Stephen Colbert on Dungeons & Dragons Online:
Earlier this week marked the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons: Storm Reach, a new on-line version of the popular swords and sorcery game. I myself played a lot of the D and D way back when. Actually I once met Len Lakofka at Gen Con Ten.Anybody?
I’ll never forget when I lost Faraneeth, my level 21 Lawful Good Paladin. Heh. I know, that’s redundant. He was on a campaign searching for Tenser, wizard of the Circle of Light, en route from the Sheldomar Valley to the Thilronian Peninsula. He got cornered by a displacer beast and a mind flayer and he failed to save against psionic attack. See, he’d already lost a lot of hit points battling a beholder, and the cleric in the party couldn’t regenerate enough hit points with his heal light wounds spell. All in all, a sad day in Badabaskor.
But I gave up D&D in 1984. My parents were concerned I was being possessed by demons. So one summer they sent me to an exorcism day camp. Eight weeks of sailing, casting out the devils within me, and making lanyards did the trick. Oh, and I got a girlfriend.
Anyway, it is the end of an era. And as the cyber-elves and the e-wizards log onto the digital dungeon, I sadly place on my shelf these now obsolete polyhedral dice. The good news is with D&D now on the Internet, the social outcasts of today’s junior high schools are relieved of the agony of any human contact.
Enjoy your magnificent isolation.
Don’t forget to bathe.
Addendum: Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor was an early third-party D&D supplement.
Len Lakofka wrote the L series of adventures:
L1 Secret of Bone Hill
L2 Assassin’s Knot
L3 Deep Dwarven Delve
Also, you may have heard of his character Leomund, who lent his name to several well known spells.
And now the video has been posted online at YouTube and on the Colbert Report site.