Gaming

So, about D&D. Lo, many years ago I was a shy boy off to college at the tender age of 17. Not too far into my First Year* I met a young woman named Ann, who shared my interest in Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. She told me about this game that she thought I would love, and she got me invited to go observe. I was skeptical. And at first, watching it (the group were almost all upper-class wargamer types, who looked upon us with barely-concealed condescension), it seemed kind of boring. However, they let us make up characters, and we were off, joining in on the tail-end of a multi-year campaign known as the 'Crown-quest' (the quest to destroy the Iron Crown of Morgoth; this predated the Silmarillion, where we learned that the crown had been made into manacles).

Anyway, I soon became quite addicted. At one point I was playing three times a week in different games, two run by the incomparable Pete: one in the known Middle-earth, and the other in the 'east.' Also at this time, Pete, Coleman and Kurt were working on adapting D&D with better rules...

Years passed, I graduated, and had a bit of a crisis. Would I go to graduate school? (Pretty much required of an Architecture career). I was absolutely not going back home to Pittsburgh. I managed to pretty quickly get dual part-time jobs at U.Va.'s Sci-tech and Architecture Libraries, so I had a decent full-time job, and I was living pretty inexpensively. Meanwhile, Pete and crew were gearing up to formally found ICE (Iron Crown Enterprises), though not with enough money to have more than one person on staff full-time. Slowly, though, ICE grew and we were able to hire ourselves, and I ended up working for ICE for over a decade. It was a wild and (mostly) fun time, and it gave me a lot of good experience for the future. I certainly don't regret going that way instead of Architecture.

*At U.Va., we do not say 'freshman,' etc. Just like it is the 'Grounds' not the 'Campus.'