Edward Hall and Daniel Horowitz

00:03 My name is Edward Austin. Hall. My age is 59. Today is Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 and I'm in Atlanta. Speaking with my friend and colleague Daniel Horowitz Garcia.

00:24 I am Daniel Horowitz Garcia. I am 51. Today is Tuesday, June 8th 2021.

00:32 I am in Atlanta. My partner today is Ed Hall. He is a friend colleague and partner in weirdness.

00:41 Daniel, would you be so kind to share with everyone? The story? You told me yesterday about the game yet? I think it was a dragon, Maybe.

00:52 It was, if it doesn't really make any difference between a little bit of difference in vengeance, is different than like the Wednesday Adventure League tabletop. Role-playing, tabletop role-playing games like this experience was a Dungeons & Dragons, Adventure League, Adventure, League is Nick DND, really? It's it's gaminglight. You know, it's a, they took the, the ideas that you could go anywhere in the world actually and plug in your character and play with anybody at any time on anything and have an experience. I appreciate that notion, but

01:41 It just if it was it's scratched an itch, but it was it was on. It doesn't kind of get it any more board games board games. They sell wargaming stuff like

01:59 I forgot the name of it, but that they sold like the different pieces for those tabletop war games and stuff. And they also sell a lot of role-playing game stuff, you know, you can Miniatures everything and they host game nights. So, Wednesday is I might my nickname for his church night, which is the folks. You know what I'm talking about. So church night. Go to church tonight, which means I'm going to gigabytes to play. So I was there.

02:44 With a Wednesday. This was a Homebrew campaign Homebrew means that this wasn't part of the Adventure League with somebody who, I really official rules created their own set of rules. Not an official homepage of men. They buried it at home. They traded home for their own players. So I was sitting in the game. It was really good, pretty experienced DMP. Everything was working really well from another table though so that we can go by to work is on a Wednesday than the before time. You can easily have a hundred people in the cafe. And the guy who runs it Mark is a great guy. He really is committed to making sure everybody has a good experience. He wants to make sure that everybody gets a chance to play and plays. Well, so takes care of the DS, just make make, make sure everything's really good. Markers are really great guy. But and gigabytes is also known for being a very welcoming atmosphere, right? So, the idea is,

03:41 There are a lot of queer folks who played there a lot of transpose to play there sometimes, folks or DM some don't, but the idea is it. So it's known as a welcoming space Master game master. The person who I think it's important to note, though, that like the idea here is that this night is known as a very welcoming space app for new people for for women, for people of color for queer folk and it's known as a welcoming space which is important. Given the history of tabletop role-playing specially dungeon II.

04:19 Yeah, I will.

04:22 I don't know how accurate it is. But the popular conception of dungeon dragons is a white peak in his mom's basement, eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew Mountain. Dew is accurate that stereotype is accurate, right? Because we were kids and when I was a kid and I was 12 13 14, we were in basically at all let you know gaming group and if it wasn't for Cheetos and Mountain Dew weed nothing would have happened. But the other stuff is is is not like it it

05:02 At least. So that that's the popular conception. So as the last what is it 40? Almost 45 50 years. However long it's been particularly with the rise. Now of the YouTube channel critical role and you know, people listen to the podcast and they see these voice actors and I like that's really cool. I want to do that a lot more queer folks have gotten into it allowed, you know, a lot of people are more prominent in my thing. Is that it's, it's, we've been in it since the beginning.

05:33 People are starting to recognize that with some backlash, right? Because the nickname and the key Community use for, for these like, older white guys, who are upset because it's not like, it used to be as chud and chug actually comes from a movie in the end and chud is an acronym. That stands for Capital cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller.

06:00 So it should is this angry white, dude, who would rather destroy the gaming experience for a second? What a chud is, an angry. Usually white dude. Straight white dude, who would rather destroy the gaming experience for everybody. Then allow it to diversify. Right? So really upset, all these women and gay people are coming in. They're angry about the combat wheelchair, and they're just running his gaming experience, cuz it's not like he had it when he was running back in 1981 hands, Chuck, cuz he'd rather destroy it. Then see if grow cannibalizing the

06:46 So the gigabytes is known for not being like that. I like it was it was good to get expensive. So I am at the table and this guy comes from another table to talk to our DM and complains that his DM.

07:06 Is not following the rule that he saw in the guide and is asking our DM to overrule his DIA.

07:17 Rgm tells him. No. She's right. You need to go back right you just you just got to do, you know just deal with it. So he goes back and our DM been just stood really? He's just incredibly angry and finally see that he's incredibly uncool. You don't you don't ask somebody else to overturn your DM?

07:48 Social. And the thing to note is that, so this guy, his DM is a woman who is fairly new to DM it like it. Had been doing it at that time. Maybe a couple of months when you should be the one who came up with a woman who was fairly new to it. And I don't know if you actually done it. It's hard to. It's very difficult to Dion and I am part would like, I would like to get into this is the difference between writing a campaign as a DM. Vs. Like writing, a novel like riding diem in his heart. He so I can say

08:30 Writing campaign says yeah. Yeah and then running the campaign because you have this plant like when I DM I have detailed plans that are immediately destroyed by the Packers players. It's equivalent for folks. Who've never played its equivalent if you've ever done improv, so one person, imagine there's one person who sets the scene, right? And they're trying to keep everybody within the confines of that scene. But within the conference with everybody else could do anything they want, they picked their character, they can just go. And you know, they just go with it, right? So that's the DM to Dam. Comes thinking like all we're going to go this way. And then some of the players are going that way and then you got to make a decision. Do you just pull everybody over to what you said or did you go with it? If you go with it, how do you go with it? How do you make that in the ideas? Like it's a game, dude. Have a good time.

09:30 So, so it's hard. It's very difficult. Most people don't want to DM. Most people just want to play show, the people who do it should be patted on the back completely making money off at now.

09:50 To to head up games to Jack if you consider like the game master. And it's so yeah, you know, I actually find it fun when it comes to like a few different systems and when it come to Dungeons & Dragons, I'd rather DM's and play honestly just because of system feels too. It's just too limited. But if I DM I can do all kinds of stuff. It's just building more fun to me. Here comes to the world of darkness and white wolf product that came through as a player you and werewolf for which I created the character who remains to this day, my fictional Alter Ego in the process. I talk about it. I think another storycorps interviews.

10:43 Just how sort of creepy, the whole experience was of coming up with this guy and then realizing later, all the stuff that was sort of embedded in his making of how his first and middle names, came to me in a dream, how, you know, I sort of made him German.

11:05 Only the waiter realize, right? Like there could very well be true, my ancestry, and my family, which is something I'd never really thought about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But before I go on, before, I get back to you too. I want to go back to the stand it though. I should say. When you talked about this before time, you're talking about before the Advent of that, before, you changed their online sites, where you can go and play. And basically, it's like Zoom for gamers. That's all kind of Gear 2 that I got a membership for six years and I told pandemic, I've never used it. So you before time is completely applicable. And I will say,

12:04 Typical not wood or whole family. Good Fortune, you know, we we lost the the father of my great niece lives here in Atlanta, in the details around his death.

12:26 Ratably.

12:30 Mysterious a butt sort of Point toward covid, but we'll never know, never know what some love one or another. Of because so many people died in because of safety protocols, right? You know, people not being autopsy.

12:52 But for me, you know, I'd already been working from home remotely, you know, doing everything through the laptop. So my life didn't change significantly except that 4 year. I probably cried more, but I did in every other previous year of my life combined.

13:12 It was it was that it was a global trauma. So suddenly I am I'm literally in demand.

13:24 For writing games, writing for white wolf.

13:35 OIP the intellectual property of the white wolf, technically does not exist anymore as white wolf. I think people made still think of it that way, but it got absorbed by an Icelandic company before the 2008 crash in the 2008, crash the Icelandic economy tanked and when it went down, it took Damon company that has bought lightbulb with it. So obvious Onyx path, which is a

14:08 Oh, probably my favorite short story ever wrote. I wrote for Onyx path. Some years ago, a story called The Troll of predators and prey volume to 13 aged. Vampire hunter in that story. Is that story is I opening for people who don't understand how all this works or how anything, honestly, fantastic 8 at work. Cuz I'm not, I'm for the most part, way more interested in fantastic hated stories of Storytelling that I am in mundane stories. Library full of mundane fiction is horror.

14:50 We're science fiction or fantasy. Probably in that order. Probably in that order is like heroic and high fantasy to me is large and tedious.

15:07 Oh God. It's for Solace Far. And Away the bulk of it. That I, I see seems to be under slavish way of JRR Toki stuff because I don't know who's the author. There's two in a salon and Steven Erikson. Steve Erickson on Magic realist. American magic realist out of LA riots about La like magic. Realistically and the other guy as the other day the other day.

16:00 And they Stephen and Ian are estimate and arrogance. They talk about they were written this. Now. It's more than 70 17 volume piece on the mouse's on Empire and the world. A different take on Magic and how it's used magic. Did you say? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean it's an epic epic high fantasy, right. But the hole and it has a tremendous number of characters, like ridiculous met. Two of the most important characters are historians. So, of course, I love you too. Well, one of them is an archaeologist. So when they write something about, like the tension between horseface Nomads in the city, they take that, they create these civilizations. They expand the Ark in the 200,000 years and then add magic to it. And see what happens, right though.

17:00 But they have their also like I think Ericsson he he's gone. The bread loaf like the Iowa Writers Workshop stuff. Like we do, right and some science fiction and they're also trained in like the literary boring to just be in the University. Leisure magazine that spot that is sent out the 500 people and always ends with everyone. Just having tea. What's known in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so the boring stuff, right that but nothing happens, there's no ending and nobody cares. So they're trained in that situation. But so he talks about how he never read token growing up. His exposure to token was through Dungeons and Dragons and and it's absolutely, I mean,

18:00 Very early on the company that does drugs could be was sued or threatened with a lawsuit by token because they had named, they call him halflings, but they called him, you know, they named him Hobbits or something. But it was it was pretty. It's it's a one-for-one really sort of bogarting. His story. About Logan, one of my fellow co-founders of state of black science fiction, tells the story of first encounter in Dungeons & Dragons in a public space, you know, maybe, I don't know, some kind of indoor space where people are tables and a bunch of young white.

18:46 Then we're playing this game and bought a gun in his several black friends were watching this new, like, what is this? And the guy who's winning the game, six of them words to the effect of you wouldn't understand or Jesus with, with the other Peter Jackson.

19:14 Oh, Lord of the Rings on that patient is the you look closely at the hair by right. You can see. It's it's braided in such a way that it's like what? I actually think he's faithful to the books cuz I'm a token token. It pacifically says, like the darker, your skin. The farther you are away from God is this that this, that attitude is not on the part of the gamer, is not coming from Nowhere by kayaks, who is generally credit? Gary gygax is generally critic rating, Dungeons & Dragons, even know, only created the boring parts.

20:03 These are mostly like, if my first exposure to role-playing was Gary gygax. I would not, I would have nothing to do with this work. I have a funny story about this, which is literally that I think the same year. I know, the same year. Dungeons & Dragons was created by pieces. Together by examining where I stole my character names from is right. That's what that's what you do. As an immature Creator. We had Red Lantern, we had Blue Lantern. I took at least one character name from Richard. Lester three, and four. Musketeers filmed.

21:03 After I had created creative D'Artagnan and O.

21:20 I was able to then date that we got in so many arguments about who was the most powerful superhero, who is most powerful supervillain. We finally sat down and chartered everybody out and followed them. Write numerical stores for various.

21:38 Physical and human and super human capabilities. There was something in the air that we essentially. The same thing. We ever know. My brother. One of the game's, my brother and I played hard but in our group was the Marvel superheroes game. We also put on tears, which was the science fiction Beast that basically like two dice. And all we love that game Boot Hill was the Western gate? And I hated that game because I died every session I would create a character and then in the first session of the play that character he would die.

22:26 And it happened about a dozen times and stuff. But we played all of us like that. But this was after what you're talking about cuz I think you're talking about mid-to-late. Seventies. Right? Right. So when we started early to mid 80s and everyone was like, no Dungeons & Dragons as a gateway to satanism.

22:47 Back backup, say all of that. Again, that go with you right now, more moral panic, panic. It's related to masculinity is immoral conduct that like, oh boy, they're not being taught. How to be men, boys, are two weeks. It's always woman's fault and marijuana or crack or something. So the moral Panic, one of the moral panic in the 80s was Dungeons & Dragons.

23:20 That. Oh, yeah. And lid to lid Rona Jaffe to write her novel of Mazes amount which became a movie. Starring Tom Hanks, which I've watched so often and did not realize. I think there's a direct connection between of Mazes and monsters and LARPing. Okay. Yeah, LARPing is live action role. Play where people imagine like instead of sitting around the table with a bunch of papers. You actually wore costumes and went around the Woods. Real place is exhausting to me. I don't like the idea.

24:06 Never get it. We let the most heaviest we ever got what Star Trek, came on. My cousin started doing the thing. I I never put raw material but there was an upstairs room where our parents would throw parties that became a playroom and then because we were so super destructive, a junk room, and then we were taking the debris and they grow and then extrapolations of spaceships typically modeled after the Enterprise and then we have these space wars with these things. One that I remember distinctly was a curvature of electric race track.

24:59 I've been glued and parallel along it to get to the simple structure where the superstructure for the Starship was glued allowed out of the wings were native brightworks to represent like weapons batteries. And then one of the ships, my favorite one, the most imaginative of these showpo after we destroyed. Our Gilbert chemistry set, which came with its own microspikes solar-powered or right. Exterior light powered, mirror. Sourced microscope thing came apart and the the dial the focal dial for it was black plastic, you know, what does not seem that way and then blonde stamped across the equator of it. If you will was the word human.

25:55 And so Joe takes that uses as the saucer section for a Starship called the first before I gave each of them, right? Joe, David and Mike, I gave each of them copies of mediums. The first White Wolf book I ever was not the first one ever wrote for, but the first long thing I ever wrote for them. I gave each of them a copy basically inscribed.

26:29 Thank you for being the architect of my imagination as a kid poems.

26:53 Eras, sort of a little bigger, my dog got out.

27:00 Can you hear that?

27:03 I cannot.

27:11 Her nails are long.

27:14 When I was a kid, my characters were always half-elves.

27:18 Consistently half-elves, and I never questioned why I'm just like I want to do a half hour. I'll do it happens. Every once in awhile and that the time it didn't come out but later editions. You can be a half work.

27:34 Now I do a lot have works, but it was trying to figure out like I made my own my 12 year old weigh trying to figure out race, you know, what was going on.

27:48 In all the books. I read you their head, still.

27:54 We still have that. He's Frozen on my end.

27:58 He must be frozen. He looks very Placid.

28:27 Do you want to? Okay, I'll just wait till I say we just wait for him to come back.

28:32 You want me to just let it roll?

28:35 And then do you, do you want to secure your dog a little bit? She's okay. Now.

29:26 Edna's to just re-register.

29:31 Okay.

29:43 Daniel. What was LARPing? What is Lars live? Action role play?

30:06 And then a child is a cannibalistic humanoid underground Underground.

30:15 That's the movie intro.

30:20 Okay.

30:44 Okay, I'm not sure where it is.

30:47 Arrogance.

30:54 We're all good with the last last thing you were saying was, you weren't sure, why, your characters are always happening, like, Creon lesson way of kind of working out race practically being mixed.

31:12 You know, it also I mean, I hadn't read all the Forgotten Realms is that series of set in like the DND universe. That is written by white snow there dragonlance.

31:27 Margaret Wyatt oleff dragonlance.

31:31 Your memory. Expanded least. Some of the dragonlance movies were based on DND campaigns they did and that's why I'm those are the worst one. We can talk about that in a minute here, but the Forgotten Realms was all based in and they're still around. The famous is like Drizzt do'urden and ra Salvatore who, I just don't think a very good writer most of it.

32:06 If it didn't have the name Tolkien on it, I never think I took, I think those books were written for.

32:14 A different out there. Like, we're why a teen reading? These books? And it is a character in any of these books as brown. They're either evil.

32:33 Or their pointy ears and their, the sides into the main hero who is white and sometime within the first 30 pages, the pointy, 82b Brown means you were skinny your pointy-eared and you were going to die.

32:54 So and I'm like, I don't, you know, I still read all of them.

33:02 I read all of them, but I'm like, they're like to. But I'm like 13 Saint Michael, making this one between 82 and 82 to present honestly, but you got like, what will come to be called Sawyer soul, but I'm sure, but this was very well known and he's Charles just passed away. I guess last year year before last.

33:42 And oh,

33:45 I have it on good authority that he had vowed. He was living in Canada that he thought he'd never come to the United States. Again. I do not know what that was about, but I can speculate in a lot of ways that are unflattering this country. And there's no way that there's no internet at the time. So, so the only way I can find out about him is by going to the bookstore library, right? So the library doesn't the library, didn't stack any of those.

34:14 Right at the time. Also like there's not just in 82. 83 84 Science Fiction and Fantasy are relegated to like the back burner. Like this is not serious. You're not serious books available. You know, when you when you finally find them, the only people you're finding are like the white dudes right as am off then go over even when the offer was black. This happens with I think most of the first editions of Octavia Butler books.

34:46 Even when the author was black, whoever was on the cover would not be right in hate you, it had to be, you had to get to you later. Editions off of paperback edition, Jadu palancar, paintings for the butler, the butler novels, for example before you got black characters on it. So I didn't know they existed. I had no idea the existence of those of well in my twenties, none of those people. You talked to Mike Saunders Delaney Butler even folks like Le Guin, I mean the first serious speculative fiction Peace by a woman while. I guess it would have been Margaret Weis, right but like the first one that broke the mold that wasn't in that life is genre area was a woman on the Edge of Time Mike. Percy.

35:40 Oh, and you know, and you I almost bought a different fantaskey that piercing novel. What is it? He she in it because I had our conversation in mind about woman on the Edge of Time and saw the galley of it.

36:02 Actually didn't buy any am I really going to read this? I read the opening paragraph and I thought I'm never going to read this.

36:11 So it's not nowadays. It's not just that I mostly don't read through a fantasy football note. I adore live. Grossman's magicians, novels and I think the TV adaptation of them is magisterial magicians, done for Syfy, love love, love way too stressful for me.

36:34 I'm just saying, I am very stressed and like this is, this is very good. I can't watch this. I'm too stressed out by

36:43 Yeah, I totally get that. It is when I thought it was ending a full season before it actually ended and I remember like crying my eyes out watching the season finale, both because of how sadly it ends. I'm actually getting tearing up right now and because I thought it was over.

37:11 Only to find out know there's another season.

37:19 Are you just seemed too? Fascinating person? You know who struggle, his personal struggles with depression? He's got two kids at home and he's like during the pandemic, he was talking about like he's got two hours today to write Max is taking forever for me to get work done.

37:36 Yeah, I really I really admire live. I love his work. You know, he was a critical Time magazine for a long time before he started.

37:53 Publishing the fiction that he's famous for now. I think he may have had off. I think it's early. It's normal that some Star Trek inspired think we may have preceded his team, but that's not what brought him. My I met him first at the author party for the Decatur Book Festival. And at the time I was there with my then-boyfriend send, Kay Hicks & Levinson. Can I turn around? Who's I think his name tag was reversed. And so I just being curious. I reach out. I flip it around. It says left right over there. Do you love to see you?

38:47 The weirder the weird eatel there.

38:52 Is that point? I think I had already reviewed. Austin, Grossman's first, novels soon. I will be Invincible, which is a superhero novel that I like a door. I'm very excited to read Austin's later work, but he and I became Austin. I became Facebook friends. When I found him. Send him a friend request and I sent him an electronic copy of the review that I find out that Austin and live denicol. Twin brothers. I didn't know that.

39:41 Just take off what I love about. The magicians that I've seen so far is it's not

39:50 So, ever since I was eleven or twelve years old, like I've been a secret fantasy of like the portal opens I go through and I'm an actual wizard, right? Like in this world. The 2nd, I think the the two questions I find the most boring are the second most boring kinds of questions in the world of questions about God. Like I don't, I don't care right. But the most boring thing is about a magician magician tricks, like it wasn't until like a couple years ago. I was listening to In This American Life and apparently like Ira Glass has a huge fan fan and

40:29 Yeah, they're talking about some famous trick that. I remember some magician did when he made the Statue of Liberty disappear.

40:38 Oh, yeah, that's a great story. Only, when watch when listening to that story that I heard. Oh, go to see how magician does your trip or cruise to me to just like I care. So, little about magicians, tricks that it never occurred to me to actually look up how they did it. Like, I'm just like, did you actually put that bird in an alternate Dimension know, then I don't care. We're probably going to go over.

41:08 So the idea by going through a portal and actually being able to throw fire from my fingertips is like yeah. Why would you why would anyone not do that? Right? Ok, Google post. You can do that. Do you think it's going to be a great time?

41:32 Yeah, there's a and this is totally. I can recommend this to you, wholeheartedly. I just finished listening to the broadcast version.

41:46 That all of the conversation Colson Whitehead, Barry Jenkins and one a host Jenn White had last week via Zoom broadcast this week on the show, the NPR show 1A and one of the, one of the things I mentioned in passing that I thought so riveted. My attention was I think it's Jenkins talking about all the Whitehead said, something very similar using the Fantastic to get to the truth.

42:22 And that's me, you know it's and I you know me I'm a, I'm an evangelist for the stuff. I'm a True Believer and at the same time I recognize that there are Reams shelves, libraries full of junk science, fiction and junk. But right now that's why I said want to sleep, 90% of Science Fiction and so I brought here that's like 90% Platinum.

43:02 And it was sent some stuff and no crap at all. There's a place for every Burger in this world where they were talking about McDonald's or like the handmade, like there was a place for every Burger.

43:19 Right? And I feel like that was nice Fiction and Fantasy. Like this place where every story and they're like really good fiction you, no matter what it is, is like, I think really good fiction is either Fluff & Stuff up to make. You forget how like about life and there are pretend everything's good or really uncovering the heart beating, right? But the really, really good stuff is not flux. Like you're not flying like a really good. You can get silver medal. Just wait, but you'll never be go. Like, if you want to be gold, you got to confront the hardship.

44:00 Yep, without going into great detail. I realize that a lot of the game writing. I'm doing right now garage from the Motions. I've experienced either my whole life or more pointedly since the Trump years and I'll let you sort of into it, what that might mean, but yeah, there's a lot of my stuff.

44:38 I need one of them very much.

44:48 I'm so, so what, you know, I'm in, I'm in Clover. I'm totally in Clover, because you, like, patrols the short story earlier that has a vampire in it.

45:02 Crunch, Georgia has a vampire in it. In the crimes are not necessarily all on the part. I appreciate talking to you.

45:14 No, it's always my pleasure to talk with you about anything.