other work to occupy myself with, I had to find and carve out a new place for me to retread the ideas and inspirations behind those lost articles as well as dig up and work on a smorgasbord of unrealized ideas for grand adventures, epic fantasy series, and campaign settings from my across my entire life, and share with, hopefully, somebody who finds some value in it.
Ichortide is a blog centered on reestablishing lost articles and musings about Dungeons & Dragons and, predominantly, the worlds of Dark Sun and the Forgotten Realms, as well as embarking on new explorations within those and other worlds.
Welcome.
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