Advance Praise for
EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW
I LEARNED FROM DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
“Mazzanoble is one brave she-warrior. In Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons, she delightfully bares the mundane details of a 21st century woman’s life—from religion to love, domesticity to dietary habits—refracting her vision through the 20-sided prism of D&D. All the while, she battles and playfully defeats her most fearsome foe, her mother. Huzzah!”
—Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
“Looking at life as one big (adventuring) party, Shelly Mazzanoble shows us ‘how she rolls,’ by meeting her every day encounters with self-effacing charisma and plucky fortitude. If Carrie Bradshaw were a bard, this might be her tale. The characters we create in D&D must work harmoniously in a group and open themselves to unique philosophies, principles and strategies in order to help them overcome their obstacles. Applying that same open-mindedness to her daily life, Shelly shares with good humor her attempt to become ‘Master of her own Dungeon,’ as she goes outside her comfort zone to earn real-life experience and reach new levels of potential.”
—Dan Milano, writer of TV series Robot Chicken
“I love this book, especially the mother.”
—Judy Mazzanoble
ALSO BY
SHELLY MAZZANOBLE:
Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress:
A Girl’s Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game
Everything I need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons
©2011 Wizards of the Coast LLC
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. Other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Cover photo by: Allison Shinkle
eISBN: 978-0-7869-5936-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mazzanoble, Shelly, 1972-
Everything I need to know I learned from Dungeons & Dragons / Shelly Mazzanoble.
p. cm.
Summary: “With tongue-in-cheek humor, the creator of the award-winning Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress takes on the self-help section, proving that the benefits of the Dungeons & Dragons? game goes far beyond simple entertainment”–Provided by publisher.
1. Dungeons and dragons (Game)–Humor. 2. Dungeons and dragons (Game)–Social aspects–Humor. 3. Women fantasy gamers–Humor. I.
Title.
GV1469.62.D84M4 2011
793.93–dc22
2011015518
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v3.1
DEDICATION
To Dungeons & Dragons players—past, present, and future.
And to Bart—best adventuring buddy a girl could have.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Dungeon Mother
Chapter 2 - Losing my Religion
Chapter 3 - Critical Hit-Ons
Chapter 4 - Babbling’s in the Ear of the Beholder
Chapter 5 - Who moved my cha?
Chapter 6 - Never Split the Party
Chapter 7 - Diapers & Dragons
Chapter 8 - Lair of the Harpy
About the Author
Mothers are like dungeons. Some really stink and you’ll do anything to avoid them. And some are lush sanctuaries filled with gold, jewels, and butterscotch schnapps-spiked Nestlé Nesquik.
That’s Judy, my mom and epic-level dungeon. Moms like Judy are few and far between, so when you find one, you should sit and relish their charms for hours. Though I suppose sitting in a dungeon is a little weird and potentially dangerous—because no matter how lush or treasure-filled, the bottom line is that all dungeons are filled with crap you best run away from.
This, too, is true of my mother.
Oh, come on. What did you think this was? A memoir of a 1980s sitcom family? I mean, even Elyse Keaton must have had her freak-outs, despite how maternally perfect she seemed to be. Bet you anything that as soon as the last of the craft service table had been packed away, she and Mallory had those kinds of unbridled fights only mothers and daughters can have. If you’re a woman who grew up with a mother or a man who grew up with a sister, you know what I’m talking about. Screeching, tear-down-the-walls, full-on Animal Planet brawls. What did we fight about? Oh, I don’t know. Forgetting to call when Mrs. Hopper got us to the mall safely. That time she crashed Chuck E. Cheese on Teen Night because my brother Mike told her his friend Mark’s sister Pam’s best friend Missy said she saw me smoking. (I wasn’t. I didn’t start smoking for at least eight months after this incident.)
“If I wanted your advice, I would have asked!” I shouted at least 1,483 times a day.
“Fine,” she said, barely raising a brow even though I was yelling at a decibel even the neighbors’ Australian Cattle Dog found inappropriate. “But you should really stop hanging out with Kim and Lisa. You’re going to get a reputation as a pothead.”
A pothead? “What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I hear things.”
She “heard” lots of things, and often well before I heard them. Kim and Lisa were potheads. I thought they had allergies. So she got lucky on that one, but she didn’t always know what’s what. Like who was worthy of friendship, what was worthy of wearing, what shows were worthy of watching.
“Mommy knows best,” she always said. And when she wasn’t saying it, she was showing it by sending me tiny satin embroidered pillows, coasters, even shot glasses with that saying on them.
“Someday, when you’re a mother—God willing—you’ll know what I mean.”
I know having a mother who bombards her daughter with unsolicited advice isn’t exactly worthy of a Dateline investigation. But still, even at twelve I wanted to be in control of my own destiny. What did Judy know about perms and two-toned jeans?
But for all her buttinsky tendencies and amateur-shrink psychologies, my friends sure loved her. Growing up, our house was the house everyone went to after school, and I couldn’t have been prouder.
Not only was our kitchen always stocked with Lender’s bagels and Ring Dings, but we also had a pool table and my mom wasn’t afraid to use it. When the guys came over before lacrosse practice to carb up, my mom would be slathering bagels with strawberry cream cheese one minute and then staring into the eyes of my future prom date the next, commanding him to “Rack ’em up.” We knew what that meant. Down to the basement we went to watch my forty-something mom banking and cutting and putting a little English on the “stripes.” The guys tried to win, knowing the worst thing you could do to Judy was s
how a little respect for your elders and let her beat you. She didn’t need anyone to let her win. She was really good. And she was a horrible sport, which is by far the worst combination. Judy had this obnoxious march she’d do around the table, pumping her pool cue into the air and making rum pum pum noises. That’s always been my mom. Always kicking someone’s ass.
“Let me give you some advice,” she would tell the boys. “Never underestimate a woman’s rack.”
That’s also my mommy. Not just making high school kids blush but hustling anyone within earshot with unsolicited advice. My friends didn’t seem to mind. She was the keeper of their deepest, darkest problems, and they all turned to her for help. Her advice was like a splotch of red juice and they were like a Bounty paper towel. She spoke. They absorbed.
Right around the time I moved to Seattle, Judy’s love affair with advice kicked it up a notch. Self-help, in the form of television talk shows, satellite radio, and online book retailers that, like Judy, love giving you tips on what to read next based on a recent purchase for your friend’s four-year-old boy, were all the rage. (Really, Amazon? You’re sure I’ll enjoy Thomas and the Naughty Diesel? Wait. Maybe that was based on a different purchase.)
No matter. The point is, all this technology meant Judy barely needed to lift a manicured fingernail to discover the next great bit of wisdom that would surely turn my life around. Why did I ever teach her how to bookmark Web sites?
But did my life need turning around? I didn’t think so. I was a fairly typical twenty-something doing twenty-something things. I had a bitchin’ apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood that I shared with a roommate. Between us we had six part-time jobs. My four were to support an unpaid internship at Sub Pop records. I lived off Taco del Mar burritos and pints of Ben and Jerry’s. I never exercised. I took writing classes and started drinking coffee. I developed a love affair with the Space Needle and discontentment with camping, socks with sandals, and Tibetan prayer flags.
Overall, I was happy. Even the old journals I kept are embarrassingly angst-free. If anything was causing me anxiety, it was the lack of anxiety I was experiencing.
And let me tell you, I’m the first one to give Judy credit for this. She’s a great mom, even if most of her sentences start with, “Why don’t you …” But could she leave well enough alone? Noooooooo. She was hell-bent on guiding me down the self-help path.
“You can thank Stephen Covey for your new job,” she told me shortly after I was hired at Wizards of the Coast.
“Oh, I will,” I said. “Right after my thank-you lunch with Deepak Chopra for giving me the courage to wake up this morning.”
Judy was so big on Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, my dad and I thought Stephen had her wrapped up in some pyramid scheme where he was offering her toaster ovens and Maui time-shares in exchange for getting people to buy into his teachings. I probably would have been more amendable if that was the case. Sadly, for me Stephen and his habits made a better coaster than a coach.
“Here’s some advice for you,” I said to Judy after receiving yet another self-help tome from Amazon.com. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“Consider this a preemptive strike,” she answered back. “I’m sure you’ll have to make a tough decision in the next few decades. Now you’ll know what to do.”
“In just thirteen easy steps,” I said. “Gee, I hope my big decision isn’t a time-sensitive one.”
I had to admit Wizards was a dream job. Health insurance, neon Post-It Notes, and a rumored-to-be chocolate fondue fountain at the annual holiday party. This was a major coup and one I’d like to think my résumé filled with unpaid internships in marketing and promotions (not to mention an embarrassing story about having to dress up like a chicken for an Easter Seals event with children while the open bar loosened up their parents’ purse strings) was what landed me the job.
Just a few weeks into my employ, I was in the R&D department trying to understand what exactly a Trading Card Game was (“You mean these cards attack one other? With magic?”) when my boss came to find me.
“How do you feel about College Station?” he asked.
“Like KEXP?” I asked. “I love it.”
He laughed. “Not that college station. I mean College Station, Texas. We need to send you there for a very special assignment.”
Well, check out the new girl! I barely had time to figure out how to program my out-of-office message on my voicemail and I was already heading out on a business trip.
“Sure! When do I leave?” I sounded like Julie McCoy responding to an order from Captain Steubing. But Julie certainly would have remembered to ask Captain Steubing why she was going to College Station and what she was expected to do there.
A few days later my boss gave me the details. “It’s really exciting,” he said in such a manner I could tell he thought I wouldn’t find this exciting at all. If it were really exciting, he’d probably go, right?
Later that night, on the phone, I told Judy about the Silver Anniversary Tour.
“Whose anniversary is it?” she asked. “Wizards?”
“Umm, no,” I answered carefully. “One of the games. Dungeons & Dragons.” The way I said it sounded more like “Durgin and Dooggins.”
“Did you say ‘Dungeons & Dragons’?” she asked. Curse her and her ability to decode secret information. Just like that time in seventh grade when she knew I didn’t pay for those tie-dyed lace Madonna gloves and in eighth grade when she knew that wasn’t a tin full of colored pencils in my LeSportsac purse for an art project but rather a can of Genesee Cream Ale. And let’s not forget ninth grade when I told her I was going on the chaperoned class trip to Darien Lake for the day when really I was in Rochester with Cindy in her uncle’s “borrowed” Cadillac trying to sneak into a Bon Jovi concert. Jeez. Maybe I should have been playing D&D.
I tried explaining to Judy that I was the new girl, this was a big initiative for the company, and I should be flattered they trusted me enough to send me on one of the tour stops.
“But can they make you?” she asked.
“I think so,” I answered. “I mean, they pay me to, you know, do stuff for the company.” Besides, I hadn’t even had my ninety-day review. I wasn’t going to ask. “Wait a minute,” I continued. “Are you crying?”
“This is hazing!” she shouted. “Oprah was just talking about this. It’s a growing problem in the U.S.!”
“In universities and on Lifetime Television for Women movies maybe,” I said. “Not in suburban office parks!”
“Well, I’m going to call The Wizards and tell them they can’t make you do that,” she insisted. “And then I’m going to tell your father.”
Clearly Judy thought “The Wizards” was a collective body of nine-year-old girls who make the rest of us do horrible, dangerous, and embarrassing things. Next I’ll be forced to sing Kenny Loggins songs during company karaoke.
“Don’t walk out to your car alone,” she told me. “Have the security guard escort you.”
“But Mom, the security guard is a Minotaur!”
Days later, Jason from shipping dropped by. Jason and I had gotten to be good friends, seeing as how he was at my desk nearly every week with another package. Inside would be a computer-generated note from Mommy explaining how she thought of me when she saw this or O Magazine called this essential reading for women in their 30s and, oh, how she just read this and loved it so naturally she got a copy for me, too. These were books like What You Say Is What You Get; The Key; The Laws of Attraction; Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man; and the one I blame for triggering Judy’s quest for betterment: The Secret. (If you haven’t read it yet, I’ll save you the time and let you in on The Secret: Get cozy with the Universe. It can make you or break you.) It was like I’d been enrolled in the mental-health rehab-of-the-month club.
At first Judy denied sending me these books.
“Maybe one of your magazine subscriptions sold your name to a bo
ok club.”
“Or maybe you’re trying to tell me something?”
“Me?” she’d ask innocently. “Or the Universe.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love helping myself. To a second helping of mashed potatoes. To a handful of M&Ms. To another pair of shoes. But self-help is a whole other story. I always thought therapy would be a hoot if I weren’t so terrified doctors would unearth something and discover I really am nuts. But Judy was adamant about the self-help movement and clearly thought I might benefit from a little paperback guidance. So I indulged her by not putting “Return to Sender” on her packages. I wouldn’t read her books, but I’d keep them stacked by the side of my bed. At least until I could afford to buy those bedside tables I’d been eyeing. Maybe by then I’d figure out a way to convince her that prepacked psychobabble isn’t the key to self-betterment. If only I knew what was.
“You sure do a lot of online shopping,” Jason said as he dropped off yet another box at my desk, noting the all-too-familiar black logo from Amazon. I’d been working at Wizards thirty-nine days and had already received so many self-help books from Judy that I caught the attention of the shipping manager?
I sighed, taking the box. “My mom does a lot of shopping,” I corrected. “I’m really sorry. I can just come by and pick these things up.”
“Or you could just stop by Amazon’s warehouse on your way home,” he said. “They’re just down the street.”
Ah, great. More advice.
The contents of that box were by far some of Judy’s finest work.
I called Judy at lunch from my car. “Nice Girl Syndrome?” This was definitely not a conversation I could have with my co-workers eavesdropping. “Ten Steps to Empowering Yourself and Ending Abuse? Abuse?”
“What?” she said, sounding genuinely confused. “You’re a young woman just starting her career. I don’t want anyone to take advantage of my Moo Moo.”
“Your Moo Moo’s professional career does not involve abuse!” I shouted.
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