DANIEL F. SCHERL IS A WRITER.

As you can imagine, growing up I played a fair amount of D&D. It was something I looked forward to more than most things. But somewhere in there, and I don't actually remember specifically when, but I believe it was in the early 1980’s, I decided that I wanted to create a new character for a campaign that we were going to be running. I wanted to dip my toe into multi-class characters, as I hadn’t done that before. I thought I’d start with two classes: Fighter / Magic User.

Now I don't remember who it was, but someone back then got a little annoyed when I said I wanted to go multi-class. They asked me: "Are you sure you want to do that? It's a lot to remember and a lot of stats, and a lot more to deal with than just leveling up one class, and ya know... maybe you oughta stick to a single class."

You should know this (I'm chuckling writing this part): I'm not a very competitive person. But I can be a bit stubborn about some things. When someone looks at me and tries to tell me that I might want to reconsider doing something I actually want to do because they think I might not be able to handle it, well…

I created this new character, and just to irritate them a little more, I made her three classes, not two. Fighter. Magic User. Thief. And I named her...

Myra Thorfann.

Over the next two decades, I almost always played her. I took her from campaign to campaign and friendship to friendship. Over the years, I leveled her up. Albeit… painfully slowly because I did have to level up three classes instead of one, but eventually, Myra became so powerful, that she pretty much laid waste to, or outsmarted, anyone or anything any dungeon master tried to put in front of her / me. It was a blast!

However, there does come a time with a character like that, that you have to put them away because they actually become so high level that it's nowhere near as fun to play them as it is a lower level character. At least it wasn't at that time. I think today, the world of role playing has expanded so much that it might be really fun to play a character that powerful. Anyway, Myra was put in a folder, and alongside all my other D&D stuff, set up on a shelf to play again at some point hopefully soon.

Then, "real life" intervened and I stopped playing D&D entirely because I decided, in my apparent lack of wisdom at the time, that it was a much better idea to have some failed romantic relationships, ignore what I really wanted to do with my life, and live for other people so that I could spend more than another decade losing sight of myself.

I strongly do not recommend this. On the scale of fun, where one hundred is the most fun experience you could ever have in your life, and zero is you being run over by a bulldozer while having your nose hairs ripped out one-by-one and all the while you're being forced to listen to whatever music you truly hate, that was about a minus four.

I advise the opposite.

Eventually, I ended up in Los Angeles and with a group of acquaintances and friends, mostly actors, who hadn't ever played D&D, and they wanted me to start up a game. I gave it some thought and one day had (what I think was) a really cool idea:

What if I dusted off Myra, and started a campaign for them in her future where I imagined she'd come to power as Queen and ruled peacefully over a beautiful land? It would be fun for me to take my lifelong character out of her folder, and have her be a guiding force for the players to send them on quests and nudge them along where they needed to go. I'd get to actually play her again, only this time as an NPC (non-player character), keeping her in the background, but still very much a part of the story. I sat down at the computer and started writing out some ideas for a storyline and realized I had quite a lot of material in my brain. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and then got everyone together.

There were six players. All actors / entertainers of some kind. They rolled up their characters, and once we were all ready, the first thing I said to them in game was:

“Welcome to Aladairelle.”

That campaign lasted about six months in real life, playing once a week, and it was awesome! Seriously, it was rad. After it ended, I put my D&D stuff away and went back to the annoyance of making ends meet. Stupid rent. But slowly, and unbeknownst to me, word began to spread a little through our community of actor friends, that I was a Dungeon Master who ran a really fun, long-term game. Fast forward, two years later… and a different group of actor friends had been asking me about starting another game. I was hesitant because the previous six month campaign had required a great deal of work and I wasn't sure I wanted to dedicate that much time to another one.

I went back and looked over my notes from that first campaign, and after reading everything again, realized how much I loved playing in my world of Aladairelle, and with the stories that had taken place and evolved there. I decided to go for it, and this was pretty much my inner dialogue: "You know what… Myra's a gray elf and they live very long lives. Why don't I start the new campaign 100 years after the first one? She’s still Queen but nearing the end of her reign, and that way I can still play around in the same world, but also leave it open for previous players and their characters to make cameo appearances if they want to, AND I can also take some of the story and the plot from that first campaign and bring it forward a century to see how the world has changed from the events that had their roots in the original!"

Once again, my imagination was bursting with creative ideas. Also, sidenote, yes, my inner dialogue often thinks in run-on sentences.

That second campaign ran for almost a year! We played just about every week, and it was something we all very much looked forward to. And yes, the original players from that first campaign did make a cameo in the second but I planned it very beautifully so the new players had no idea that the old ones were going to be there! It was pretty epic to have all of them in one room for a night. We consumed a lot of good pizza and my homemade triple chocolate brownies (these are very important parts of D&D. Pizza and sweets. Vital components, I dare say). That campaign would've continued, but a couple of people in the group had to move away, and it wasn’t going to be the same without them, so we decided to end it. However, before we did, we got together and they all dressed up in costumes representing their characters, and I took some studio photos of them for posterity. That's them in the polaroid above. My "Orphans for Thorfann," as they called themselves. I don't have a group pic from the first campaign, or I would have posted both.

After that second campaign ended, I thought I was going to take a breather, but I'd spent so much time over those few years writing this beautiful and complex story, that I really missed it when they were gone. And so… one day not long after the second campaign was done, I simply thought to myself:

“I wonder if this story would make a good series of novels?”

I sat down and started writing, and several hours later, with many pages in front of me, said aloud to no one but myself, “Well… I like it a lot! Haha! I wonder if anyone else will?”

Now I have to stop here for a moment and give credit to my friend Isaac. He’s the real human being who played the character in the novels named Daar. Like me, he’s a very direct person and someone who doesn’t blow smoke. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I knew that if I sent him those pages to read, he’d tell me, quite bluntly, if they were good or not. As a matter of fact, if he didn’t like them, he'd probably tell me to never write again and go do something useful with my life like make pizza and brownies for people. Only he'd say it in a very R-rated manner that I'm not going to post here. That's also why he and I have been friends for so long.

Everyone should have an Isaac in their lives.

I sent him the pages. Oh! I should also tell you that Isaac doesn't pick up the phone very often. He'll email or he'll text but a phone call… not so much. It's not personal, he's just very busy and I know that. But as you can now surmise, my phone rang a couple of hours later, and seeing his name on caller ID, I was as shocked as you are.

“Dude…” he said. “I just read your pages.”

“Oh boy. Here it comes,” I thought. “It’s so bad, he’s actually calling to tell me that he vomited all over his laptop.”

I said, nervously, “And?”

There was a long pause. He exhaled. And then he said a few sentences I hope I never forget:

“Daniel, I've read a lot of fantasy books in my life. A lot. Probably in the hundreds.” Another pause, the bastard keeping me in suspense. “Dude… I know I was there, and I played the game with you guys, but this is some of the best writing I've ever read, and if you don't finish these books, I'm gonna fu**ing kill you. I mean, obviously I’m not really gonna kill you, but dude… seriously, you gotta write these books.”

“Really?!” I said excitedly, a bit in disbelief and totally ignoring the faux threat on my life.

“Yeah, man. For real. Why do you think I actually called?”

And that was that.

My Mom and Dad gave me a world of freedom, my brothers introduced me to D&D, my crazy actor friends gave me the inspiration to bring Aladairelle to life, and Isaac gave me a kick in the ass to encourage me. I'd also like to add that since that moment many other friends have jumped in and helped inspire and push me along when needed. You don't ever do these kinds of things alone. Not if you're even the least bit sane. Ken, you get a big thanks for the TD convo at Le Pain.

You know, it's funny, sitting here having written all of this out, I realize that I probably could've just summarized this with one of those “Too Long; Didn’t Read” statements that the new generations are fond of. Something like this:

TL;DR: My parents loved me. My brothers showed me D&D. Created a Queen. Rolled some dice with some good people. The Universe whispered, "Remember, you're a storyteller," so I wrote a series of novels so she and I can hopefully both retire in peace.