Where story began with dice, stubborn imagination, and the spark of something too big to stay on a tabletop.
The Forge of a World
Ambervale didn’t begin as a novel.
It didn’t begin with outlines, worldbuilding spreadsheets, or a carefully shaped magic system. It began the way the best stories often do:
around a table, with friends, a few battered dice, and the kind of imagination that keeps you up too late.
The guys I played Dungeons & Dragons with back then were deep into Dragonlance.
I wasn’t — and that’s part of what made things interesting.
They brought the epic tropes and grand fantasy arcs.
I brought stubborn questions, a love of character grit, and a habit of asking what the world looked like behind the usual hero’s path.
Somewhere in the crossfire between those influences, the first version of this world took shape. Hank built a module — handcrafted, messy, brilliant — and in the end, we called it Over the Dragonwall.
Back then, it was just a campaign seed.
A setting that grew every time we rolled a natural one at the worst possible moment.
A place where we learned the kind of stories we loved — and the kind we refused to tell.
It wasn’t polished.
It wasn’t pretty.
But it was alive.
And it stayed with me.
Dennis D Montoya 