When I started seriously gaming, me and my little brother would write up our own rules before playing, mixing boardgame rules and pieces from Heroquest, Key to the Kingdom, the Wizards Tower, and others, with random rules drawn from various choose your own adventure books, like the one where you play Merlin's apprentince Pip, the one where you play Raistlin in the tower of High Sorcery, and one based on some Middle Earth Roleplaying rules. Our Wizards were like totally broken until at least 6.43 edition, where I started to realize that giving wizards 20 castings (each!) of stuff like lightning bolt and acid storm was a little over the top.
Having watched people talk about D&D once or twice, and maybe even flipped through a book, I'd add in little details I remembered. Stuff like the existance of a spell named Magic Missle, (And people think the official version is OP. Ha!) And Barbarians with rage ability. Of course, my Barbarians at first did double damage every round they raged...(stacking from the previous round) It sounds bad, but honestly, my monsters were even worse. I was statting up cannon fodder with 30-50 hps, and most of the tougher monsters I made up (Usually using a Key to the Kingdom Monster card picture as inspiration) were almost unstoppable.
Eventually, we realized that D&D books could be acquired from the library at which point, our gaming lives really took off. Shame about their being a 2nd edition DMG but no PHB, though. My most precious find was checking out the 1st edition Dragonlance Campaign setting book, and photocopying the precious monster/spell lists. At this point, our game was so advanced that I would routinely just make up spell effects on the spot by reading off the spell list. "Ice Storm? Well it's 4th level....some ice bonks the guy on the head and does xd6 damage. Fairy Fire? Eh...."
Was a very long time until we had a Player Handbook....
Having watched people talk about D&D once or twice, and maybe even flipped through a book, I'd add in little details I remembered. Stuff like the existance of a spell named Magic Missle, (And people think the official version is OP. Ha!) And Barbarians with rage ability. Of course, my Barbarians at first did double damage every round they raged...(stacking from the previous round) It sounds bad, but honestly, my monsters were even worse. I was statting up cannon fodder with 30-50 hps, and most of the tougher monsters I made up (Usually using a Key to the Kingdom Monster card picture as inspiration) were almost unstoppable.
Eventually, we realized that D&D books could be acquired from the library at which point, our gaming lives really took off. Shame about their being a 2nd edition DMG but no PHB, though. My most precious find was checking out the 1st edition Dragonlance Campaign setting book, and photocopying the precious monster/spell lists. At this point, our game was so advanced that I would routinely just make up spell effects on the spot by reading off the spell list. "Ice Storm? Well it's 4th level....some ice bonks the guy on the head and does xd6 damage. Fairy Fire? Eh...."
Was a very long time until we had a Player Handbook....
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