Origins of Honeybeech

It’s about time you found out about the origins of Honeybeech. And I didn’t come up with the name. My D&D gaming friends did. And even then, they didn’t consciously come up with the name.

They used a product called the Toolbox by Alderac Entertainment Group. Apparently it’s been revamped, and its current incarnation is Ultimate Toolbox. I haven’t seen the product, so I can’t say how useful it is. It’s not exclusively for Dungeons & Dragons, and is for general roleplaying game use. But from the answers and conversations and discussions between my friends, I’ve gleaned enough to have an idea.

Going back in time

Let me go back a little earlier. I’ve only started playing D&D in April 2009, so it’s about a whopping 8 months of experience. My friends had been playing D&D for years. They go way back like 1st Edition where the Golden Darts of Hornet’s Nest (or something like that) were more powerful than a magic sword, possibly even the Vorpal blade.

It was around D&D Edition 3.5 when one of the DMs tried something new. He had to come up with names of villages and towns and cities, so he used a third party product called the Toolbox. The way to come up with names on the fly was to roll the dice. Then compare the results to the tables in the Toolbox.

So the DM rolled and compared to one table. And got “honey”. He rolled and compared to another table, and got “beech”. Thus was “Honeybeech” born.

The creation and destruction of Honeybeech

They were on a “rotating DM” kind of thing. The next DM in line didn’t like the name Honeybeech. So he wove a story to destroy it. The players had great fun.

Then the next DM, possibly to spite the Honeybeech destroyer DM, told a story that brought back Honeybeech. And the cycle continued.

Earthquakes, lightning, volcanic lava and even interplanar black holes couldn’t destroy Honeybeech.

My friends had very fond memories of Honeybeech. It’s a minor inconvenience that I wasn’t there to witness it. So when I had the brilliant idea of starting an RPG blog and partially to log my gameplay experience, I decided to honour my friends’ memory and named this blog Honeybeech.

Besides, it’s much shorter than the name of my other blog…