Huckster in the Making

You see them at every convention; they are the hucksters in the dealer room who sell you everything from odd-shaped dice to supplements to velveteen bags and autographed photos of your favorite "Trek" cast members. Very early in my adventure, I became one of these elite.

The story continues where it began, at Jack Powers' house in a small town in Ohio.

To say I was fascinated with The Game would be to grossly understate my enthusiasm. That first encounter had run well into the wee hours. I outlasted everyone, including the game master, and would have cheerfully gone all night. We called it quits just after three in the morning.

I awakened on Jack’s living room couch momentarily confused as to where I was. Slowly, it came back to me. More than 3 feet of snow had fallen overnight and the snowplows had been overwhelmed by the ferocity of the storm. The streets were impassible and I hadn’t been able to drive home. Believe me when I say that this would not; by a long shot be the last time I would wake up on a strange couch after a night of orc and balrog slaying.

Over the next 30 odd years I would fall asleep in some pretty off-the-wall places in the wake of The Game. That next day though, I was pretty much overwhelmed by the raw joy of having participated in such a wondrous thing as Tunnels and Trolls. My imagination had spun up into such a state of overload that I was convinced that I could be a game master the equal of Jack.

He has, to this day, remained the better player between the two of us. He is more methodical and better with the dice than I am and he has more patience with "Monty Haul" Players than I do. He strings them along; whereas I just kill them all and let the gods sort them out.

I was young and pretty cocky in the mid-seventies. I foresaw nothing less than the bright lights of fantasy-fiction fame and glory ahead of me, despite the lack of a practical backup of a college education. For all practical purposes, we players with Jack in the lead had written a novella the previous night as the plot for the game unfolded.

I figured that I was at least that good.

I was fired up. I wanted to know where I could get my own rulebooks and figurines. Where did they come from? How much did they cost?

Jack explained that they had come from a "gamecon" he had attended the previous year. He revealed that another one was being held in Cincinnati two weeks from the day of our conversation.

"Would you like to go?" He asked.

Would a duck like to visit a pond?

That first convention was miniscule compared to subsequent cons I attended in those first years. I don’t remember much about it. There were hucksters set up in a special room with everything for sale I needed. Cincinnati was the home of Ral Partha, so naturally Partha figures were my first. Damian the Dangerous acquired horns on his helmet and a physical representation of his prized kris. I bought a bard figure that later became Freerover, the perpetual storyteller in my books. And I bought a 5-header hydra for my own (as yet unrealized) campaign, figuring that it was the most bad-ass thing that could roll an attack dice, a speculation that turned to truth in a near massacre the first time Jack "borrowed" the monster.

I became aware that day that Tunnels and Trolls wasn’t really considered "the" game. Such reverence was reserved for Dungeons and Dragons. That game was more widely pushed by the vendors in attendance and more universally played in the game room next door and in the wide world in general.

As a matter of fact, T&T was considered by many gaming purists of the day to be somewhat of an upstart and a copycat. I had become enthralled to an underdog.

One thing stands out in my memory like a bright beacon in that fog enshrouded first convention. It was the first time I met Mr. Lou Zocchi

He was huckster extraordinaire. Outgoing, friendly, talkative and standing amidst tables stocked with the most gorgeous goodies imaginable, Zocchi was a dervish, a dynamo. He seemed able to hold three conversations at once while simultaneously accommodating another half dozen customers. It took the better part of half an hour to get a word in edgewise. By that time, after watching this master at work, a germ of an idea had formed in my mind.

The earliest role-playing game rulebooks were, for the most part, products of pre-computer desktop publishing. Typeset by typewriter, or a changeable typeface IBM Selectric. On Zocchi’s table that day, most everything was "kitchen table" quality printing and binding, hand collated, 8.5 X 11, stapled, black and white in a zip lock bag. The D&D stuff was of a slightly better quality though by a slim margin. T&T was exactly as described, a hand-typed loosely written set of general guidelines.

My idea was this; I had it in my mind to put my own book into play. I didn’t want to be a "just a gamer." I wanted to be Ken St Andre or Gary Gygax. People should play in my world. It looked easy enough.

So I asked Zocchi a question, the answer to which would change my life forever and enroll me as a bit player in one of the greatest pop culture revolutions of the next two decades.

Mr. Zocchi, " I asked, with the innocence of Oliver Twist in my intention, "Do you buy books to sell from people other than the big guys?"

"Call me Lou," he answered kindly, turning his attention to me. "Let me put it this way. . ."

The Emperor of Gypsy Hucksters then proceeded to lay out an hour-long lecture on the nuts and bolts of game publishing, including the price structure, the necessity of illustrations and the importance of zip lock bags to the universe, as I needed to know it. He was frank and to the point on every detail. His lecture was an entire college level course on marketing to the FRP trade.

By the time our conversation ended, I knew exactly what to do. That took place on a Friday. It was a three-day convention.

That night at the public library saw me studiously perusing through reference books searching for information on the topic of demons. I went through a complete who, what, where, when and why crash course on the topic. I immersed myself in the occult, both fictional and "real," filling a spiral notebook with names and descriptions of notable minions of Hell. So driven was I, that I quickly amassed a sizable database, too complex, I saw immediately, and realized I would not be able to complete a book to sell to Zocchi by the time he left on Sunday.

Saturday, I created a micro-world with non-player characters, destinations, intrigue and substance. I got a printing friend to photocopy two-dozen copies, which I collated and stapled with Jack’s help late Saturday night. It was as true a labor of love as anything I had ever done in my life to that moment.

Sunday, Jack and I returned to the convention, where I pitched my creation to The Poobah of Kitchen Table Publishers, Lou Zocchi. I honestly suspect that he was acting more out of pity than potential for profit when he asked, "How much will they sell for?"

I hadn’t given it a thought.

Jack suggested three dollars, which would give me a buck and a half for each copy (actually, I am rounding it off because the discount schedule is actually more complicated and I don’t feel like doing the math here). I nixed that idea and set the retail at ten dollars, which would put a lump in my pocket if sold. Zocchi pronounced ten to be too much and offered a compromise of seven dollars.

Sold American!

KaChing!

Dimensions and Doors became my first ever sale of a product written by me. That night I returned home with the hoped for lump in my pocket, having sold 20 copies (the world supply minus 4 for archive) for a princely sum in the coin of the day. To me, it was the beginning of my life.

I was 26 years old.

Jack and I celebrated by going out to dinner before returning home from the big town.

In truth, I think that Lou saw something that even I did not see at the time, besides the hunger in my eyes to be "somebody" that burns in ever kid. However clumsy and halting, even by the standards of the time Dimensions and Doors might have been, Zocchi, ever the guru, I believe had detected future works in the making, grinding away in my mind. I like to believe that Zocchi saw the future publisher and future huckster I would become.

Now maybe that’s wishful thinking. Or Maybe it assigns fair amounts of mysticism and hero worship to a man who in my opinion deserves far more credit than he gets for jump-starting the FRP industry. Who really knows?

By handing me cash for 20 home made books that he knew had been assembled in the space of a single weekend, this master huckster made more than just my day. He made my life. No matter what else I did in subsequent years, including some pretty strange travels and bizarre jobs, FRP publishing always kept me from starving; and always, always ready to look at a new product at a convention I attended, Lou Zocchi was an omnipresent mentor, critic and friend.

After that first convention, I went back to my CB Radio store, set up my typewriter behind the counter and began to bootleg spare minutes from my daily routine toward the creation of my next book. Our gaming group played game after game, filling in the blanks of history and geography, with me paying close attention to every detail of every scenario. Together, Jack and I created "The World."

Damien The Dangerous grew in strength, dexterity, constitution, charisma and experience points. He was soon joined in weekly "dungeons" for that’s what we called them, by a variety of player characters from other members of the play circle.

As a group, or more often as a gaggle, due to so many newbies constantly joining the ongoing game, we ravaged the one dungeon and soon began exploring the outdoor expanse of The World, as it came to be known.

Eventually, Damien became so high level and powerful, as to be able to dispatch foes of exponentially stronger and more vicious non-player characters and monsters until he eventually amassed a fortune large enough to retire and live off the gold and experience resulting from the slaying of countless Ocs, bears, dragons, wolverines and assorted other creatures, including dozens of "guest evil wizards."

His 3x5 card expanded into a small notebook as the need grew greater to catalog his many accrued possessions. No matter what else, though, Damien always carried that first Kris with him, even after he had successfully retrieved an "Orb of Ultimate and Indiscriminate Killing," which could take down a balrog at a mile from a town while a player spooned ice cream in the local parlor, reading a copy of The Weekly Dungeon News written in Orcish.

Harry Potter? Hell, we were killing Voldemort when JK Rowling was a schoolgirl. We just didn’t know his name!

I placed 25 copies of my second book, Castles and Kingdoms, with Zocchi, which in turn, he distributed worldwide. On E-bay now a single copy of C&K can easily fetch a hundred dollar bill, though some critics cannot fathom why.

I think it is a simple matter of rarity. I got in almost at the beginning. While the number of copies I sold seems miniscule, it was a fair amount by my standard of poverty at the time. Now, one copy of a hundred printed in 1978 is a big deal and fetches real dollars.

Things were working for me on many levels toward the end of the 70's. CB Radios were jumping out of my door, meaning that I had money for gas and freedom of movement on weekends. I routinely traveled to CB Jamborees to sell radios. Why not do the same with the books, which now numbered three, Dimensions and Doors, Castles and Kingdoms and the controversial and much maligned by conservative Christians, Demons and Notmen. It became apparent to me that it was time to start going go to game convention.

I asked Lou about it during one of our phone conversations. He suggested GenCon 11, which was being held soon at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside, outside of Kenosha. I asked Jack if he wanted to go and he turned me down. With many, many children in his house and another on the way, he had too many responsibilities and couldn't take time off his job.

For this game con, I would be flying solo.

Armed with 100 copies of the newest book, Demons and Notmen, I set out from Ohio for Wisconsin, a place I has previously never been. I also had copies of Castles along as well.

I wanted to set up my own table and sell retail. The opportunity to collect the full dime off the cover price was alluring. More so, I believe I secretly wanted to be Lou Zocchi. He was enormously popular, greeted warmly by gamers and gurus as their equal. I wanted that to be me.

That convention, I was woefully unprepared. I knew nothing of the rules of huckster rooms and laws of pre-reservation. For all the distance I had driven, I ended up sitting on the sidelines. But the sidelines I sat upon were an education all on their own.

The Adventure Begins

They say that just about any event can be life changing, "they" being the invisible philosophers who continuously comment on such things. In real life, the truth of the matter is that one single event can send you off in an entirely different direction from the pathway you are currently trudging on. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is seldom evident at the time, and is best viewed in retrospect.

For me, the single most life-altering event of my life was Tunnels and Trolls, the Fantasy Adventure Game authored by Ken St Andre, play tested by The Phoenix Cosmic Circle, and published by Flying Buffalo's Rick Loomis.

Most folks, when the words "Fantasy Adventure Game" is bandied about, immediately think of "Dungeons and Dragons" and the Wizards of the North in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. Indeed, the runaway train that has been D&D for the last 30 years is the poster child for role playing games, having earned that title through sheer talent, tenacity and creative firepower.

T&T, as it is affectionately known, was in 1976 and is still today, the redheaded stepchild of gaming. While not without its supporters, who point out ease of play and simplicity of rules, T&T never attained the overall financial success and national recognition that D&D achieved. No movies were ever made about "Grimtooth's Traps" or "City Of Terrors." Conversely, T&T never saw headlines linking its players to the rise in satanic worship or teen suicide rate either, so that actually worked out pretty well.

Prior to the winter of 1976, I was blissfully unaware of role-playing games. I had a love of Science Fiction and a deep yearning to be a writer that dated all the way back to my childhood and wrote short stories that went unpublished as most do, written by wannabees and everyday dreamers. Back then, I owned a CB Radio store in a small Ohio town and that was my world, the world of 10-4 good buddy and CB Jamborees. In attending the latter, the seeds of my future hucksterism were already being sewn, but I simply had no experience to do what I really wanted to do which was write. All that changed due in large part to my friend, Jack Powers.

Jack was a family man, a young Mormon father with a growing brood of bright, delightful children and a beautiful, patient wife who made better macaroni and cheese than my own mom. This alone was a powerful incentive for me to accept an invitation to a small party; a gathering of game enthusiasts (and cheese lovers) to play this new game called Tunnels and Trolls. To help my decision along, snow was predicted to fall over Southeastern Ohio that Friday night and TV reception in my apartment was really bad. So, T&T it would be, whatever that was.

They say that you always remember your first kiss, your first love, your first car and your first dungeon character. They are right. As the snow began to fall in late afternoon and the smell of popcorn wafted through Jack's house, we players sat around his dining room table rolling six-sided dice to determine the Prime Requisites for the characters who were about to journey into the depths of Jack Powers' imagination (with a little help from Ken St Andre).

His name was Damian The Dangerous, that first character. He had unusually high Charisma and luck, fairly ordinary strength, enough dexterity to handle a sword, and the constitution of a full sized luxury Ford. He was, what was to be categorized later by vastly more experienced gamers, fortuitously rolled.

The game began where every game I have ever played start off - in the tavern on the edge of town among a gaggle of suspicious, nefarious, vociferous and colorfully necessary non-player-characters, come forever after to be known as "bar denizens." Questions were asked, gold changed hands, maps were acquired and a cocky virgin gamer got his first taste of combat in a 6-sided dice shoot-out with a loudmouthed bully. I didn't kill him, but I damn sure taught him a lesson in T&T fisticuffs. In the process, I also learned that life (or death) is as fickle as a single dice roll.

Our little party, under the guidance of Gamemaster Jack, who had a genuine sense of terrain and detail, headed out from the tavern and onto "The Road," that universal highway upon which all new gamers tread for the first time as they seek gold, glory and those all-important Experience Points that allow advancement, improvement and a better chance at surviving the sudden charge of a rabid cave bear.

Any gamer who reads this has traveled "The Road," so there is no need to go into detail. Suffice it to say that the number of monsters encountered was proportionate to the amount of Dr. Pepper and popcorn consumed. It was a bloodbath. Had that game ever been produced as a module (as so many play-tested games have) it could easily have been entitled, "Die, Monster, Die."

At that time in my life I had yet to encounter Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit and had no clue what an "orc" was or for that matter why there were a blue million of them hiding behind every tree and bend in the road. All I (and Damien by proxy) knew was that each dead Orc added EP’s (experience points) and that their weapons were consistently better than the one carried by me.

By the time our group arrived at the dungeon, we had slain so many Orcs that the odds of finding one of the loathsome creatures with a really good sword had finally caught up with me. Though it came within a chicken’s whisker of killing me, the last Orc gave up a Kris (sword of meteoric iron with magic absorption properties) that rolled extra dice in combat and just had a really cool name.

Damien The Dangerous was on his way to immortality.


Back in the "real" world, the weather was out of control. Snow was falling so thickly outside Jack’s house that one could easily have mistaken the storm for the beginning of the next ice age. The wind gusted from time to time hard enough to literally rattle the windows. Inside, in Jack’s dining room though, it was warm and toasty. Except for an occasional chagrined whistle at an unusually aggressive wind gust, we were pretty much oblivious to any world except the one where Damien and party struggled with a door - the door that stood between them and the seriously large chest of gold coins some wizard had left laying around as bait to entice foolish adventurers to enter his underground lair where he would kill them all for fun and profit.

So far, I had trudged Damien down roads, across fields, through villages and hamlets and up to farmhouse doors on a fascinating, time consuming, humorous and detailed journey toward a mythical cache of gold coins and experience points awaiting just around the next bend. Now though, the real work lay ahead - but first, somebody had to open that stupid door!

In later years I faced some of the best gamemasters in the country, in Albany New York, and on Long Island, Salt lake City, Dallas, and GenCon in Milwaukee under the guidance of the incredible Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss of Dragonlance fame (Tower of High Sorcery). Those games were tough, but that stormy Ohio night in the mid-1970’s we spent two hours opening a single door and by the time we got the lock picked and the magical password figured out, every player in the room was ready to take a real-time sword to our gamemaster.

More than 100 angry orcs, armed to the teeth and hungry for blood, were approaching from the road. With time running out, the door finally sprung open, only to slam noisily shut behind us after we had scrambled through, trapping us. A room by room search ensued. Hall monster combat, narrow escapes, tragic and sudden death of a rogue carelessly played by a sleepy 14 year old preluded the discovery of exotic sometimes magical treasure items and objects od rarity, beauty and usefulness. It was a classic game played at one time or another by every role player who ever opened a book.

Damian the Dangerous collected a fair haul of loot that night. In addition to the kris, he found a "Dagger Of Knowing" which vibrated in its scabbard whenever orcs were within a hundred yards proximity, and a "carrysack" that could magically stash up to 300 pounds of "stuff," while weighing no more than 10 pounds to the person carrying it.

That snowy night in Ohio, all those years ago was a grand introduction to the world of 'what if," an imaginary adventure of the first order. Jack was, and still is, a meticulous game master, who missed his calling by never taking up fiction writing.

Looking back on that first game, I would have to say that we wrote a complete fantasy short story with our interaction that would have been publishable at the time. I know, most "game fiction" is pretty awful, but the story that game told would have sold. I am certain of it!

By the end of the night, I was hooked on gaming, hooked on fantasy and my life became, forever after and inexorably intertwined with the world of fantasy role playing.

Now, 34 years later, as I put finger to keyboard to recall these events, it seems like only yesterday that I gulped a handfull of popcorn, grabbed 4 6 sided dice and said to an expectant gamemaster, "I attack the first orc with my Kris," and threw a blood spattering combat roll that sent the creature straight to the netherhells.