A few months later, a game store opened in my area, and I started playing AD&D and Vampire with some people there. Later, the store closed, *sniffle* and I started playing Marvel Super Heroes™, AD&D™, various Storyteller™ stuff, and Champions with some friends I knew from the game store. Then those friends moved on. Then I recently found some new friends at school, whom I play SenZar with (it’s a new fantasy RPG. To find out more about it, search for SenZar on Yahoo), and a few more who’ve invited me to join their Ravenloft™ game.

14^th December 1996

Ah, but it sounds wonderful. My experiences weren’t as golden. I started off with those books … not modules, books … like the Steve Jackson "Dungeon" books and all that. I converted them into an RPG by running new adventures using their rules with my friends. That’s right, a game where you have three stats, is entirely combat-oriented and you could finish a quest in half and hour.

From there, it went to AD&D. In case anybody has ever wondered why I stopped GMing until last year, it’s because of this. In my first game as a GM, I let the PCs randomly roll on the "Artefact" treasure table in the DMG1. And then I gave them a ring of three wishes. And then I gave them random magic items for doing me favours, like carrying the books instead of me. It was munchkin as hell, but we had fun. I seem to recall the one PC wishing for something I didn’t want to give him, so I had Satan come and buy it back from him. <laughing> I didn’t have the monster manual yet, you see. Not to mention the time one of the PCs (in an adaptation of a Spy-RPG module in Dragon magazine, I didn’t have any modules yet) polymorphed himself into a dragon. We didn’t have any stats, but there was this handy guide in the DMG that listed combat abilities, so he chose … a CHROMATIC dragon. It was amazing how fast the monsters died. To make things challenging, the end fight with a couple hundred lizardmen was changed - the lizardmen were all priests, and when the PCs came in, they finished their chant and suddenly they were all sucked into one body, becoming a huge, hundred-foot high lizard man god. He did 1d100 hit points on a successful hit, but the PCs only had something like 25 or 30 each. So I kept on assigning the monster penalties - Oh, his claws are so big, only one of the three could hit you … and he moves really slow, so he only gets one attack every two rounds … and he only hits small creatures like you on a natural 20.

It was fun. But it was munchkin as heck, and I’m glad to say I grew out of it. This was … let’s see … 11 years ago.

 15th Dec 1996

The standard is much higher, and the gaming sessions are shorter. The adventure and good times are still here, but… there is a bit of magic that has gone. We started at 14 (now 30), and played some incredibly munchkin games in the beginning. We used to play all night (weekend), and every day over summer vacation. By reading this NG, I consider myself lucky on two fronts:

1. My original group is still together (5 of us), we all live within ½ hour of each other, and some of our wives get together on game nights.
2. We play EVERY week, for four hours, on Monday nights.

In our playing careers, we have grown from going on single adventures (with each of us taking turns at the DM seat), to playing the long campaigns that we now play. Our campaigns now last at least a year (real time), with the longest clocking in a three. Our characters now can die, without wished or priests to raise them. We retire our characters once we hit about 12^th level, and start over (usually someone else wants a shot at DMing - Not me), I will say that some of the magic is gone, but, (like a marriage) is replaced by something deeper. We actually care about our characters now, so much that when a character is killed or retired, that characters fig gets a place of honour in the players home (put on the shelf with the pewter dragons and castles we all seem to love). We have books filled with old characters that we can feel real stories about. So … I would say that nothing is lost, just changed.

 16th Dec 1996

Back to Losing Virginity

Sure. It was in the basement of a house built in the early 1900s. It had that great old building smell of mildew and rust. I played with a bunch of West Point cadets; I was 13, had never seen the rules, and was completely clueless.

My PC was a dwarf fighter with 2 hit points. Don’t remember much of the game (it was 20 years ago). I do remember one scene where the party marched along a wooden, straw covered platform and the lead guy fell through a hole obscured by the straw.

That game hooked by hard. I’ve been playing ever since.

 16th Dec 1996

Back to Losing Virginity

I first met an RPG in about ’82 (Basic D&D, I think), when some kid in school brought a copy along. I remember that it was a bit of a hoot, but very arbitrary (we were only about 12).

My first RPGs were Space Opera and C&S 2^nd ed. - not the simplest introduction to GMing! The SO games were always very munchkinish, but the C&S games were wonderful, and I wish I could still play with those players (who are scattered to the four winds, these days). We also had some great Bushido and Aftermath games, and I must say that very seldom is my sense of wonder stirred more than it was then. They were great times indeed.

From the Land of the Long White Cloud

(Six weeks by Slow Boat from ANYWHERE)

16th Dec 1996

Back to Losing Virginity

For me that’s a two part question.

Back in 1977 or so, a couple of geekish friends of mine told me about some kind of "role playing game" (whatever THAT meant) that was going on at a mutual friend’s house. First off it was worth investigating because this guy had his own apartment (I was 16 at the time and easily impressed) and the game was supposed to be science fiction based and that sounded worth checking out. Apparently, the guy had rolled together a few ideas and called it "Starships and Spacemen". It was loosely Trek-ish (a Federation, but warp points/lines instead of warp engines). I played for a while but it didn’t last long.

A few months later, a different friend picked up this new boxed game called "Dungeons and Dragons". A couple of other friends and I tried it out with the box’s owner being the DM. Since I was the only other person in the room with RPG experience (though I hardly knew it), I got elected party leader.

Well, my mother heard about all this and saw my interest. Now I know what you’re all thinking: she probably spazzed out now that her son was getting into "that cult game" as some of its detractors were calling it. Well, what to my surprise when for my birthday a few weeks later she brought home a bag that had the "Big Three" hardcover books in it. Getting the DMG, PH & MM set me on my way.

I ran a few campaigns after that. My first one was the worst one you could imagine (I think I redefined the term "Monty Haul") but I improved with time. After about 8 or 9 years I switched to GURPS.

Now I’m in my 30s, on my second marriage, two kids, the mortgage, etc. and I don’t have much time for gaming anymore. Haven’t really done it in years but I keep buying Dragon Magazine (have them all back to #34 and several individual ones before then), the occasional Dungeon and Pyramid for ideas that may get used sometime in the next century. The group my wife plays with just asked me to run a game next year and I’d really like to, but who knows if I’ll have the time?

Sigh… ’s good to reminisce sometimes!

(djlong@magic.mv.com)

17th Dec 1996

Back to Losing Virginity