Post by grinningdwarf on Aug 26, 2016 3:34:49 GMT
Howdy, all! Started paying D&D a long time ago. It was 1978, and I was a high school freshman. I was just reading The Lord of the Rings, had just finished The Fellowship of the Ring. Dan, the guy who sat behind me in my first period class, was drawing some cool looking maps on graph paper. They turned out to be dungeons. That was the first time I'd ever heard of D&D. After a couple of weeks of telling me about the game, he and his older brother took me to their Saturday game at the Wargame Club meeting at our local community college, College of Lake County. I believe the AD&D books were brand new, they might not have all been published yet, and the group was playing AD&D. Dan's brother was the primary DM, but he would alternate with a friend of his every once in a while. I was hooked from day one!
The only problem was that they only played once a week, and if Dan's older brother didn't go play for some reason, we didn't have a ride and had to miss that week. This was not nearly enough!
First, I needed books. Since Dan's group was moving into AD&D, Dan offered to sell me his 1st edition set. I had to save up lunch money for weeks, but I got them. The first game I ran was just my buddy Mark and me. Mark was the guy who had turned me on to TLotR. He played a halfling thief, and I ran a dwarven fighter NPC.
We soon moved up to AD&D, and the group grew to include most of my high school friends. D&D was always a favorite, but if involved RPGs, or a board and dice, or cards, we played it. Top Secret. Boot Hill. Car Wars. Star Fleet Battles. All of the classic Avalon Hill board war games. Naval War. Nuclear War. Great times.
My favorite class to play was dwarf fighters. And I'm usually a happy guy. Hence, GrinningDwarf
But, after high school, the group started scattering all across Mother America. I left for California in 1986 to work in the mountains and forests, and the only people I could find to play D&D were mostly interested in hack-and-slash games, which I was not interesting in. I got out of gaming for a long time, getting back into it with a group of friends playing Star Fleet Battles and MtG in the early '90s. We moved on to some other historical war games but no RPGs.
Then I got married and had kids. When my son, Josh, was 8 and my daughter, Grace, was 6, I picked up the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. I started them out in a simple game, introducing new concepts each time we played. The first game was a simple tavern brawl encounter. The next game added some stealth and perception checks. The next game added simple vehicle movement. The next game added vehicle combat. And so on and so on, until we got a space ship and started exploring the galaxy. Their main nemesis in that game turned out to be an abandoned kid they found on Rhen Var, who turned out to be a Force Sensitive cross between Gollum and Charlie X from OS Star Trek. He had a holocron. The kid's parents had abandoned him on the planet because they were afraid of him.
After that, Josh took off running games on his own with his friends. I am one proud poppa!
Last year, I decided to get back into D&D. 5E had just been released, and I love it!! I think WotC has done a great job with the new magic rules. IMHO, low level magic users are now playable. I actually played a wizard for the first time in my D&D career in Josh's Icewind Dale campaign.
I just finished running the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign with my kid's gaming group. The kids are 19 and 17 now. Next up, a guy from the group is going to run a Ravenloft campaign, and I get to be a player in that one! We have a pretty good group of gamers at Matrix Cards & Games in Redding, CA.
I'm still working in the mountains and woods of California. I'm a trout hatchery manager with the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. I write. Working on a memoir of my time on a Backcountry trail crew in Yosemite National Park. I have a couple of blogs, one about the California Conservation Corps, and one on D&D. (The D&D blog has actually evolved a couple of times into what it is now. And I haven't posted on there in a while.) I also run the website and newsletter for our local writers group.
Howdy, everybody!
The only problem was that they only played once a week, and if Dan's older brother didn't go play for some reason, we didn't have a ride and had to miss that week. This was not nearly enough!
First, I needed books. Since Dan's group was moving into AD&D, Dan offered to sell me his 1st edition set. I had to save up lunch money for weeks, but I got them. The first game I ran was just my buddy Mark and me. Mark was the guy who had turned me on to TLotR. He played a halfling thief, and I ran a dwarven fighter NPC.
We soon moved up to AD&D, and the group grew to include most of my high school friends. D&D was always a favorite, but if involved RPGs, or a board and dice, or cards, we played it. Top Secret. Boot Hill. Car Wars. Star Fleet Battles. All of the classic Avalon Hill board war games. Naval War. Nuclear War. Great times.
My favorite class to play was dwarf fighters. And I'm usually a happy guy. Hence, GrinningDwarf
But, after high school, the group started scattering all across Mother America. I left for California in 1986 to work in the mountains and forests, and the only people I could find to play D&D were mostly interested in hack-and-slash games, which I was not interesting in. I got out of gaming for a long time, getting back into it with a group of friends playing Star Fleet Battles and MtG in the early '90s. We moved on to some other historical war games but no RPGs.
Then I got married and had kids. When my son, Josh, was 8 and my daughter, Grace, was 6, I picked up the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. I started them out in a simple game, introducing new concepts each time we played. The first game was a simple tavern brawl encounter. The next game added some stealth and perception checks. The next game added simple vehicle movement. The next game added vehicle combat. And so on and so on, until we got a space ship and started exploring the galaxy. Their main nemesis in that game turned out to be an abandoned kid they found on Rhen Var, who turned out to be a Force Sensitive cross between Gollum and Charlie X from OS Star Trek. He had a holocron. The kid's parents had abandoned him on the planet because they were afraid of him.
After that, Josh took off running games on his own with his friends. I am one proud poppa!
Last year, I decided to get back into D&D. 5E had just been released, and I love it!! I think WotC has done a great job with the new magic rules. IMHO, low level magic users are now playable. I actually played a wizard for the first time in my D&D career in Josh's Icewind Dale campaign.
I just finished running the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign with my kid's gaming group. The kids are 19 and 17 now. Next up, a guy from the group is going to run a Ravenloft campaign, and I get to be a player in that one! We have a pretty good group of gamers at Matrix Cards & Games in Redding, CA.
I'm still working in the mountains and woods of California. I'm a trout hatchery manager with the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. I write. Working on a memoir of my time on a Backcountry trail crew in Yosemite National Park. I have a couple of blogs, one about the California Conservation Corps, and one on D&D. (The D&D blog has actually evolved a couple of times into what it is now. And I haven't posted on there in a while.) I also run the website and newsletter for our local writers group.
Howdy, everybody!
