Dungeons & Dragons & Novels: Revisiting Pool of Radiance

…oh.

Assorted Musings:

• The only people who will likely understand what I’m saying here are the folks who read D&D and AD&D player’s guides back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, but for you all: Remember how they’d start with a short story about characters going on a short adventure, which would be interrupted to explain when players needed to make their various rolls for exploration and combat? The writing in Pool of Radiance felt like that except the narrator wasn’t allowed to interrupt. It was like an instruction manual for how to play D&D, just without the instructions.
• If you’re curious, there were various items of cosmic power bouncing around the Marvel comics universe before they were codified as the Infinity Gems in 1977.
• Ren calls his daggers “Right” and “Left.” Just sayin’.
• “Yes… and he has two boots!” is a line of dialogue which is treated as a major revelation.
• I am not going to tell you the year I finally got a PC in my life, but suffice it to say I missed out on playing Pool of Radiance. 
• Next up: I desperately want to check up on those crazy kids from Azure Bonds and The Wyvern’s Spur of The Finder’s Stone trilogy, so instead let’s force ourselves to revisit Prince Tristan and Robyn and those knuckleknobs over in The Moonshae Trilogy by reading the second volume, Black Wizards.

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