Reminiscing...

The other day, as I was preparing a post, I was thinking about my early days in D&D. I know it's a familiar story for many:

One of my friends, Tim, in 7th grade or 8th grade (I think it was 8th grade - late '81) had these:

We all asked him what the heck it was and he told us it was a game - but not a board game - it was a roleplaying game. We all nodded sagely, as 8th graders are wont to do, and he proceeded to befuddle us with talk of attributes and armor class and character class.

We spent almost every lunch period and study hall that year and the next playing D&D. We quickly split off into different groups, however. Steve and I lived fairly close together so we started to game together - sometimes Aaron or Bill would join us, but Tim had his group and we weren't really invited into it (he was kind of "the first hit is free" guy - then we had to measure up to his standards - and we didn't - because we wanted to clear out the Keep on the Borderlands once we cleared the Caves of Chaos - and by then he was playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and we were still playing old Basic/Expert). But it's all good - he introduced us, we played off and on for a year or so with Tim (when we could) in school. Summer meant that Steve and I could play nearly as often as we wanted (couple nights a week, usually).

By the second summer (lets see, around 83, I guess) we were playing a hybrid version of Basic/Expert/AD&D - Steve had the B/X and the DMG, but not player's handbook or the Monster Manual. I had the Greyhawk supplement and B/X - so Basic/Expert was our common ground - but we mixed in all kind of stuff that we found. Oh - and I had a BUNCH of issues of Dragon - including the first Best Of...that had lots of nifty stuff in it.

So we had race as class AND race and class separated - and it didn't matter. We used the experience point charts from B/X but the combat stuff from the DMG - and the treasure tables from the DMG, of course (got to get us some artifacts, donchaknow...). We figured if TSR put it out, and it said D&D in any fashion on the cover, then it was "official" and fair game for us to use. Of course we were munchkins (heck, we were 14 or 15, what do you expect?) - some characters had pages of equipment that, somehow, they managed to carry with them everywhere they went (I remember us once in a while going, "Okay, so it's a white dragon, I know I have a sword that's like +3 vs. cold creatures here somewhere...). Apparently we had the world's largest portable holes or something. I know I had a fighter with 50 or more magic swords...

After a while, the powergaming got stale for me - not as soon for Steve - and I tried to create an original campaign world. I'd read the Lord of the Rings and some Morcock and Piers Anthony's Xanth series (well, what was available up to that point) and a number of issues of Savage Sword of Conan as well as a bunch of one off fantasy fiction (I think I had read Quag Keep by then - but I didn't realize it was set in an official TSR world until years later). I really hadn't read all that much - but I was a huge fan of any sci-fi or fantasy movie that came out - Star Wars, Alien, Conan, Battlestar Galactica, whatever I could get my hands on.

And all that was in the mix in my "original" campaign world - that featured a Dark Lord in a volcanic land guarded by goblins (no, not orcs, this is NOT Sauron, dangit) who forged crowns of power...yeah, you get the picture - I even had hobbits kidnapped by goblins...but Steve caught on (I was so surprised...) and the "campaign" fell apart.

We mostly played modules - no continuity - we'd just read the set up and dive right in. I plowed through the Giants as a player, Steve the Drow as a player. I owned more modules, so I DMed more - B2, B3, B4, X1, D1-3, EX1&2, U1, UK1, DL1, I1, I12, S3, WG4, WG5, WG6, X3,XL1...

Took myself through MSOLO2 and XS2

Steve DMed - B2, X1, L1, G1-3, O1 (kicked my butt), S1 (also kicked my butt), S2, X2, maybe C2, I can't remember...

So once we got to like 10th or 11th grade or so Steve quit playing - which meant that I did, too. I kept buying stuff - issues of Dragon, Adventure modules, etc.

Freshman year of college I acquired the Fiend Folio - which deserves a post all its own, of course. But I greedily added the slate of monsters into my repertoire - for the "someday" game that I would play. I still didn't pick up any other AD&D books - content with B/X and Greyhawk as my official rule set.

Freshman year I played a single session with some upperclassmen - they were way too into it for me - I just wanted to kill things and take their stuff. They talked in funny voices and sort of dressed up. That was enough for me...

Quit playing again until I changed schools, saw a guy reading a Dragonlance novel - turned out he was a good friend of my (not quite yet) wife from when she went to college (long story as to why he and I were still in college while our wives had graduated a couple years earlier and had steady jobs - but it had something to do with neither of us attending all our classes freshman year...and, well, grade point averages suffering for it...but it's more complicated than that). Anyway, Jim and I started talking and eventually I asked him if he played D&D or just read the novels...turns out I'm a "first hit is free" guy, too...

Jim and I gamed for about a decade before real life (and an obsession with Magic the Gathering) broke it up. I acted as DM almost exclusively (turns out I'm not a very good player - I'm not a great DM, I don't think, either - but I guess I'm better at that...) - started with an adventure in Dungeon called "Tomb It May Concern" since Jim wanted to play a paladin. I think we started him at like 3rd level but with 0 xp. Something like that, anyway - thing is I wasn't very good at remembering to calculate xp...so I think he stayed at level 3 for a long time...

We ran that little adventure almost "as is" - I think I added a little to the Big Bad Evil Guy at the end of it...and Jim's paladin found a book that he believed held the secret to gaining lichdom in it and didn't feel he could leave it there for just anyone to find - so he took it with the intention of destroying it...though he never got around to it...and had more than one bad thing happen because he had that book...

Anyway, that was the last "module" we played - I used all kind of bits and pieces of published stuff - but generally not in a very recognizable form. But we logged hundreds of hours of playing - wives and kids falling asleep on couches - driving home hopped up on caffeine at 4 in the morning - to get up and go to work at 5:30 AM. I was crazy at the time...but they were good times. And I miss those gaming days a lot more than even the early days - we tried to create a campaign world - no funny voices and dressing up - but history and politics and factions and Jim created a plot for his character to follow...it was a lot of fun.

We even went to two small, semi-local conventions. One was in Oil City or Franklin - I think it was called CosCon - whatever we paid to get in didn't entitle us to play any games - so we watched one poor DM struggle with...um...idiot players. I'll tell that story another time.

The second convention was in Erie - and we were getting started in our Magic the Gathering phase and we took part in a Magic tournament - did pretty well considering we both were playing "rainbow" decks (it hadn't occurred to us that you could play a single color - or just a couple colors) - but we managed to make it a few rounds into the tournament before getting our butts handed to us. Later we played in a run through of N1 "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" - though we were (for some unfathomable reason) all halflings - and I had to play a druid...it didn't go well...like I said, I'm a better DM than a player. But Jim and I enjoyed ourselves. I swore off conventions after that, though. Too many wierdos... (because I'm completely normal, of course).

During that time I ran a few sessions for a guy I graduated with and worked with at a restaurant - Joe - but he was all into powergaming - just wanted his fighter to be able to be Wolverine (from the Marvel comic series). It devolved quickly...

And then I've been on a decade plus long hiatus from actual gaming - too much real life. But I can opine - and I can plot and plan...and someday, oh yes, someday, I'll get a group together and the world will be my...oyster?