The role-playing legend resurfaces as a powerful occult figure.

David A. Trampier was god to players of Dungeons and Dragons He was a brilliant artist and a wonderful and subtle author before he fell of the face of the earth and left his comic Wormy hanging limbo forever at issue #132 of Dragon magazine. I write this with the greatest of respect. I was recalling the Trampier affair to a friend of mine and realized it was the work of symbolic action if anything has ever been. This is my interpretation, which takes a rather negative slant. This is mostly because I was in the middle of working on The Disappointment and felt that they intersected. I know a bit about Tramp but most of what I am writing is extrapolating from this knowledge.

So in honor of Wormy, DAT and my childhood I write this stat block:

Some people never want to get famous. They are simply talented, lucky and in the right place at the right time. They get the notoriety that we all want. Sometimes their just pursuing some sort of hobby or one of their great loves. David A. Trampier is one of these people.

With the construction of Dungeons and Dragons Tramp got on the train, lending his artistic skills to the cover of the first Player’s Handbook. Later, with the advent of Dragon Magazine as a companion publication he started a comic called Wormy.

The story revolved around the antagonist of the role-playing world of Dungeons and Dragons. The characters that would people played would occasionally show up as nuisances. What began as a semi-serialized comic poking fun at the gaming industry evolved into a brilliantly complicated storyline.

And then one day he disappeared. His comic unfinished and his fans aghast.

History: David was a successful comic book artist, it was very close to what he wanted. He had always hoped to be a painter, someone who would be respected for years to come. He didn’t want to be famous while he was alive though. He hated the idea of people at his doorstep asking for autographs. A man is entitled to his privacy.

However his work in Dragon Magazine was getting attention, a lot. He got fan mail until he changed his address to a P.O. Box. He was getting famous, too famous to be taken seriously as a painter. He didn’t dislike hobby gaming, in fact it was a big part of his life. He just didn’t want it at the center.

He started to stress over it. His personal life began to suffer. He was angry a lot of the time and everything he did began to fall through. His girlfriend stayed with him through it. She kept saying it was a phase. He still had work at TSR even though his social skills were going down the toilet. People just felt comfortable trusting him. It was a hard part of his life. And then, well then he came out the other end. He attuned to the archetype known as the Disappointment and drew power from it. At first it was unconscious but soon enough he figured it out.
He didn’t fully understand his archetype though. He thought he had become attuned to something that just made him more convincing or made people trust him. He thought that he could turn his life around and pull things back together, that his archetype would guide him. Instead he just ended up hurting everyone around him.

His girlfriend left him and he quit writing Wormy right in the middle of a fascinating climactic arch. And in that action he disappointed almost everyone who had anything to do with role-playing at the time. It wasn’t a whole lot of people but it was such a large percentage of a type of person that he got really juiced up by it. It was the symbolic push to becoming the Godwalker.

Now he wanders Illinois avoiding the limelight and letting his friends down. He’s getting on in years but keeps himself going with mojo from the Statosphere. He moves to a different place every couple of months and establishes new expectations to shatter. He walks with a limp and a cane these days after a bitter ex-tracked him down and shot him in the hip. He does this mostly to stay off the radar. He could certainly hang around one location pretty much indefinitely and still get symbolic mojo out of the populace. But staying in one place has its risks, he can’t let himself be tracked down. Being found by a fan might break the mystical synergy he got from prematurely ending Wormy.

Personality: Charming but quick to anger, most of his friends know him for his temper but they all love him anyway.
Obsession: Invisibility, David doesn’t mind having friends but he needs his out for when he let’s them down, he needs to disappear. (Skill: Drop Off the Face of the Earth)
Wound Points: 40

Passions
Rage: Fans: David is trying to divorce himself from his past, he doesn’t want another letter about how great Wormy was and how he should finish it.
Fear: Being Found Out (Helplessness): David is a phony, he hates that he has become such a blatant failure and he doesn’t want anyone he cares about to know.
Noble: Art: Deep down David has always been an artist. Art should be appreciated and artists should be respected.

Stats
Body: 40 (Getting on in Years)
Speed: 40 (Brushstrokes and Typing)
Mind: 80 (Wisdom of the Ages)
Soul: 99 (Attuned to a Higher Power)

Skills
Body: Cane strike (Struggle) 25%, Run From Your Problems (General Athletics) 25%
Speed: Avoid Conflict (Dodge) 20%, Traveling Man (Drive) 25%, Quick to Anger (Initiative) 45%
Mind: Been Around the Block (General Education) 40%, Write Fiction 45%, Drop Off the Face of the Earth (Conceal) 70%, Artistic Vision (Notice) 50%,
Soul: It Won’t Happen Again (Charm) 60%, Painting 60%, Intuition 60%, I Would Never Let You Down (Lying) 60%, Avatar The Disappointment 99%

Godwalker Channel: As the Godwalker of the Disappointment David can subvert his will on non-living, mundane things that would normally fail him. He uses this most notably to drive his junker of a car which is actually missing a few, fairly important components. As long as David needs something to work, it will. Sometimes David even breaks the technology around him for this purpose. His apartments tend to be left if completely unusable condition right after he disappears.

Madness Meter
Violence: 0 Hardened >< 0 Failed Unnatural: 4 Hardened >< 0 Failed Helplessness: 3 Hardened >< 3 Failed Isolation: 2 Hardened >< 1 Failed Self: 6 Hardened >< 1 Failed Possessions:
David has possession of only a few key objects. He has a set of painting brushes and other supplies and some expensive oil paints. He has a car that shouldn’t work. Every bit of technology he has is broken just to the brink of physically falling apart. He has a cell phone that only makes outgoing calls, and only when he dials it. He prefers to surround himself with objects that shouldn’t work so would be thieves would gain nothing from taking them. Apart from that he owns two occult objects that he uses to keep himself unfindable.
One is a long chain of paperclips. There is a tuft of hair from someone David hurt in the past tied to each paperclip. As long as he holds it any kind of divination attempted on him will at best lead the scryer to one of the people whose hair is tied to the fetish. When this happens that tuft of hair unravels and falls off. Currently there are still eleven enchanted clips.
The other is a business card with a bit of blood on the tip of each corner. He can hand it to someone and they will instantly forget he exists as long as the card is in their possession. He has used it once on an adoring fan after they tracked him down through an article printed in a newspaper. After fleeing the state he cashed in a favor and had it returned to him.