When I was 10 years old, I got the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Deities and Demigods for Christmas. Here's a story about it. Some of you may have heard this. Probably not, though. #dnd #dnd5e

Anyhow, I loved this book! It was filled with all these gods for my players to kill! And in this edition, there were the Cthulhu Mythos!

And the Elric mythos!

Now, back in the day, I used to draw in my D&D books and decorate them with stickers. Here are some choice stickers from my old Monster Manual.

My favorite thing to draw in those books was a dragon.

Anyhow, around that time, I was playing D&D at the Boy's Club several days a week. At some point, I let a friend borrow my Deities and Demigods.

He was supposed to bring it back the following week. But--as you can imagine--he never brought it back. He let one of his friends borrow it, and that was that.

I bought a new edition, but it was different! There was no Cthulhu! No Elric! Those sections had been removed due to copyright issues.

The editions with Cthulhu in them became a little pricey.

30 years later, I decided to look on EBay for the Cthulhu edition. Most were too expensive for me. But I found one listing that I could afford. It wasn't as expensive because, according to the seller... someone had drawn on the inside covers!

He posted examples of the drawings and--guess what?--there was my dragon! The stickers had been peeled off, but the outlines I drew around them remained!

But--folks!--MY DRAGON!

So, of course, I bought the damn thing!

And that's the story of how my Deities and Demigods found its way back to me after 3 decades!