From Game Table to Page

The Draakonor Chronicles began at a gaming table in a basement in Colorado.

The story that would eventually become The Draakonor Chronicles started with a group of friends, a lot of dice, a basement full of miniatures, and a Game Master with an extraordinary imagination.

In the winter of 2000, I was invited to participate in a role-playing game with a group of friends. Some I had known for years; others I had only recently met. These were serious gamers who had played just about every role-playing system in the known universe.

I had been playing RPGs since college, including Dungeons & Dragons, Middle Earth Role Playing, and Vampire: The Masquerade. But these guys were in another league.

And there was another reason I was interested. 

The game was being played at the home of my friend Douglas Shuler.

Doug is an accomplished illustrator and a lifelong gamer, but more importantly for this story, he is an exceptional Game Master. His basement is essentially a gamer’s dream: shelves packed with role-playing books and board games, walls covered with artwork and convention memorabilia, and cases filled with armies of hand painted miniatures.

Standing in the center of it all are two long tables, ready and waiting for another adventure.

When I arrived at Doug’s house that cold winter’s day and sat down at one of those tables I had no idea I was about to begin an epic four-year journey.

The Bells of Fairhaven

The game was originally supposed to be a one-off adventure, scheduled to coincide with a visit from a mutual friend who was living in England at the time.

When I arrived, I saw that Doug had built something I’d never seen at a gaming table before.

One table was essentially empty with only a plastic arch to indicate the entrance to a dungeon.

The other table held an entire medieval village.

There were houses, stables, an inn, a church, and a stone tower. There were wagons, carts, pigs, and horses. And villagers walked the streets. 

It looked less like a game and more like a tiny world waiting to be explored.

There were eight of us involved in that first adventure, with Doug and Karl running different parts of the game. But first we had to create our characters.

I chose a human thief named Finn.

Dave created a barbarian warrior named Ander.

Kris created a wizard named Portia.

Denny created an elven ranger-mage named Lothanarian Tharthia, a name born out of our long-standing joke about elaborate elven names.

Sarah and Freya created twin wood elves, Blayde and Rayzer.

Then we chose our miniatures, placed our characters in the village, and rolled for initiative.

The adventure was called The Bells of Fairhaven.

None of us knew it at the time, but it would be the first chapter in a much larger story.

When a Game Becomes a Story

What made this group special was that the story always came first.

The rules were important, but they were never allowed to get in the way of a great scene. House rules were created when necessary. Rules were bent when it made the story better. Characters faced difficult choices, unexpected consequences, and situations where there wasn’t an obvious right answer.

That approach created something much more than a series of disconnected adventures.

It created a story.

A few months after that first game, Doug asked if we wanted to continue.

We didn’t hesitate.

In March of 2001, we gathered again. This time our adventure took us to the high seas and involved a band of notorious pirates.

After that, we met on the first Saturday of every month.

Every game brought a new adventure. Doug built new terrain—castle walls, towers, ships, villages, taverns and more. Sets changed but some locations returned, including an inn called Sour Hugh’s, named after Sarah’s husband. It became a recurring part of our imaginary world.

And, of course, there were snacks.

Lots of snacks.

We filled the mini fridge with Coke and Mountain Dew, covered the counter with chips, cookies and M&Ms, and brought enough food to survive the apocalypse.

Then we ordered pizza.

Month after month, the story continued.

The Chronicle of the Dragon Shards

By the fourth adventure, Doug and Freya had begun developing a much larger storyline. Doug called it The Chronicle of the Dragon Shards.

The individual adventures were no longer isolated episodes. Each one affected what came next.

We received information about what had happened previously and how those events had changed the political situation. Characters developed. Relationships changed. New enemies appeared. Decisions had consequences.

We were no longer simply playing a game.

We were following a saga.

From beginning to end, we played 44 episodes over four years.

And I started keeping notes.

At first, my notes were little more than reminders. During a game, it isn’t easy to document events while also trying to figure out what to do about the axe wielding dragon-ogre bearing down on you.

But as the campaign continued, my notes became longer and more detailed.

Eventually, they weighed in at 406 typed single space pages.

Some of those notes had begun to sound less like gaming notes and more like scenes from a novel.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was already writing the first draft of The Draakonor Chronicles.

From Campaign to Novel

After that campaign ended, life took me in other directions.

My wife and I moved to the Northeast for several years before eventually returning to Colorado. My writing slowed down, but I never completely forgot about those adventures.

Then, in 2010, while visiting friends in Los Angeles, I found myself lying awake one night thinking about the Chronicle of the Dragon Shards.

The campaign had ended years earlier.

But the story was still there.

And I realized something.

I already had the foundation for an entire series of novels.

I had characters.

I had relationships.

I had conflicts.

I had villains.

I had political intrigue, magic, battles, monsters and mysteries.

Equally important, I knew how the story ended.

The question was whether I could turn four years of tabletop adventures into actual novels.

I decided to try.

Building Ninavar

There was one major problem.

The campaign existed within a game setting and rules system that weren’t mine.

I couldn’t simply take my 406 pages of notes and turn them into a book.

I needed to create something new.

So, I rebuilt the world.

The characters remained recognizable, but the setting changed. I created new cities and countries, drew map after map, developed new creatures and races, and eventually created an entirely new world called Ninavar.

Some of the names had stories behind them.

Ander had originally been called Ender, but I changed it because of the obvious association with Ender’s Game.

Some names simply couldn’t be changed.

Nachtwald was too good to lose.

Ashendraugnir was too good to lose.

And Jankayla, the mysterious sorceress at the center of the story, had to stay.

Eventually, even the name of the series changed.

The original campaign had been called The Chronicle of the Dragon Shards. But when I discovered that “Dragon Shards” was already being used elsewhere, I wanted something more distinctive.

I combined draak, the Dutch word for dragon, with the final letters of “honor.”

Draakonor.

And The Draakonor Chronicles was born.

From Fairhaven to Nachtwald

The first novel grew out of that very first adventure, The Bells of Fairhaven.

But the tabletop adventure had been relatively small.

For the novel, I wanted something bigger.

Instead of a village, I wanted a castle.

Instead of a small orc attack, I wanted a siege.

Instead of one adventure, I wanted the beginning of an epic fantasy story.

That became A Way with Magic.

Portia and Finn—characters who had first come to life at that gaming table—became central figures in the novel.

The world grew around them.

What had started as a group of friends sitting around a table had become a fantasy series.

Turning the Story into Books

Writing that first novel took four years.

There were revisions, rewrites, doubts, and plenty of moments when I wondered whether I was wasting my time.

But I kept going.

Eventually, I had a finished manuscript.

And then I discovered another advantage of having spent most of my career working as a graphic artist.

I could publish the book myself.

And I knew the perfect illustrator to create the cover.

We decided that Portia should be featured on the first book. Doug found a model, arranged a photo shoot in that same basement where our adventures had begun, and used the photographs to create the finished artwork.

I handled the rest.

I learned how to prepare the ebook files, designed the print edition, created the interior and cover files, and published the book independently.

A Way with Magic finally made its way out into the world.

The tabletop game had become a novel.

The Adventure Continues

Since finishing A Way with Magic, the story has continued to grow.

I’ve written The Fabled Beast of Elddon, a prequel novella, along with The Judgment of Thieves, the second novel in the series, and Pirates of the Tragosian Sea, an interlude in the larger story.

And there are more adventures still to come.

The characters who began as names on character sheets have become people with histories, ambitions, relationships and choices of their own.

The world we once defined with dice and miniatures now exists on the page.

More Than a Fantasy Series

The Draakonor Chronicles is a fantasy series, but for me it is also something more personal.

These books exist because a group of friends spent years sitting around a table imagining stories together.

Month after month Doug created elaborate adventures. Freya, Sarah, Kris, Dave and Denny created characters and helped shape the world. Everyone contributed something.

And I was lucky enough to be there with my laptop, taking notes.

Those 44 games gave us four years of adventures.

The novels are my way of preserving them.

I hope readers will enjoy the stories for what they are: epic fantasy adventures filled with magic, danger, mystery, pirates, monsters, heroes, and villains.

But behind every chapter is a memory of friends gathered around a table, rolling dice, eating sugary snacks, drinking too much soda, and wondering what would happen next.

That is where The Draakonor Chronicles began.

At a gaming table.

With a group of friends.

And a story we weren’t ready to let end.