Vintage Roleplaying Book Porn at the House of Fun

So there's a store called House of Fun in my little South Jersey burg, and it's a collectibles store mostly known for having vintage toys.

I went in there the other day with my son because he's developed an obsession with Aliens and Predators. Specifically, Aliens Versus Predators. Now, I haven't let him watch any Aliens or Predator films yet except for a TV edit of Alien, given how young he is at the moment.

He gained knowledge of Aliens and Predators from a friend who picked up a toy from House of Fun. So, the boy had to get his hands on a similar Alien-type toy using his Christmas cash.

Yeah, boys will be boys, right? I'm just glad he's into a classic creature that his old dad likes, too. The old stuff still has some appeal!

ANYway, as the boy was agonizing over what Alien toy to choose, I wandered around the treasure trove playland of the store.

And I came upon a bookcase:

Yes, indeedy. Suffice to say I plunged into this bookshelf with abandon, going through every item, extending our visit waaay beyond what the boy wanted, unfortunately for him.

Sorry kid, your dad is an inveterate old-head nerd, and finding stuff like this is a wonderland!

Want some more? Take a look: 

I felt like I needed to pick up these 1st Edition AD&D screens...but I didn't...mostly because I think the owner of the store is going to try and sell them at a pretty penny. He seems to go by what they cost on Ebay...and these suckers are pricey! I might go back and ask though, just in case. 

I'm not playing AD&D 1st Edition and not planning to do so any time soon...but when has that ever stopped me?

Never heard of Feudal...it's a game from the 60's, so that's probably why (I'm not from the 60's)

Boot Hill boxed set...contents seemed pretty incomplete.

There was a ton of stuff but I just took some shots of my highlights. There were a lot of D&D modules, MERP modules, and Ravenloft stuff as well.

And there was a copy of the Elfquest RPG, sans box. 

I bought that. 

I've always had a thing for Elfquest. I've always thought that someone should do a Basic D&D conversion of Elfquest. 

Hmmm...

Yes, I'm still insane and a nerd. What else is new? 

Anyway, gotta run for now, but just wanted to share!

Me and Roleplaying: 2014 and Beyond...

Hail and well met, fellow adventurers! Here we are, on the threshold of a new year of crisis and opportunity! May we all rise to the blessed challenges that the universe lays before us, for challenges are blessings, and they help make us more than we were before!

I love the RPG blogosphere, the whole cacophonous lot of you! Every single one of your blogs are a light that keeps the flame of roleplaying alive! Whether you have a regular game (be it face-to-face or virtual), or are dreaming of gaming days past or future, you are keeping the spirit alive. And I salute you for your efforts, however humble or grand. Thanks to all of you for your continuing inspiration. For that's what you have been, are, and will be for me.

No, this isn't a farewell post from me. I'm just changing my focus for my free time in 2014. I'm working on a dream, folks. Wish me all the best you can spare. I'm bound and determined to change the career aspect of my life. I'm going to focus all the will, energy, determination, and ambition I have in this body into the effort.

So my available time for the hobby will be limited, but it will burn no less brighter for it. Indeed, I expect the inner fire for roleplaying will only burn hotter. I'm looking forward to my return to roleplaying when the time is right, just as it was right about three years ago. I always have believed that hope springs eternal. It is this faith that has driven me most of my life. Without it, I'm not sure where I'd be today.

At any rate, this is an RPG blog, eh? So, what do I foresee for me in the way of gaming in the new year?

Well, there will be no doubt some evenings where I will actually find myself at the game table once more. I've laid the foundations for several good groups of gamers that have promised to have chairs open for me. Most likely I will be a player, as I probably won't have the time to prep to be a GM.

I see the coming year as a time of much-needed reflection on my roleplaying career. This reflection will include some much-needed delvings into the old rule sets that have been calling out to me. I'm feeling like I have a lot of assumptions when it comes to my gaming past. Assumptions scare me. To me, they reek of hubris. You assume you know all there is to know about something, and that's when bad things happen.

Yes, I need to do some long-overdue exploration of my roleplaying past. Since I jumped head-first back into roleplaying in 2010, I've pretty much never looked back. But that neglect of my RPG past has most likely given birth to this burning desire to read and use some of the old books.

One of the big assumptions I've harbored is that I know all I need to know about the older versions of D&D and AD&D. But I'm really feeling drawn to, of all things, 2nd Edition AD&D at the moment. At the very least, I think I need to do a good read of this version of the game over the next year. If only to exorcise the demanding, nagging feeling that I need to explore it again. But actually, I expect to see that old game with my older man's eyes, and see what I get out of it this time around. That's a reunion I've foolishly avoided. I think it's going to be a good thing, for me to revisit the version of the game that took up much of my early roleplaying life.

Heck, if I have time, I might just go back and revisit St. Gygax's masterwork, 1st Edition AD&D...the version that I played the most back in the day. I expect to be rewarded by that journey as well.

As I do my re-exploration of the above, I hope to have time for posting some musings here.

As I've said before on this blog, I love Castles & Crusades, and it really is my preferred version of AD&D, but nostalgia DEMANDS that I go back and take a look at the real deal again. Whether this becomes good nostalgia or bad, limiting nostalgia is really up to me, and what I do with the feeling.

 

I also hope to do some reviews of new games and such as I read them, and perhaps contribute some gaming material here and there. We'll see. 

 

The X factor of 2014 is the 40th anniversary of D&D and the release of the next iteration. From what I've seen of D&D Next via the playtest materials, I'm not really interested in using those rules. But what a milestone! I'm excited to see what comes...er, next!

So, this is not goodbye. I will be reading all of your words, contributing when I can, and enjoying every minute of it! I wish you all a wonderful new year of roleplaying goodness! Please have much happy gaming, as well as general happiness and prosperity (both of the wallet and the soul!) Until we meet again on the road to adventure, I wish you all the best!

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 2: Favorite Playable Race

Tanis, sans beard.

You have to remember, when going into these blog memes, there are those that think they're not worthwhile. And you know what? They might just be right! But I've never been the most prudent fellow, and have been know to do some corny-ass stuff, so...onward with the post for Day 2! *

* I know I'm still a day behind. Working on my Day 3 post for later today, in order to catch up.

I love the half-elf. This affection might have started with Tanis Half-Elven, tormented co-protagonist of Dragonlance fame. I suppose, like any socially awkward youth, I related to the character's internal struggles.

In the image above, the ears are way too pointy for my tastes. They scream "full elf" to me. I like my half-elf ears to be a lot more subtle.

Anyway, the half-elf also appeals because in 1E AD&D, as well as 2E and my beloved Castles & Crusades, they have some elf abilities but not the weaknesses. OK, I'm generalizing quite a bit with that statement. I'm not an "RPG scholar" and I don't have the books in front of me (and for the purposes of this post, I don't feel an urge to study too hard), but here's what I'm going on based on memory (which could very well be pretty sketchy):

• In 1E, the half-elf is a bit less restricted in class choice compared to the elf.
• 2E introduced the concept of elves getting +1 to Dex and -1 to Con. Half-elves did not suffer this, but instead the whole "child of two races, accepted by neither" was reinforced. Cry me a river. I'll take a "roleplaying incentive" over a mechanical penalty any day. 
• Castles & Crusades did a sort of Middle-Earth thing with half-elves. Meaning, they can choose to take after the elven or human side, and doing so gives different benefits (see Elrond and his, uh, dead brother who chose to lean toward the human side). Translation = made half-elves even cooler.

Again, for any of the above, I welcome corrections/expansions of what I've written.

 

Now, over the years, I haven't played much D&D, but rather mostly served as GM. But those few times I've played, I've mostly gone with half-elves. There was one half-elf ranger in there, of course, as cliched as that is (did I mention I'm a Dragonlance fan?). Most recently, I played a half-elf paladin (named Drance, of course) in a Castles & Crusades-based City-State of the Invincible Overlord campaign.

 

Anyway, that's me and half-elves. Onward to the next challenge post!

Does every old copy of Unearthed Arcana in the world inevitably fall apart?

I was at Top Deck Games the other day, one of the few FLGS's in South Jersey, perusing their selection of OOP D&D materials. They've always got some good old stuff in there, at very reasonable prices. In the recent past I've picked up copies of the 1st and 2nd Edition D&D core books there.

 

Anyway, I saw they have an old copy of Unearthed Arcana there. I picked it up, and immediately pages were slipping out. What the hell? Does every single old copy of Unearthed Arcana really have the same problem? How is that possible? Is the damned thing cursed? I'm sure some of you D&D scholars out there have the answer.

 

Others have posted about the many reasons Unearthed Arcana bites the big one, but for more than just the binding. I'm sure the book isn't really universally reviled, as WotC just did a reprint of it. I'm guessing, at the very least, the new verion's binding will be vastly more durable!

Battle of the Bards: AD&D vs. C&C

Ok, maybe I should wait until I have the AD&D and C&C books in front of me before I get into this. Nah. I'm impatient and lazy, so I'm just going to riff on this one. Here goes:

So I'm playing a bard in a campaign using the awesome C&C rules. Anyone who's read this blog for any amount of time knows I love C&C. But now that I'm playing again, and playing a class that I've never played before in any version of D&D, I'm having some issues with some of the rule choices.

So yeah, I'm playing a bard for the first time ever in my gaming career. I thought it would be good to try something new. Anyway, there's this bard ability called "Exalt" that basically boils down to my bard chanting or singing or playing an instrument or something, and inspiring my companions. All well and good.

But this class power only seems to help companions with bonuses to saving throws and attribute checks, not combat bonuses. Somehow, that doesn't make sense to me. I mean, the description of the power mentions "battle cry" or something like that as one method of performing Exalt. So, you loose a battle cry but your companions only benefit via better saving throws? That just seems rather limited to me.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the AD&D bard (1E and/or 2E) have some similar ability that provided bonuses to combat for companions?

Overall, I'm finding the C&C bard sort of, well, bare. Meaning, there doesn't seem to be much that the bard can offer. Sure, Legend Lore is awesome. It allows a bard the potential to know vital tidbits of information during the course of a session. But that and Exalt are the only class powers that a bard has at low levels (I think...again, I don't have the C&C PHB in front of me at the moment).

This issue might seem minor, but there are other C&C class abilities that I'm having issues with here and there. This is sort of making me pine all the more for some Classic D&D. Less character class "powers" to deal with during a game, you know? Meaning, more room for player creativity, right?!

Anyway, any insight you wonderful folks out there can provide, that would be awesome, as per usual! What would I do with out our virtual collective consciousness/hive mind?

Thanksgiving Holiday RPG Musings

As I’m sure most of us do, I’m thinking deeply about my life during the Thanksgiving holiday. In particular, I’m thinking about my relationship with RPGs. Perhaps my mind is dwelling on this subject because for several weeks now I have not been able to meet with my usual RPG group. So it may be that I’m suffering from withdrawal, and this is making me pine for all things roleplaying. So, here’s what’s on my mind:

 

I believe that I am prone to fits of RPG assumptions. I think since I returned to table-top RPGs in July 2010, I’ve been focusing on retroclones and other modern recreations of out-of-print versions of Dungeons & Dragons, rather than a re-exploration of the actual Dungeons & Dragons games.

I’ve been assuming that retroclones are the direction I MUST go with regard to my return to gaming. I’ve also been assuming, perhaps in a mostly unconscious way, that retroclones are “superior” to the original D&D versions. This applies in particular to Castles & Crusades, which I’ve allowed myself to believe is “better” than Advanced D&D.

 

I think I’m moving away from this superiority belief and moving toward deeper and deeper desire to engage in an in-depth study of the Basic/Advanced D&D editions. I’ve been assuming that I know those systems already. I’ve overestimated my understanding of those original rules. I may know the general concepts pretty well, but my knowledge of the finer aspects of D&D is sorely lacking.

I now think my focus on retroclones has been purely a matter of expediency. They are what’s in print and readily available, and they are often more streamlined that the original versions. This, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, is no doubt due to my current life as a busy adult. When it comes to C&C, there’s also the fact that it makes some changes I like to the Advanced D&D classes, as well as a unified modern mechanic.

 

Of late, I’ve had a growing urge to study, of all things, Second Edition D&D. In the epilogue to my gamer testimonial, I professed a disdain for that edition. I have to say that this supposed disdain is probably based on a tendency to turn away from a pastime after inundating myself with said pastime. This is especially true when it comes to me and RPGs. I think I just immerse myself so deeply in an activity that I burn myself out.

But this rejection of 2^nd Edition AD&D also comes from my weakness for novelty and perhaps a bit of attention deficit disorder. I’m not just talking about Gamer ADD, but just generalized ADD. I think my retroclone focus was based on a tendency I’ve always had to cling to a “newer is better” mentality/habit. I go through phases in life where I cannot focus well on things. But I also labored long under a tendency to assume that prior versions of D&D, or indeed D&D itself, is somehow “childish.” From reading other blogs, I don’t think I’m alone in this. There was a time when I left D&D behind and moved on to RPGs that I thought were more “adult,” such as Amber Diceless RPG and the White Wolf Storyteller games.

 

I know I’ve been rambling here, but this post is probably more for me to talk things out to myself rather than be a coherent read for others. However I would love to hear feedback from readers. To sum up: I’m going to stop assuming I have a deep understanding of the Basic and Advanced versions of D&D, and actually read up on them. I know I have limited time to do so, but I’m going to make the commitment. I’m also going to rethink my prejudice toward 2^nd Edition AD&D and give that system another chance. It is, after all, the version of D&D I played the most besides 1^st Edition AD&D.

Wish me luck as I delve into the depths of my RPG motivations!

Fantasy Authors Play 1E at ConFusion

I hope everyone reading this - including those outside the US - has a great Thanksgiving weekend! You don't have to be a US citizen to give thanks, right? Anyway, I stumbled upon the video above, so I decided to share. You'll see authors like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, and others playing 1st Edition D&D! It's edited down to a half-hour video (apparently they played for about three hours or so) but it's pretty entertaining. Below is another video of the authors talking about RPGs. Enjoy.

In the Mind of a Mad Gamer

"Oh, and Game Master, just one more thing: love your campaign!"  

Perhaps the excessive heat the US has been suffering under has broken my brain. Perhaps seeing the bickering of my family over parental issues (that's all I'll say on the matter here) has broken my spirit. Whatever the cause(s), I've found my brain severely unfocused as of late. As a result, my mind has been spinning on all levels, and this includes my gaming life.

When I was young, my hobbies were a true escape from a tumultuous family life. I read books voraciously. I found solace in places like, well, Solace, the tree-top village in the Dragonlance Chronicles. Yes, reading was a hobby, and linked to that was a "hobby" of self-imposed isolation. To be hidden in the depths of a library, secluded among stout walls made of book shelves with a book in hand, was to be in paradise for a short time. I also liked to write fantasical stories, an interest that I'm sure I shared with many young people who enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons.

When I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, I was often in the role of Dungeon Master, as my enjoyment of crafting plots was the greatest among my childhood group. As with many of us, the game gave us a means to develop creatively and socially.

I suppose reading is still an escape for me, and roleplaying is still something of an escape and a creative outlet, as well as a great social event (I can't say enough about how much I enjoy being around my current group of players). Though now I'm escaping the sometimes onerous grind of adult responsibility/bullsh*t.

ANYway, to continue on from my recent post about self revelation, of late I've found myself feeling pulled in many directions with regard to what I want to run as a game master. I feel really upset at myself for putting my still-young Labyrinth Lord game on hold. I didn't want to do that to my players. But I also had to be true to myself with regard to the fact that I felt unfulfilled with what I was running.

After a lot of rumination on the more nebulous aspects of my feelings, I think I've reached some clarity on things. I suppose not many people out there will be interested in hearing a 30-something man go on and on about roleplaying woes, but this is more for my own sanity, I think. I need to lay out what's on my mind in some organized form. I hope this will alleviate the swirling miasma of Gamer ADD. I've been inspired by Chris at Classic RPG Realms, who isn't afraid to talk out his struggles regarding what system to use.

Again, I consider anything with D&D "DNA" to be D&D wearing a mask. All that being said, here's my thought process as of right now:

Basic D&D

I have come to realize that I really want to run a game using actual Classic/Basic D&D rules. The retroclone thing wasn't cutting it. This came as something of a shock to me, as I'm a big fan of the 'clones. But I can no longer hide from myself the fact that I want to play "pure" if I'm going to play Basic D&D.

If I'm going to deal with the somewhat arcane mechanics of Basic D&D, then I want to be actually playing Basic D&D. That means using the original rulebooks. I have a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia that I'm dying to use, and I have PDFs of the individual Mentzer box sets that I can print out (or have done so already).

I'm not sure if this sounds shallow or bizarre, but yes, I want to use those original books. I don't want to use a retroclone. There, I said it. Again, I have nothing against the 'clones. They're great, and they're the impetus behind looking back to explore early D&D.

But I want to see that Larry Elmore/Terry Dykstra artwork when I'm flipping through the books. I want to see the fonts they used. I want the beholder in the monster section! I want that authentic D&D experience, which to me means using the original books.

And in using the original books, I want to stay as close to rules as written as I can. I really want to cut down my house rules and just do rulings on the fly as needed. I think the majority of my house rules will pertain to the classes, to give them a bit more "oomph."

Again, I'm feeling very guilty about putting my Labyrinth Lord game on hold after only a handful of sessions. I think I owe it to my group to give Basic more of a fair shot. But to me that means actually using those original rule books. Once more, I ask: is this insane?

I'll include the DCC RPG here, because it uses Basic's race-as-class feature and many other connections to Basic. I really like what Goodman Games has done to the D&D chassis. But I feel like it has more rules crunch than I'm willing to deal with at the moment. I have an urge to run some DCC RPG in the future, but not right now. I don't want to deal with the crunch.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

When it comes to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, for some reason I currently have the opposite desire: I do NOT want to run a game using actual AD&D rules. I would much, much rather use Castles & Crusades. I'm not sure if this is a strange divergence from my "NEED PURE BASIC D&D!" feelings. But there you have it. At any rate, I have no desire right now to GM an AD&D/C&C game.

D&D Mine

Every once in a while I get the urge to make my own "edition" of D&D. Who in our blogosphere community hasn't felt that urge, right? I want to take the Swords & Wizardry clone as a foundation and put in all the tweaks I want and make my own game! I was inspired recently by JB at B/X Blackrazor when he proposed the D&D Mine concept.

But at the moment, this still is a case of "MUST PLAY PURE BASIC D&D!" eating at my brain. So this recurring urge is, once again, pushed aside.

Other RPGS

I really like Savage Worlds and the Dragon Age RPG. Their allure is that they offer an alternative to those games that are variations on D&D (i.e. those games that use mechanics very similar to D&D, either Basic or Advanced). And this appeals, because I have no deep-seated desire to immediately house rule either of these non-D&D RPGs, because they aren't D&D!

I think that I'm so familiar with the D&D rules that I can't help myself when it comes to house ruling. I'm sort of tired of this uncontrollable need on my part to endlessly tweak the D&D design. So, to me, the logical solution is to try another RPG for a while, and take a break from D&D in all its forms.

Yet my desire to play these games, strangely enough, makes me yearn for D&D. I'm really feeling insane...

Conclusion

I try to tell myself that I don't have a time limit on my new gaming life. I can run one sort of game/RPG for a while and then switch to another at some point down the road.

Ultimately, I'm sorry to subject my poor gaming group to the results of my scattered mind. I'm feeling like a very divided self, with my attention pulled in too many directions. This is frustrating to no end.

Any advice is very much appreciated.

Self Revelations: D&D, the OSR, and Me

I started this blog to chronicle my return to roleplaying. I really had no idea what my attempt to return to the fold would entail, or how successful I would be. As far as success is concerned, I've got a steady group of fellow gamers that I play with on a fairly regular basis. So I consider that a success.

Note, of course, that I had no idea there was an OSR when I came back to gaming within the last few years. When I first made my concerted effort to return to the table-top, my first exposure was with Pathfinder (which I found to be interesting but too crunchy for my tastes...I had never played 3E either, for the same crunchy reason). It was this lack of fulfillment with an in-print game that caused me to wonder about the out-of-print games from my past. I decided to dig around online for those older editions, and the rest is history...

Since I've come back to roleplaying, I think I've learned some things about my current gaming self. The following is very subject to change, however, as I'm nothing if not mutable:

The Old Rules
At the moment, I don't really want to go back and use the old D&D rules as written, be they Basic or Advanced D&D. Sure, I have strong feelings of nostalgia for those old rule sets. Like so many of us, it was my first RPG. There's a certain lure to the thought of playing actual D&D instead of a retroclone, but again, that's probably just a bit of "bad" nostalgia. In re-reading the Rules Cyclopedia, Moldvay/Cook/ Marsh B/X, and AD&D, I find myself balking at the "clunkyness" (or what I personally perceive/define as clunkyness) of the rules. I've also run into that balking feeling while running some Labyrinth Lord recently. So I've reached a point where my issues with the rules have overcome the gravitas, the prestige, the tradition, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it of playing actual D&D or those retroclones that cleave close to it (i.e. the "first wave" of clones = OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord).

I say all the above with not a little sadness, because I blame my current state of life as being the culprit behind my inability to grok the old rules. I can't seem to retain the little idiosyncrasies of the old rules. I know this seems lame, but it's a sad truth for me. I've got some personal things in my life that are taking up a fair bit of brain power of late. Maybe this ineptitude on my part will abate someday, but for now...

I have to admit, though, that I've felt a recent urge to get the original AD&D books, in order to add them back to my collection. The books my teenage group shared years ago were destroyed by a friend who became a hardcore born-again Christian. After so many years of not having the hallowed words of Gary Gygax in my library, I feel the need to own them once more.

I'm not sure why, even though I know how old school games are about rulings and not rules, that I just can't feel totally at peace with playing D&D rules as written OR with house rules that make them more to my tastes. Maybe it's some disillusionment with the rules, or being tired of the same old D&D rules appearing over and over in the vast number of OSR publications, or a combination of the two. Don't get me wrong, I love the wondrous variety of the OSR and believe it is a positive aspect of the movement. 

I think familiarity does breed contempt, and I've been around the D&D rules for so long that I'm probably getting a bit tired of them. I probably need a break from them. I can't seem to help the urge to tinker. I know, the prevailing thought process is that older D&D rules were pretty much made to be just guidelines, and made to be tinkered with. But I just don't have the stomach for too many house rules of late. Maybe it's my current time crunch that makes me get upset if I have to craft too many house rules. Granted, I don't think I've played with too many house rules, but still...I feel the need to find a game that doesn't give me the overwhelming urge to tweak. This feeling alone probably strips away a good portion of my OSR cred (if I ever had any).

The Rules with D&D DNA
Again, I've no urge to use the original D&D/AD&D rules in a current game. For my AD&D needs, I have Castles & Crusades. It is the game that had Gary's blessings as the successor to D&D, after all (at least, according to the Troll Lords, who were close to Gary before he passed).

Yes, the only version of AD&D I really dig is Castles & Crusades. It's a wonderful amalgam of 1E (classes, races, overall aesthetic) and 3.5 (more modern unified mechanic), with some new ideas/twists thrown in (example: rangers don't cast spells...that's awesome...never could stand spellcasting rangers) and an old-school mentality surrounding it.

The other game that's made a big impression on me is DCC RPG. I really like this "second generation" clone! I am definitely liking it more than the original/first wave of clones, and I know that statement may raise some hackles. I know, DCC is not supposed to be a clone, but come on folks...call a clone a clone. I'm not ready to actually run DCC RPG at the moment, but I have the itch (and some of those Zocchi dice as well).

Both of the games mentioned above use a much more unified mechanic than the old versions of D&D/AD&D. And these days, I'm loving me some unified mechanic. This is due to being busy with adult life, which leaves me with minimal brain space to use for storage of various mechanics. I know, lame, right? Oh well, it's my truth. And to thine own self be true.

The less I feel the need to house rule, the more I like the RPG. I do like to play with some minimal house rules for C&C (one sheet of paper front and back is my limit!), and DCC seems like a game I wouldn't want to house rule much at all.

But C&C and DCC have that D&D DNA, and of late that's bothered me. So I have to conclude that I'm having an issue with D&D, deep down.

Other Rules and New Rules
Lord knows that, over the years, I've played a bunch of other games that weren't D&D-based. I played a lot of Palladium (TMNT, Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies) and also Amber Diceless RPG. Most recently I've been playing Savage Worlds. So my experience with the other RPG possibilities out there is probably part of my current urge to look elsewhere. Look, I learned a lot about rulings not rules and other concepts favored by the OSR through my experience with a non-D&D game like Amber Diceless Roleplaying. With no dice and just four attributes, the ADRPG GM has to make a lot of rulings.

Bottom line: I'm really curious about newer, non-D&D based systems like Savage Worlds and Dragon Age. I feel the urge to break away from the D&D "hegemony"...at least for a while. These games also have unified mechanics (with Dragon Age going so far as only using the d6, rather than Savage World's use of the other polyhedrals we all know and love...I have to admit I'm going to miss all those other dice while we play Dragon Age).

I know there are a lot of OSR folks who clamor about player vs. character skill, and a system like Dragon Age can lend itself quite easily to players depending on the character stats and associated skill rolls. But I'm here to tell you that my thoughts towards character stats and skill rolls are also tied to my current gaming status. I'm a busy adult playing with busy adults. We don't have all the time we used to have in order to lean mostly on player skill and searching every cranny of a dungeon.

I guess you could say we don't have time to be incredibly clever. We have time to be somewhat clever. My players are very creative and come up with really inventive solutions to things, be they battles or negotiations with NPCs or solving puzzles. But if they sometimes want to lean on the dice mechanic, I'm not going to stop them. Because in our limited time we want the adventure to press forward, and not worry about exploring all the minutia that "pure" old school D&D play demands.

I do encourage a combination of player and character skill, a compromise if you will. These two roleplaying concepts don't need to be mutually exclusive. Player ideas improve dice roll success or eliminate the need for dice. I guess I am not purely of the OSR when it comes to mechanics, but I am when it comes to the style, the spirit. Not that labels matter, though. The gaming is what really matters.

Conclusion...For Now...
I'm not sure if I'm getting across all my feelings as clearly as I wanted, but I made an effort here. Mostly for my benefit, but I'm also wondering what others think. You may think I'm a cop out when it comes to the OSR, but again, I'm thinking that I'm more of an omnivorous gamer rather than just a consumer of the old ways. Maybe I'm not really an OSR gamer at heart. I don't know. Not that there's a strict membership guideline for the movement, right? ;-)

I'm not knocking those who want the pure OSR feeling/gameplay. I'm just realizing that I'm different...at least for the moment. Someday, I'm sure, I'll want to play C&C or DCC or maybe even Labyrinth Lord again. I think I just need some time away from the same rules I've been using for so many years. Hell, I might want to try my hand at original AD&D again. Who the heck knows, right? I'm nothing if not a sufferer of chronic Gamer ADD!

But for the time being, I talked to my group and they seem interested in me running some Dragon Age RPG. And I'm having a blast with my friend Bill's Savage World of Solomon Kane game. Both games may owe their existence to D&D (like all other RPGs), but they don't owe much in the way of mechanics. And I'm really, really liking that fact.

Wish me luck on this latest phase of my gaming life. Until we meet again, happy gaming!

Early D&D and Feeling Left Out

I feel like there's something of an "inner circle" in the OSR. There's guys steeped in the early editions/versions of the game (OD&D/the LBBs, Holmes, Moldvay) and early supplements, and I am just now scratching the surface of that era in the game's history.

As I explore, I'm becoming more and more interested in stepping away, at least for a while, from my AD&D roots (which I'm currently expressing through AD&D's modern counterpart, Castles & Crusades). I'm becoming more interested in using the old rituals, so to speak, of Basic D&D.

Besides a yen to actually play in/run games using Basic D&D rules for the first time, I've also wondered about the reality behind names like Tekumel, Empire of the Petal Throne, and Arduin. I see the veneration for these items that some people have expressed, and I feel a certain envy, not having been exposed to those things when a young man starting out in the hobby.

Now, I've read up on the meat of Tekumel and Arduin, and further study has not garnered any particular interest on my part. Some of the mystery has been stripped away and I guess I wasn't too impressed. The same goes for my delvings into OD&D and Holmes...they just don't seem to do too much for me. Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X is where I really seem to start liking things, and on through the Mentzer era culminating in the Rules Cyclopedia.

As far as clones go, I like the style and passion that comes from Matt Finch's Swords & Wizardry, and also the magic that seems to be infused into the pages of Dan Proctor's Labyrinth Lord. As for "second generation" clones, I really like Adventurer Conqueror King, and Newt Newport's Crypts & Things is up there too.

But I'll always feel like I missed out on something as a kid, for not having experienced Basic D&D all those years ago, during my formative time in the hobby. Ah well. Here's to making up for lost time! GAME ON!

Ok, there ARE some things that bug me about Castles & Crusades...

...such as the extensive armor list. It's a bit of that "AD&D complexity" filtering through, I think. It's not as onerous as the AD&D polearm list, thankfully.

But I mean, come on. Greek Ensemble? I really just want the good old list that includes leather, scale, chain mail, banded, plate. Done.

Sorry, it's Monday morning. I'm mourning the weekend.

Maybe this is all just fueled by my recent readings of the Rules Cyclopedia as well as my PDF of the ACK system (the latter of which I am really liking, and not for the domain control rules either).

Hmmm...

Between hope, wonder, and ambivalence...

That's where I find myself, folks, in light of Wizards of the Coast's latest move: the announcement that they will be reprinting the 1E AD&D books that St. Gary laid down all those years ago. Wow. I really feel like this is surreal. Let's talk about this, shall we?

What is WotC up to? That's my gut reaction. Sorry to be cynical. But seriously. Are they really finally taking a page from the OSR, admitting that old editions have their place in the gaming world and not just some fringe movement? Are they giving props to the OSR, actually listening to long-time fans of the game's many incarnations from the last few decades? Do they want to play nice and live in harmony with fans of all editions of D&D? Is this an extension of the squishy 5E feelings that they're pushing?

Or is all this some ploy to steal the OSR's thunder? Because as expected, the news of 1E's reprinting (albeit a limited release, supposedly) has some OSR diehards crying foul. Why? Because, the diehards say, this will make OSRIC obsolete. Uh, I personally am not so sure about that. I can see how some might consider WotC re-releasing OOP edition as a move to quash the OSR. Every group has conspiracy theorists, right? I'm not so sure it would mean the end of all the retroclones, though. Ironically, some might find the clones to be more user-friendly, having given the old rules better organization, etc.

For me, these days, if I wanted to play in the 1E style, I would just keep playing Castles & Crusades. For me, C&C takes the spirit of 1E and blends it seamlessly with the best of the 3E mechanics (I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, with the C&C love I constantly spout). I'm not sure I would even want to go back to the old 1E rules as originally written, as heretical as that may sound to some. But, let's keep in mind that Gary gave the C&C guys his blessings back in the day, so...there you go.

Is WotC just jumping on the bandwagon? That would be something of a victory for the OSR, eh? The movement has become something that WotC can no longer ignore, eh? I wonder what all the "This Is A Dying Hobby" doomsayers are thinking right now.

I've been so busy today that I haven't had time to do any reading on the 1E situation, so I don't know if WotC has released a longer statement as to why they are reprinting Gary's masterpiece. But between this and their "kumbaya" 5E love-fest ("it will bring all D&D lover's together!"), I'm really feeling a bit like I'm dreaming. I really don't know what to think at the moment. It seems to good to be true. Or at least to good to be kosher.

So I just wanted to vent. I sit here between hope, wonder, and ambivalence about all of these recent developments, and frankly I just don't know what to think. And I know I'm not alone. Thanks for listening to me babble. I'd love it if someone would babble back, to let me know what you're all thinking out there.

Interesting times we live in, eh?

UPDATE: Since I can't seem to post a comment to my own blog at the moment, I'll respond to all the people who stopped by through this update.

Chris Creel: Glad you got a laugh outta that! And I agree that there's a good likelyhood that 5E will take some inspiration from C&C (this opinion is no surprise given my *ahem* boner for C&C ;-).

Greyhawk Knight: Thanks for the insight, specifically the reminder that this is a limited print run. And those who don't want to plunk down the cash on the Hasbro of the Coast altar can also take up the OSRIC cause.

Martin: Hey there! Good to hear from you! How are things? Agreed on the hype factor on the part of WotC, the canny bastards! And you worked with WotC before, right (no judgement there, of course)? Who better than you to know their tactics? Yeah, this 1E reprint thing smacks of another olive branch that is designed to test the OSR interest in "official" D&D.

To Gwydion and all: thanks for the reminders of the real purpose behind the clones.

James and Tenkar: thats for stopping by and for helping to put things into perspective!

Thoughts after reading Moldvay’s Basic Set

So, as part of my desire to read up on Classic or "Basic" D&D, I’ve read through Moldvay’s Basic Set. Here’s how I sum up my thoughts after reading it:

The nostalgia that I felt was heavy duty (again, I never played it when I was young, but it still reminded me in some ways of reading through the AD&D 1E books).

The only real difference that I could see between Moldvay Basic and Labyrinth Lord was the rules for attribute adjustment. It might be clearer to state that the only rules difference that matters to me is attribute adjustment, which I think is absent from Labyrinth Lord (then again, I haven’t read Labyrinth Lord from cover to cover, so I could be wrong). But really, I don't think that there are any other differences of any considerable size.

If I wanted to play by these rules or something like them, I’d rather play Labyrinth Lord.

This last statement is how I felt after finishing my read-through. I feel like Labyrinth Lord has a much better organization, appearance, and some small changes in the rules that make it much more accessible, at least to me at my current stage of life.

The big factors that appeal to me when thinking of running a Classic D&D game are:

Limited class options make it easier for the GM to remember class abilities and faster for players to create characters (even faster than Castles & Crusades/C&C, which is pretty quick when it comes to character creation).

Saving throw progression and other similar mechanics don’t require the thought process that goes into systems that require the GM to create target numbers for attribute checks (an issue I had with D&D 3E, but C&C mitigates much of the thought process with the SIEGE Engine system). If I ever thought there was a need for attribute checks in a Classic D&D game, I like the thought of making players roll under the appropriate attribute score. I’ve always felt that D&D attribute numbers were sort of useless, and their modifiers or lack thereof had more effect on the game (perhaps that was just my style of play back in the day…)

The four human races and the demihuman race-as-class options lend a certain archetypal/mythic aspect to the game that appeals to me. I have ideas for developing my own setting for use with Classic D&D rules, and using that in a future campaign.

How Classic D&D lends itself to a certain style of play that is appealing to me (i.e. simpler, faster, rules-light, archetypal/”mythic”). I truly believe that system influences style of play.

Actually, there’s one other big thought on my mind, as you can probably tell from all my references to C&C above: I still prefer C&C for my number-one go-to game. I love that system and its combination of AD&D and d20 D&D concepts. It’s the rules set that makes me want to do the least amount of house ruling. To me, at this point in my life, I find that “limited need for house ruling” is a big factor for me when it comes to a game system. This is mostly due, I think, to my limited free time for gaming. I would prefer to spend my time prepping for game time and actual play rather than rules tinkering. And less house rules means that players can depend mostly on published rules and not have to worry about tons of house rules that I might foist upon them.

While I was reading Labyrinth Lord, I found myself doing a lot of house ruling in my head. There were a lot of tweaks I found myself wanting to make. And in considering the changes, they were mostly efforts on my part to put C&C functionality into Classic D&D. Such as thinking about how to do attribute checks in Classic D&D in a manner that was satisfying to me.

I KNOW that this is a big heresy when it comes to Classic D&D play. I know there’s a rabid contingent of people, many many people out there, who would balk at my attribute check fixation. Trust me, I do so myself. In our C&C games, I try to minimize attribute checks when possible, resorting to asking my players to roleplay out the actions they want to accomplish as much as possible. Even if they are asked to make an attribute check, I still ask them to roleplay things out (and depending on how convincing they are, I will often give them bonuses to the associated rolls).

And come to think of it, instead of resorting to Classic D&D rules to get the Classic D&D “style” of gameplay (archetypal), I could very well just run C&C but restrict races and classes to what would be close to what is available in Classic D&D.

I am thinking of potentially asking my group if we could sometimes run Classic D&D one-shot sessions. Just so I can get a fix. One other aspect of Classic D&D that I like, funnily enough, is how deadly it can be. I would like to run a game that is more deadly and less about epic adventure. Again, this is just my own perception of game systems, but I find that AD&D/C&C (at least for me) lend themselves to more epic adventure style of play, where characters are more hardy at lower levels and therefore have a much greater chance of living to reach high levels and forging great destinies.

Anyway, there you have it, folks. For good or ill. Please give me your thoughts. I guess I’m on to read Moldvay Expert, and then on to Labyrinth Lord (for a more through read than I’ve ever given it).

Facing Down the Beast

So, instead of bitching about gamer ADD like I've been prone to do in the past, I decided to man-up and do what I should have done before: take all the RPGs that have been plaguing my mind and literally spreading them all out in front of me. Like a lineup of the usual suspects. And I gave them a good hard look, and some thought, and I was determined to come to some conclusions. And I think I've finally regained mastery of my gaming domain.

First there's Castles & Crusades, my number one game. The Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. The Little John to my Robin Hood. The Riker to my Picard. I started out my gaming career with AD&D 1E/2E, and C&C to me is a near-perfect reimagining of those editions of the game. I like what Troll Lord Games has done with the system by incorporating the SIEGE Engine mechanic, bringing some 3E into the mix. I don't have to do much in the way of house ruling to get it to where I need it to be at my table. I will never need to go back to AD&D, because C&C has become the ideal version of those editions, to me.

Now, as I've said before, until recently I never actually played any version of basic/original/non-Advanced D&D. I bought the Rules Cyclopedia when it came out in the early 90's, and also bought the "Black Box" version of D&D, but never actually played them. I missed out on the whole boxed set thing entirely when I was a kid. The LBBs and all that Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, etc. jive was something I would have appreciated back then, I think...but I missed it all. I was just never exposed to it.

But looking back now, and having dabbled in OD&D (especially via Swords & Wizardry and Lamentations of the Flame Princess), I have become more and more enamored of OD&D and its clones. But looking through Moldvay, Mentzer, the Rules Cyclopedia, clones like Labyrinth Lord and S&W and LotFP and all the rest, I think that I feel strongly about actually using the original Mentzer books rather than a clone. I just like the look of the game, the layout of the books, the style, the art (as a confessed Elmore nut). There's just something about it that calls to me.

So, when I get the chance to run some OD&D, I'm going to use Mentzer, with some house rules I'm mulling over to add a bit of spice to things. I'm taking inspiration for my house rules from many sources on the web and blogosphere, as well as from other games. This includes the beta version of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

Now, there are some other various games that have also been tempting me with their shininess. Games such as Barbarians of Lemuria, Dragon Age, and even that game based in Middle Earth called The One Ring that I just learned about YESTERDAY! Yes, gamer ADD has no mercy. Heck, I just really discovered a lot to like about Dragon Age less than a week ago, on Free RPG Day. All of these various other games I have lumped together as potential candidates, but I have used a bit of reality to temper my expectations. These miscellaneous games are nice and all, but I either don't own them, they haven't been published yet, or they would take time to learn that I just don't seem to have these days.

Above all, I'm totally dedicated to the Dragonlance game I am currently running, and have no intention of sacrificing it in order to jump into OD&D right now. And especially not for some new shiny game that would require a whole new cycle of reading rules, learning rules, teaching rules to others, etc. I've been waiting a looooong time to do a Dragonlance campaign,  and I have met a great group of gamers who make running the game a pleasure.

Wow, it feels good to get that all out! All it took was standing up to the beast!

What I (Re)discovered When Looking at 1E and 2E AD&D

Just a quick note about my lack of recall regarding 1E and 2E AD&D and how I was shocked to relearn something about those two editions: I was flipping through PDFs of the 1E and 2E Player's Handbooks last night. I was looking at character classes and races. And I was shocked that I had forgotten that 1E is pretty restrictive when it comes to what classes the demihuman races can take. It's not much different from what was in OD&D, as far as I am concerned. Then I looked at the 2E PHB and saw it was much less restrictive.

During my return to gaming over the last couple years, I was under the impression that 1E and 2E were very similar when it came to allowed race/class combinations. My memory was obviously flawed! Despite my disdain for 2E (which is probably due mostly to the unsavory characters I was gaming with during my 2E era), I think I would much rather play that edition that 1E due to the difference in race/class restrictions. In its own way, 2E is closer to my current game of choice, Castles & Crusades, than 1E.

I feel pretty sheepish at the moment. Ah, what a journey of rediscovery I am on!

Are YOU with D&D?

Hi all. I haven't been able to post over the last few days due to work and family. I am becoming much busier by the day at my new job, so that unfortunately means that my blogging during the day will be slowing down/sporadic. I have to sacrifice something in favor of spending time to actually game/prepare to game. As always, I do what I can when I can. Anyway, enough of all that. On to the real topic of this post:

Has anyone read the "I'm with D&D" post over at The Other Side blog? Take a look if you haven't, and let me know your thoughts. What is your stance on the many editions of D&D? Are you an egalitarian, or a staunch partisan? I for one have a "play and let play" stance on things for the most part. Any kind of D&D is D&D, alright! What's most important to me is that people are actually playing! Now, does that mean I love the 4E incarnation? No. I am not a huge fan of editions 2 through 4 of D&D, actually. And I have just truly started to delve into OD&D, and find some issues with that venerable beast as well. Give me 1E any day! But if people are as passionate about other versions, so be it. Who am I to tell them what should be their game of choice? I could write posts that go on about what I find offensive about a particular edition, but always with the caveat of "this is my opinion." If you love it, play it.

I've been called "mealy" for my opinions. So be it. Mealy I may be, but at least I'm not a "flaming" uber-nerd who's sole purpose is to extend one's ire for a D&D edition to actually attacking those who play said edition. That's a level of meta-dorkness to which I will not descend.

Currently, I am playing using Castles & Crusades, which has been dubbed a 1E/3.5E hybrid. But I am also increasingly interested in Labyrinth Lord, a clone of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X. I see C&C as a means to do more "story-driven" roleplaying, whereas LL to me would be used at my table for a more "traditional" version of D&D that focuses on the sandbox-y, dungeon crawl "slay and loot" approach. I know some of you are groaning right now at my mention of story in conjunction with D&D. I might need to do a separate post on my thoughts regarding the use of certain editions depending on what style of game you want to run. This post may also include my thoughts on playing strong archetypes versus more "individualized" characters, etc. I may have to rethink my stance on other editions, and accept that each has their merit based on what style of play you seek to foster.

Early-Afternoon Reflections & Some Gamer ADD

Well, as I near my 100th post, I've been reflecting on the events in my renewed roleplaying career since June of last year. That's when I started this blog. I don't really have time to do a year-in-review post at the moment, but I might do something like that for the actual 100th post. I want to take a look at my progress over the last year as far as actual gaming is concerned, refocus on the purpose of my blog and consider what I might do differently going forward, and perhaps make some predictions on what the future may hold. On the matter of roleplaying, I definitely feel like I need to make my own destiny, so the future will truly only be what I make it. And there's a part of me that is saying "You've been doing this for a year and you only have 100 posts?! Weak!"

I also wanted to report that I am currently suffering Gamer ADD again. This time, of all things, I find myself longing to possess the Mentzer Basic and Expert box sets. I know, I know, there are those out there that are going to start saying that the Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert are superior, and that Mentzer's work is a "kiddified" version of D&D. I wish I had copies of all of those sets, so I could compare for myself. QUESTION: can anyone give me a summary of the differences, and the pros and cons of each? I am sure that there has to be such a comparison out there in the blogosphere. Oh, and I'm not sure if I should bring the Holmes thing into the mix...ugh.

I have a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia, so I technically don't need the Mentzer stuff. But I dug up some PDFs of the Mentzer books on the Internet, and I find myself enamored by them. Why? I have to admit that I'm not really sure. It might be pure nostalgia, and not necessarily the good kind. As some of you may know by now, I never really played "regular" D&D. I started out playing Advanced D&D as a kid. I may have been around the D&D books (like the Rules Cyclopedia) but my friends and I never used that other stuff. We were 1E PHB, DMG, and MM all the way.

Maybe the Mentzer stuff appeals on a very shallow level, since they contain a lot of art from Larry Elmore. Elmore was also the primary artist for the early Dragonlance novels, and we all know how I feel about Dragonlance by now.

It's only in recent years that I've payed more attention to the OD&D works. I've stated here before that I didn't really care to learn the difference between Holmes and Moldvay and Mentzer, but it's sort of seeping in through osmosis. Yet I find myself getting more and more curious about those box sets. Maybe it's a seed of gamer puritanism within me. Sure, I could use Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry or some other retroclone. But there's something about using the original books that somehow appeals.

Oy, it's enough to drive one insane! For now, I need to return a bit to reality and stick to the good gaming I have going on at the moment. Enough with the grass is greener stuff, right?

I, Gamer: Epilogue

In re-reading my testimonial, it is really glaring how, when I was a kid, I didn’t get any real exposure to the original versions of D&D (i.e. Classic D&D, the versions behind much of the old-school renaissance) before I picked up with 1st Edition AD&D.

Many of the blogs I read are written by guys who started gaming in the 70’s or early 80’s, so they started with OD&D/Classic (aka Basic) D&D. I started in the late 80’s, so my first exposure was to AD&D. I had just a vague impression that something had come before the game I was playing, but no real interest in “going backwards.”

However, I did eventually pick up the Rules Cyclopedia, but that was more out of curiosity and a desire to add the book to my collection (it was advertised/talked up big time in Dragon magazine of course, and I guess the hype worked on me). I never really had any intention of playing it, however.

And for good or ill, my personal Dungeons & Dragons “fate” was to begin my gaming career not long before the appearance of 2nd Edition. I tend to associate 2nd Edition with the decline of my first era of D&D gaming during my teenage years. It may just be my least favorite version of D&D...or maybe not. No, come to think of it, my least favorite version would have to be 4th Edition. More power to those who like 4E, but it's not for me. Like many, I was intrigued with the arrival of 2nd Edition’s numerous (perhaps TOO numerous) settings like Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the rest. But I never really found these settings interesting enough to actually use them.

Yeah, 2nd Edition never really felt right. I never truly got comfortable with it, due to what I considered its unnecessary complexity, the move from the Monster Manual to the Monstrous Compendium, and what I considered to be some of the “lower-quality” artwork (I never was a fan of artist Tom Baxa, or at least the art he produced for 2E AD&D and especially the Dragon magazine of that era).

Anyway, this is all just more navel-gazing on my part, so I’ll stop rambling for now. Some of the stuff in this post will be fodder for other posts, for sure. Until then, game on!

I, Gamer: A Testimonial in Three Parts (2)

PART THE SECOND: Long Game’s Journey into Night (Ages 19 to 25)

So, you’re back! I guess the prospect of reading some guy’s sob story didn’t scare you off? Good! Sorry it’s taken me a few days to post this second part. I know all my readers were waiting with bated breath ;-). Let’s proceed, shall we?

To briefly recap my first post in the series, ages 13 through 19 were the years of my original foray into Dungeons and Dragons. A scant two years (13-15) were entirely dedicated to 1st edition AD&D, and I loved every minute of it. From 15 to 19 I began to play other RPGs (and moved on to 2nd edition D&D), and slowly became disillusioned with Dungeons and Dragons. We return to the story during my 19th year:

So, I began my college career in 1994, and for a short while roleplaying of any kind was on the back burner. I did indeed enjoy myself in college, academically and socially. It was a great time all around. I won’t bore you with the non-gaming details.

I was still in my first year of college when the roleplaying itch returned. How did I scratch that itch, you ask? Well, over the course of the next four years there were two primary ways:

Amber Diceless Roleplaying: If you haven’t read Roger Zelazny’s Amber books, you are doing yourself a great disservice. I heartily recommend that you check them out! For my own part, I had never heard of them until a strange little game called Amber Diceless Roleplaying (ADRPG) came along. A roleplaying game that was DICELESS?! Who could fathom such a thing? It took a man named Erick Wujcik (who had also done work for Palladium Books) to come up with the idea, and he became to me a new Gary Gygax. Both men created games that I came to love and associate with good times in my life.

The Wujcik diceless concept seemed to me the epitome of elegance, something that could strip away all the heavy mechanics many other games sported, and only pure cooperative storytelling would be left behind! It would take a skilled GM and players to handle the “high art” of the Amber game. It was me and two other old friends who primarily explored Amber, and we did so with relish. I felt like some of the magic of my original gaming experiences had returned, from a source totally separate from D&D.

So, yes, I became something of a roleplaying snob. Amber became to me the “grown-up” version of roleplaying. D&D was for kids! I pretty much vowed that I would never play anything else but the ADRPG. Silly man…

Looking back, it was just important that we were having fun. And we did a good job of striking the delicate balance between GM/player connection/trust that is so necessary to ADRPG. If you haven’t played the game, it’s hard to describe…at least for me (I may not be smart enough anymore to explain it properly!). Suffice to say that it’s sort of rules-light and yet somehow “heavy” at the same time, if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that it’s rules-light but cooperation-heavy. I’ve always felt that Amber would be nigh-impossible to play with anyone but close friends. But I’ve been known to be wrong more than once. It would be interesting to hear what other people who have played Amber think (hopefully someone will read this blog and respond! ;-)

Live Action Roleplaying (LARPing): Another type of what I—at the time—considered “roleplaying for grown-ups” was LARPing, which was a relatively new phenomenon back then. Yes, some of you are shuddering. But my decision to LARP was really born out of my surge of social interaction. And part of it was the novelty of getting up from the table and still roleplaying. I was involved in acting on stage during high school and on into college, so LARPing seemed a natural extension of that. I got into a good group of people who were LARPing Vampire: The Masquerade (I’m pretty sure White Wolf almost single-handedly created LARPing…or I may be wrong. Maybe someone can clarify the history for me. Maybe the people who do war reenactments were the first to LARP in a primitive way, and I am sure the people at the Society for Creative Anachronism and Markland have something to say about their role in all of this). All in all, I had some good times LARPing, but after a while it seemed to all become more about who was dating who and other real-world social intrigues rather than the gaming aspect. So I eventually moved away from that scene.

Actually, when I come to think of it, there was a pseudo-third way in which I got a roleplaying fix: board and card games. From my late teens until just a few years ago, myself and a handful of friends played a lot of these types of games, such as Risk (and later A Game of Thrones and Munchkin, but I wouldn’t get into these until years after college) and other (sometimes more obscure) games. Personally, I liked to interject some histrionics and at least a skeleton of a storyline when playing those types of games. But that can only take you so far.

And to some extent reading fantasy novels was another indirect outlet for the gaming itch (and still is to this day). As I read, I would think about how great a novel’s setting would be as a game world, or what a character’s stats would be, or how one would resolve an intricately described combat.

Some of you might be asking: What about computer-based RPGs? Well, when I was a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s it all came down to economics. We were able to afford Nintendo, so I did play a lot of Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior, and Shadowgate was a personal favorite. However, I missed out on all those great Ultima, D&D “gold box” games from SSI, and other such computer games because my family couldn’t afford a computer. The only exposure I got to these types of games was through the father of a friend, who played such games fanatically. This guy eventually built himself a replica of a medieval fantasy tavern as a gaming room, which he stocked with those replica swords and miniature suits of armor you can buy from catalogs. And the heart of this really cool room was his precious computer and a huge bookshelf of games. I would watch him play for hours sometimes, amazed at the graphics, but of course there wasn’t much opportunity for me to actually play. It wasn’t until after my mid-20s that I consistently had a computer of my own with which to game. I’ll talk more about me and computer RPGs in the final post in this series.

During my college years, there were times now and then that I did indeed think about table-top Dungeons and Dragons, remembering with fondness the golden years. By then D&D was already becoming inextricably bound with my memories of my youth, and I couldn’t separate one from the other. Indeed, these table-top thoughts and the accompanying nostalgia have never truly left me. They persist to this day.

By the time of my graduation from college, I had long before gotten out of LARPing, and my Amber table-top games were few and far between. Most gaming endeavors were drowned in my transition from college to “productive” member of society’s labor force. It was the late 90's, and the (then) dreaded millennium creeping up fast. I was filled with great expectations for the new century. I read scores of fantasy novels, and kept on dreaming…

But dreams can be so easily dashed by reality. I was 25 when September 11th happened, and my hopes for the new millennium were darkened by the billowing clouds of smoke rising from American soil. Suffice to say, RPGing wasn’t just on the back burner anymore. It seemed to be banished forever, a relic of my lost youth and innocence, never to be seen again. It seemed that there would be no more innocence anywhere ever again. For a while I looked on all my pastimes as frivolous, wondering if (especially after the terrorist attacks) I should assume some stereotypical form of adulthood and give up daydreaming about gaming.

I entered a personal gaming Dark Age for a time, where only fantasy novels sustained me. I was certain that nothing would ever be the same again. It turns out I was both correct and incorrect…

To Be Concluded in Part Three!

I, Gamer: A Testimonial in Three Parts (1)

PART THE FIRST: Portrait of the Gamer as a Young Man (Ages 13 to 19)

So, in reading many gaming blogs recently, I’ve seen several authors give accounts of their personal RPG journeys. Therefore, unoriginal and potentially boring as it may be, I think I will do the same. This is really more for my own benefit, when it comes down to it. I’m trying to codify my own gaming history to get some perspective, etc.

Here goes nothing:

My mother was into a strict Baptist thing when I was very young, and she therefore saw fit to indoctrinate me, her imaginative and bookish son, into said sect. Suffice to say that as I neared the teenage years and the subject of Dungeons & Dragons came up, she and the preachers at the church went all hellfire and brimstone and denounced it as a tool of the Devil. And of course, I was given the infamous Jack Chick tract.

And the smear campaign worked…for a while. Yes, for a while I was very VERY scared of Dungeons & Dragons, and how the game could supposedly lead my immortal soul into the clutches of Satan himself.

Oh, brother. Well, he who isn’t naïve as a child is a rare bird indeed, and much poorer for it.

But as time went on, certain elements within me conspired to eliminate my fears. First was the obligatory teenage rebelliousness. Second was my inexhaustible imagination, curiosity, and innate open-mindedness, fueled by devouring many books over the years (much to the chagrin of my blue-collar father and my macho older brother). And third was my best friend at the time, Pat, who happened to possess several Dungeons & Dragons books (I believe they were the 1E AD&D books with the revised covers). Pat was a Catholic, also, and I think the Catholic priests were much less rigorous than their Protestant cousins in their denouncement of Dungeons & Dragons.

Around the time that Pat was showing me D&D (this was the late 80s, around '87 or '88), I also discovered a book called Stormblade, a novel in the Dragonlance world (I’ve read/heard some controversy surrounding the supposedly “negative” influence of Dragonlance and other “shared worlds” on D&D, but that’s a discussion for another time).

Stormblade was a revelation for me. Something about the fantasy genre intrigued me like nothing else before. I had heretofore been mostly a fan of Star Wars and science fiction, but it felt like destiny for me to read that Dragonlance book. I had come home, arrived at my preferred genre. Here was an accessible story that appealed to the sense of adventure and escapism that I craved. The fact that it was derived from a Dungeons & Dragons game world only furthered my interest in the game. Of course all this was before the stigma of “gaming fiction” versus the works of the likes of Howard and Tolkien. Conan and Middle Earth were things I had heard of, but hadn’t delved into as of yet. And I’d never even heard of Jack Vance or Fritz Leiber at that point.

(I know there’s someone out there reading this that is really balking at the fact that a Dragonlance novel was my first real experience with fantasy fiction. Hey, no one’s perfect…)

Back to the game itself. So, after reading Stormblade and having listened to Pat’s rave reviews of D&D, I finally decided that I didn’t believe it was evil anymore. At this time I also had a budding desire to be a writer of fiction someday in the hazy future of adulthood. And therefore the shared storytelling aspect of D&D was also a great draw to me. I wanted in.

I started out as a player, creating characters to play in games where Pat was the Dungeon Master. But as time went on I grew ever more eager to take the reins, devise stories and characters, weave my own legends of valor for my friends to experience.

That was the golden age, a span of a roughly two years (13 to 15) when everything was new. I can see us around the gaming table in Pat’s room…me and Pat and our friends Jay, Dan, and Pat’s younger brother Sean. We spent hours upon hours poring over the D&D tomes in our possession. Whole weekends were devoted to the adventures we faced. We didn’t worry about rules, or the fact that none of our campaigns ever really had conclusions (or that said campaigns lasted no more than a month or two). We started fresh so many times and had a blast every time.

But time ground on inexorably, as it does. And our attentions were drawn further and further away from D&D as we journeyed through the teens. The distractions of high school drama, girls, and other pastimes like video games (which were getting better and better than the old Atari stuff we played when we were really young) and plain old TV ate up precious time (how we squandered it! Youth is truly wasted on the young!).

Between ages 15 and 19 D&D would rise and fall among our group in fits and starts. By my senior year in high school we had started playing D&D with two guys who were from the neighborhood but we hadn’t really been friends with. But we thought it would be a good idea to bring some new blood to the table. As it turns out, that really wasn’t a good idea.

These two had a very aggressive style of play that focused on player characters as just above the level of villains. They were fond of playing drow elves, for the most part. And they introduced us to the concept of the anti-paladin…which never made sense to me. I mean, isn’t a paladin of an evil deity still just called a paladin? Suffice to say that these two guys were “munchkins,” “roll-players," and “min-maxers” to the Nth degree. But since we didn’t know those terms, or they didn’t exist yet, we just called them “a-holes.”

But somehow we got roped in to their antics. And our roleplaying lives suffered for it. Specifically the D&D roleplaying we were still doing. We began arguing over rules, getting angry at bad dice rolls…all of the behaviors that reveal the fact that the pastime was no longer fun.

From 15 to 19 we had also branched out from D&D to explore other RPGs. We as a group became primarily entrenched in the Palladium game system. We played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninjas & Superspies, Heroes Unlimited, and finally Rifts. All of which served also pull us further and further away from the grandfather of all roleplaying games. We slowly began to disrespect our elders, so to speak, and an insidious disdain for D&D crept into our hearts. We began to see it as a kid’s game, in a way, and looked to other games like the Palladium offerings for a more “adult” experience.

By the time high school came to a close, we also turned our focus on the impending higher education experience. To which I was looking forward with great anticipation, having finally been freed from the prison of high school. True to dorky form, I had been tormented for my bookish ways for four years (except for some grudging respect I temporarily garnered for playing on the football team in 10th grade).

By the time I was 19, all roleplaying fell to the wayside. I spent the summer before starting college in sort of a vision quest of self realization. I was full of youthful fire, thinking existential thoughts and plumbing the depths of philosophy with a few close friends. I was an embryonic adult, and had no time for games. I was preparing to come out of my cocoon, to read “real Literature” (there was no doubt I would be an English major in college, my mind firmly set on the certainty of becoming a published author someday). I still loved to read fantasy literature, but was content to use that, rather than a D&D campaign, as my avenue of escape from the trials of life. And I was also determined to really develop a social life beyond the friends of my childhood and teenage years.

For the moment, I had left the gaming table behind…

Continued in Part Two!