Aslaug's Axe Shed

Me: Hello, my name is Joan Jacobsen, and I’m a webcomic-reader.

Chorus: Hi Joan.

Me: *fiddle* *sit down*

Well, thankfully reading webcomics isn’t something that requires the equivalent of an AA meeting. But I do read webcomics. Some I read for only a short while before I lose interest. Others keep me hooked for a very long time.

Some I return to occasionally.

Amongst those I read as soon as they are updated are Sabrina Online … which should be obvious to anyone who read Transitions I and who knows the comic … and Order of the Stick.

Now, since many people frequenting this page are furries but not roleplayers, I don’t expect everyone to know what Order of the Stick is. But OotS (as it is commonly called) is an internet phenomenon amongst roleplayers and fans of the fantasy genre. It is created by the erstwhile ‘giant in the playground’ (yes, that’s the name he goes by) and consists of a meta-comic (meaning the characters break the fourth wall from time to time, seemingly well aware that they live in a comic-strip) drawn as stick-figures. It doesn’t sound like much fun but as stick figures go, these are very elaborate and EXTREMELY expressive.

Above all, OotS can make me literally pass out from lack of oxygen from laughing. It happened when I came across a strip in which the horribly evil villain (Xykon … a lich with a short attention span and a rather puerile perception of the world) suddenly realizes that his army of sacrificial cannonfo … I mean loyal henchmen … ahem … consists not of a few scattered goblins but ten whole legions of the stronger species of hobgoblins.

To wit he replies dryly: “I think I just had an evilgasm”.

And the world will never be the same again. ‘Evilgasm’ entered my vocabulary and has stuck there ever since.

So a few moments ago I checked the OotS homepage to see if there had been an update. I should be in bed, but I’m not because of what I saw there.

As some of you may recall, not too many months ago I mentioned that a gentleman named Gary Gygax had died. Mr. Gygax pioneered roleplaying games and is generally seen as the father of Dungeons and Dragons. To some, that would make him a horrible villainous evildoer and corrupter of youth. To people like me … he was a hero in the truest sense of the word. He was someone who set a positive example and helped give my life meaningful content through something as frivolous as games.

But this is not about Gary Gygax. This is about his co-conspirator, one might say. This is about Dave Lance Arneson, who passed away on the 7th of April. Mr. Arneson co-authored the first version of Dungeons and Dragons with Mr. Gygax, and while Mr. Gygax was a great man for rules and systems, Mr. Arneson was first and foremost a storyteller. The guy who thought “hey, these games need to happen somewhere” … and so he created the first true gaming world called ‘Blackmoor’. Today, I don’t think more than maybe a handful of roleplayers use that game-setting anymore. Not because it’s bad but because there are so many and this one is nearly forty years old. I mean, it was released in 1972. It’s even older than me, and I’m OLD for a roleplayer … as people keep reminding me

The point is, Mr. Arneson came up with the concept of a game-setting. He pioneered ideas like dungeon-crawling and the thought of hit-points and levels. All something roleplayers today are painfully familiar with and without which the hobby as it is known to players all over the world today, wouldn’t exist. It is that simple. Without Mr. Arneson’s work … millions and millions of people around the world would not have had this fantastic hobby to enjoy themselves with.

Without his work … and without his collaboration with aforementioned, late Mr. Gygax, James Bjerkholt in Norway would not have started playing Dungeons and Dragons. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have introduced me to these games during a family holiday to Norway back in 1986. James wouldn’t have sat down to draw a comic-strip about a wizard trying to catch a tiny dragon in a trap, but ending up in the trap himself much to the amusement of the dragon. And without that comic strip … well …

Let’s just say that the freight train of my imagination was parked happily, collecting dust on some unused mental rail-tracks before that comic strip acted as a supercharger. And suddenly, that imagination was sent hurtling along on a journey that has still not ended and which never will end.

As I have told James myself: without that comic strip, I would probably not be writing today. Without that, I would not have begun reading English on the high level needed to read and understand roleplaying rulebooks already at the age of ten. I would not have grasped English the way I do now.

In that sense … if one backtracks a bit … Mr. Arneson’s ideas was the original seed to why I write now, and what he started had been perhaps the most formative element of my teenage years. And for thirteen painfully long years, it was my only escape from the waking nightmare that was my life.

For all these reasons, I consider Mr. Arneson a hero.

For all the good his idea has brought to me through circumspect ways.

Rest in peace, Dave … and keep the dice rolling wherever you are now.