First Post: My Introduction to Sympathetic Magic

My name is Joel, and I'm a fantasy addict.

I wasn't always this way.

Somebody get Michael Bay on the phone, I have his next movie idea.

When I was younger, I liked science fiction. Not the classy, literary science fiction I'll point out, but sci-fi. Space-marines with chainsaw swords and rocket launchers engaging in epic battles with robots armed with built-in plasma grenade launchers; in the sky, the blue sun is eclipsed by the cyborg battle station and the last human star freighter crashes down to earth. Cue the badass explosion in the background.

In short, I played a lot of Doom 3 and Halo, and I wasn't ashamed of it.

This was also the time I became familiar with the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the Hellboy franchise.

Great.
Now the space marines are fighting Cthulhu.
With zombies.
Zombies make everything better.

So what made me give that up? Why did I start to yearn for shores of silver and misty mountains, for flights of dragons and wizards towers? What made me leave behind the glorious world of Space Explosions (copyright pending)? It all started with a whim. It started with me, and my oldest friend, Lemming, when I still lived in my dad's basement.


We were browsing netflix. We found a funny looking movie based on Dungeons & Dragons.

No, not this one.

This one.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

That's what started it. If you enjoy nerd culture at all and you haven't seen this movie, I recommend it highly. I was always curious about DnD, but never had much of a chance to play it. After we watched this, we knew we had to. So we recruited the most elite fighting force known to mankind (pictured right).

We played around with D&D for about a year with me as the dungeon master, and I told my friend Chris he should try running a game.

The game went well and I was driving Chris home. I told him I liked the game and that I'd like to continue it, that the story was good and he came up with a great setting. I especially liked how he handled the magic in his world.

"Yeah," he said. "Sympathetic magic is the shit."

I gave him an odd look and asked "What's sympathetic magic?"

Boom.

Well, I can't say I didn't ask for it.