It's not every day you get to see someone who has spent years honing his craft really flex his muscles. And that's part of the reason that I'm really excited about the launch of Scott Kurtz's Tables Titans. You get so used to the level of quality at his core comic, PvP, that you kinda forget how good he is at this stuff. Then you see something like this, and it hits you. He's playing this game at a completely different level.Table Titans is officially licensed by Wizards of the Coast, which means Scott has the entire D&D universe to play in. If that's not enough to get you in the door, I'll tell you this: I know a little bit about where Scott's going with this opening storyline (and a smidge about where the story goes after that), and I'll just say it -- you're gonna want to be reading this one from the very first strip.
But beyond seeing a friend do exceptional work, I'm a little excited about this for another reason...
Dr. Jeff is someone you may have seen helping me out at my table at shows like Wizard World Philadelphia. He's a good friend of mine, and he has a son who's about the age of my younger son. He's a long-time comics geek, and we've talked about exposing our kids to Dungeons and Dragons for years -- as soon as they'd be old enough to really enjoy it.We decided to give it a shot a few weekends back, and we had a blast. Dr. Jeff has a ton more experience playing D&D, so he Dungeon-Mastered the first campaign. When we got to their house, we were greeted by him and his son in full wizard regalia (as were my boys). The dining room was decked out in candles (battery-operated... he's no dummy) and eerie ambient music.
He put hours of work into designing an opening campaign, and we sat down, rolled for our stats, and were roaming the countryside looking for goblins in no time. I hadn't played a whole lot of D&D as a kid, so I was learning right along with the boys. And I gotta tell you, we had a blast. We were all decimated by our second encounter, but we were hooked.
It helped that Dr. Jeff also has excellent taste in scotch. He had on hand my all-time favorite, Laphroaig, as well as an 18-year-old Glenmorange that was absolutely sublime. I never did get to sample the Monkey Shoulder, but I'm told it's exceptionally good.
Needless to say, my wife drove us home.
We're already trying to sync our schedules for the next round. The boys are excited about actually making it past the first pack of wolves to see what's in the dungeon beyond. And me, I'm excited to see my boys introduced to a fascinating world of gameplay.
All this, and we'll all have a new comic to read as we progress.
Not bad for a pair of geek dads.