23 August 2025 Summer's End and Memories

 23 August 2025 Summer's End and Memories 

    Where did it all begin? When was the first time I knew I was interested in fantasy? If I really think about it, I'd have to say it began with my grandmother, Eleanor Irons-Reilly. Ma, as we called her, worked at a department store called Gilchrists. Her manager was a fan of The Hobbit, and got her to read the book in the late 60s or early 70s. In 1974, my grandparents bought a small cottage in Marshfield, Massachusetts, a place that has become the most important location in my life (but that's another story...), and my younger brother and I spent many, many days there with our grandparents. I distinctly remember Ma telling us about Bilbo and the trolls, and how the troll said Bilbo would barely be a mouthful. Later, when playing on the lawn, which seemed enormous to small boys who grew up in the city, we put our hoods over our heads and scrabbled over a rock, pretending we were dwarves fighting trolls in the fog that had rolled in from the ocean. 

    Two years later, the Rankin-Bass animated version of The Hobbit was shown on network TV, and my brother and I begged to stay up late (9PM!) and watch it.    I was eight years old, knew some of the story from my grandmother, and had my mind just fucking blown. It was amazing, and those two things--Ma's stories and the old cartoon--set me on the path I continue to walk today. We had a record player, and a record of The Hobbit (along with a picture book) so I basically memorized it by listening over and over and over again. I'm not sure when I read Tolkien's actual book: it must have been in the sixth grade or there abouts, but that year--in the spring of 1981--a friend asked me, "Have you ever heard of Dungeons&Dragons?" And here we are, 44 years later. I'll write more about my early D&D experiences later.

    "Summer's date hath all too short a lease..." as the Bard writes, so I find myself staring down the dark  barrel of back to school time. It is what it is: this is year 26 for me, with just two or three left after this one. I have had a lovely summer: a lot of reading, many trips to the beach, a great deal of exercise, and countless hours sitting on my screened in porch, listening to podcasts, drinking coffee, and pondering TTRPGs. I am a fortunate fellow.

19 August 2025 Wicked Place Games

     Welp, my little brother has a TTRPG bee in his bonnet, and wants to get more serious--maybe more oriented, is a better world--toward actually creating and selling game materials. We are both approaching retirement age in our respective careers; I'll be done (God willing) in less than four years, and he's not far off of that, so what we've long talked about and thought about is starting to come to life. 

    Way back in the day, when D&D 3.0 was alive, we came up with the idea of Fionna Games, and wanted to publish some Celtic-themed materials, but someone beat us to the punch, life got in the way for all of u (wives, kids houses, careers, etc.) and it just never happened. Dennis (my little brother) is a very organized person; 20+ years of service in the United States Army does that to a person, and I know he's had this on his mind for decades now. He's really good at logistics and organization; at creating a plan and executing it. At researching things, then making best-information-available decisions. 

    I'm good at making shit up.

    So we've decided to take the next few years to create lots and lots of content, in the hopes that in the not too distant future, we can actually turn some of our lifelong hobby into a retirement gig. I am not concerned about making money at all: this is more about filling my time doing something I love with the people I love, so it's a nice plan and completely doable. 

    When we were children living in Somerville, MA back in the 70s, we used to call this staircase 'the Wicked Place' because, in our little kid perspectives, this wall was like the battlements of a castle, looking out over a mighty realm, especially as the sun was setting. Imagine Mufasa holding up baby Simba as they gazed over the Pride Lands in wonder and awe. That's what this view as like for us as kids, and in our New England parlance, "wicked" means good, or amazing, or incredible. Wicked Place Games goes back just about as far as my memories do. Seems like a good place to start.