Just how popular was DnD? Did kids really play it during lunch? (red box nostalgia)

[TirionAnthion]

School Games

I used to run an game on the bus to and from school. About 8 to 10 people played in the game. I was the only one with dice and we passed the dice around, along with the red box to roll the dice in. I was the DM and it was always chaotic. We also gamed at recess. I was in 5th grade at the time so it was probably around 1985.

We had a pretty equal mix of girls and boys playing. I was happy to run a game for whoever was willing to play. By the end of junior high the school had outlawed the game, around 1988. That was largely my fault. I spent so much time on gaming and working on campaigns that I almost never did any homework. Also several parents complained about the "satanic" game we were playing in school.

I still have alot of memories of the wild anything goes gaming that comes from a game full of 3rd, 4th and 5th graders.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I was playing red-box and compendium D&D during lunch in ~1992 - 1996 or so. We used to spend every athletics and swimming carnival playing (and then enter the shortest race to justify being there and not in normal classes).

 

[EugeneZ]

I heard about DnD from a friend of mine on the middle-school bus. There was no way for me to get my hands on one of these books so I asked him to photocopy me the ADnD 2e PHB. A week later I held in my hand a few dozen sheets of paper with PHB pages photocopied on them. My friend had to pick and choose the "important" pages since he didn't want to copy the whole book. In retrospect, the critical facilities of a twelve-year-old with regards to PHB importance are questionable.

Lunch was never the same again. I would literally bring a binder that contained:

• Random printed pages from the PHB (nothing from the DMG or MM or whatever)
• The Secret of Bone Hill module, which I believe this friend had let me borrow
• Character sheets of the people who happened to sit next to me at lunch
• Graph paper

To this, we would add a ziploc bag filled with goldfish, which one of my friend's parents always packed in his lunch. The gold fish would be arranged on the graph paper or perhaps simply directly on the table, and each fish represented a character and/or monster. Without fail, within second of my announcing a monster to be at zero HP, it would be smashed to bits by someone's fist.

Let's be clear: it's a stretch to qualify this as "playing DnD." I didn't know how to run modules, we barely knew how to create characters, and many of the DM instructions in The Secret of Bone Hill were a complete mystery to me. We literally just made up the game as we went along. But, on the off chance that this counts as playing DnD, then, yes -- we did so at the lunch table daily.

Of course, the year we went to high school, 3e came out, I saved up enough to get the books, and we were far too cool-aware to bring out our books during THOSE lunches. No, instead I started a DnD club. I should add that this was a Catholic/Jesuit high school. I took a lot of verbal abuse for starting the club, but strangely, after a couple months, many of the kids calling us nerds actually rolled characters. By the time I graduated it was among the bigger of the school's clubs.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It wasn't popular when I started, it was something the nerdier kids - the ones who were obsessed with Star Wars or Tolkien or liked Math or played Chess or whatever - were into. In my junior high, there were kids playing D&D or Metamorphosis Alpha at school durring breaks, but not many of them, nor often. I played D&D at a freind's house at first, but I got much more serious about it than the others in my age group, got the AD&D books and started playing at a local game shop - I was the youngest, an annoying 14-year-old among mostly college-age players. The fad peaked in the mid 80s, and I was surprised to find myself playing D&D, at one point, with one of the 'cool kids' from my junior high days who was into sports and in no way a nerd. By the close of the 80s the fad was over, and D&D slunk back into the realm of the serious hobbyist.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Let's be clear: it's a stretch to qualify this as "playing DnD." I didn't know how to run modules, we barely knew how to create characters, and many of the DM instructions in The Secret of Bone Hill were a complete mystery to me. We literally just made up the game as we went along. But, on the off chance that this counts as playing DnD, then, yes -- we did so at the lunch table daily.

Totally did the same thing as a kid....now I am the rules remembering guy. I think I will make strong effort to remember that rules do not make a fun game, people do.

DS

 

[buddhafrog]

Check out this story:

I teach Korean middle school students and DM 20+ in several different games a week. One of my 7th grade students told me that "all" (me: "All?" / student: "Yes, all!") of the 40 kids in his class play D&D almost every day. Apparently he taught them this amazing game and now they all play during their 1 hour lunch break. They use paper and pencil and d6's only.

That story made my day! I fell like I turned 40 kids on to D&D. Job well done, pay self on back, and give double-massive-bonus XP to my student!

 

[mach1.9pants]

^Bravo to you, Sir!

Yeah it was not huge in NZ, but much bigger than now. We played Basic set at lunch time, the DM owned the only copy. It was pretty eccentric (as seems the case throughout); for example the DM tried to insist that we had to roll to decide the sex of our PC. I put my foot down at that and said 'show me in the rule book'. We had a group that 1 PC from every class/race in the Basic Set, which was quite cool. I played a Magic User called (and modelled on) Raistlin Majere. I (to my shame) cheated on char creation to get an 18 INT which netted me exactly 0 benefit! I also had to roll my spells and had Read Magic (free) and Floating disk at level 1. Got Shield at level 2... You get the idea.

Latter that group split and we played every hour we could in the 'Hostel'. I was a boarding kid (rural) and our boarding 'hostel' was attached to a normal state/public (as in available to the public, not UK public) school. Called College (which is 13-18 yrs, this stuff is very confusing explaining internationally LOL). Anyway I DM'd there for me and 2 plus upto 6 more players. BECMI>ADnD>2E. In the Hostel, of my year everyone played at least for a small period of time, even the cool skilful Rugby players!

So although still thought of as geeky, it was more accepted than now.. I have cousins etc going through the same school, there is no RPG at all any more. In fact I don't know of any RPGing at all in our region, apart from ourselves

 

[imredave]

Never played D&D at lunch, but do remember talking with a couple of kids who became friends about Empire of the Petal Throne during study hall (We were Seniors in High School)

 

[Bold or Stupid]

I played many games on luch hours at school, we all used to use our Blazers as Dice bags...

AD&D (2nd), Red box D&D, Cyberpunk, TMNT, Vampire(1st), Dungeoneer Fighting Fantasy RPG, Star Wars (westend), we even almost tried Champions.