Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

In my novel Into the Wild Nerd Yonder (now in paperback from Square Fish!), there are quite a few scenes of role playing, Dungeons and Dragons style. Here is the tale of how I made my D&D characters, and how my characters made me.

The first character I ever created was an elf mage named Imalthia. So was the second. High school was rough at times, not in an outward, people bullying me or even necessarily knowing I existed way, but in an inner turmoil, clinically depressed way. I had friends, good ones, and liked music enough to be one of the “alternative” kids. But I didn’t like myself very much. I was overweight, shy, and insecure. Not like Imalthia; she was beautiful, skinny, and could charm the pants off of anyone. (Naturally, I put the 18 in her charisma slot.)

Eventually, though, when I started to figure it out—it being life, who I was, and how that was actually a good thing—I realized it was much more fun to play a stocky, ugly, strong dwarf or gnome than some skinny, skanky elf. My epic new character came in the form of Sofa, a huge fighter with negligible intelligence, wisdom and charisma scores, although her strength was off the charts. I soon realized how much I loved doing damage instead of thinking so damn much. Who cares if Sofa would never convince a prince to divulge the whereabouts of the Staff of Fury by batting her eyelashes? She could kick his teeth in with a flick of her ankle. Besides, the Dungeon Master playing the NPC prince was just some dork math major with a Jim Carrey circa Dumb and Dumber haircut.

As an adult I became a DM to a middle school D&D club at the school where I was a librarian. There, I learned my forté was in role playing was comedy. In dire situations, throw a flaming couch down from the sky and watch the thirteen year-olds laugh. When it was one of their turns to DM, I played a delightful bard named Lulabelle who often inappropriately tooted on her recorder and constantly wove oven mitts. Or jumpsuits made out of oven mitts. And sometimes she even helped the party.

I think my D&D evolution says a lot about my own evolution as a person and as a writer. Instead of the brooding poems I wrote in high school or the serious(ly), perverted relationship stories of my early college days, I write humorous novels. Granted, they involve depression, STDs, and abuse, but I always manage to throw a flaming couch or an oven mitt in there. We DMs know how to move a story along.


Julie Halpern is the author of three YA books with Feiwel and Friends: Get Well Soon, Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, and Don’t Stop Now (out on June 7). She’s still looking for a group of adults to play D&D with who don’t freak her out. You can read more about her, her books, and her blog at the above link.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Julie Halpern

Author

Learn More About Julie
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments