What is Simple DeeEnDee? Where did it come from?

Where does an idea come from? Well, in this particular case, drugs, punk rock, and a lifetime love of fantasy adventure ttrpgs.

I remember I was staying with an old friend and I was on a dose of dissociative anesthetic large enough for mild hallucinations. I was, at that point, carrying-everything-I-own homeless, which had exacerbated my already bad back. That’s what the drugs were for, not even fun just lesser misery.

Anyway, I started thinking about fantasy adventure ttrpgs, and what made them fun and what sapped the fun for me. Then I got a little belligerent; which is/was also not unusual.

I was thinking about how the fun of every game has not been in the numbers, the systems, but rather in the creativity of everyone involved. I also was thinking about how much that painstaking “character build” systems like 3E and Pathfinder did not feel like endless options. They felt like a very convoluted straight jacket, eroding potentiality for needless specificity and endlessly increasing numbers.

D&D sort of fit that bill of what I wanted, specifically B/X Dungeons and Dragons, RIFTs, Swords and Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, and other OSR systems that usually we just called DnD. So I set out to make a game that could communicate with “DnD” modules, but emphasized the type of creative fun I loved so much. I was pretty sure i could do it in less than 4k words (and I did).

I decided to call it Simple DeeEnDee, replace the letters with just meaningless sounds; a subtle reminder to everypony, it was their imagination that gave the game meaning & power. It was never Hasbro’s game, never Gary’s game, that’s mostly noise; the game is you. The rules I wrote are suggestions meant to help, and just as easily can be discarded.

I wrote the whole fucking thing in one go. Then edited it very lightly over the next couple of days. And have since designed adventures, spells, more character classes, and new setting for the game. With all of it, I try to emphasize the creativity of all involved.

Now, I’m using the format to turn my religious trauma, and feelings as xtian nationalists attempt to erase me and every other trans person, puttin’ all that into a dungeon crawler setting for Simple DeeEnDee. You can but that whole setting for only $8 right now. Including the original DeeEnDee zine!