A Long Time Ago, in a small town Far Far Away

Its funny what I remember.

Last night, Steph and I were talking about Star Wars the Roleplaying Game.  We are both incredible Star Wars geeks, and she is interested in possibly trying that out as she continues to get comfortable with RPGs. 

As we discussed some of the newer stuff, and how to run a game - I actually stumbled on a video I created years ago (13 to be exact) as an intro to a session I was going to run.  Needless to say, Nostalgia is a funny thing and I thought I would share it and another Star Wars related story with you below. 

I know I know - the crawl isn’t perfect, but keep in mind, the time-frame and resources available.  I must have spent hours getting the planet transition right, and I actually synced multiple bmp files together to get the effects of lights flashing on the space station.  What fun.

After we watched (and laughed about) the video, I pointed out that I had actually been playing Star Wars since its first edition - and that brought back another memory of a day back in 1985-ish, where I might have a brush with one of the artists from the RPG.

It was at that time, Mike and I had gone to our local bookstore to play in a our first “Public” game of D&D, a big deal for us kids back then.   Redbeards Bookstore in Marion Indiana was not your typical bookstore like Barnes and Noble.  Instead, it was a little white house, and when you went in….it was full of new and used books in the various rooms.  Growing up in rural Indiana, there were not many places to get D&D products, but Redbeard’s had them…and it kept us sane. The owners were incredibly nice, and carried all the newest products - not just TSR, but also White Dwarf, miniatures and paints.   They even hosted a miniatures painting contest (I won in the “Young Guns” category) and it was through that that I heard there was a bi-weekly game played there at the store.  It was such an interesting community and we were excited to play with new people - we just had to check it out. 

Redbeard’s Today - no longer a bookstore, but it still has the red shutters.

While I won’t go to much into the minutia of that gaming session and why we never went back to play there again (there were just to many players), one thing always stood out to me.  One of the players was always sketching during the session.  He even asked me to describe my character – to which he added it to an ongoing sketch of all the party members – right before my eyes.  I was amazed.  As I looked through his other work, I saw he like drawing SciFi and Star Wars related art as well – and he was good. One particular picture stuck out to me, a Star Wars cast of characters piece across the top line of his notebook. Definitely inspired by The Empire Strikes Back, I was really impressed with his attention to detail and ability to capture classic poses.

Flash forward to 1988.  I was stationed at Ft Devens MA, and I had just picked up the companion book to West End Games Star Wars the Role Playing Game called The Star Wars Sourcebook.  I’m in my room, thumbing the page when, low and behold – right at the bottom of pages 134 and 135 is a piece of artwork I had seen drawn two years prior.

Now, I cannot say 100% that this is the same piece, but it does seem a bit out of place with the rest of the art in the sourcebook. It is not an uncharacteristic setup – in fact, it is pretty basic, but in my mind I can still go back to that day (we were playing outside and the session ended due to rain) when I looked through another players art collection and told him how good his art really was and that he was going to go places.    In my mind it is his art, but without remembering his name - I doubt I will ever know for sure. I can, however, still give a shoutout to the great work of WEG artists: Joe Johnston, Ralph McQauarrie, Norman Reynolds and Nilo Rodis – Jamero.  Who knows, maybe someone reading this knows the artist and lets them know they still have fans.  Crazier still would be IF that artist really is the person I recall…….if so, maybe there really is something called the Force. 

As a side note - while doing research this morning, I came across someone else who remembers Redbeard’s, so much so - he blogged about it too. If you want to see this store’s impact on someone else - please visit Bob Freeman’s blog HERE or you can follow him on Twitter - @OccultDetective