Orius
Legend
I can't remember exactly when I started playing, but I know it was early summer 1993. So sometime during the end of June or beginning of July. That makes it 20 years now since I started playing D&D. I was working as a councilor at the local scout camp, and got introduced to the game. The guy who was DMing was in his early thirties I think, and had been playing since at least 1e. He had the original 1e PHB, which I briefly looked through (I only remember a few pages), and he talked about some of the devious traps he'd use on his players like a puzzle that if incorrectly solved summoned Demogorgon for the party to battle.
From what I now know about the game, I can only conclude that he was a killer DM.
I hadn't played the game before but I was well aware of its existance from things like the D&D cartoon and all sorts of merchandising in the early 80s. And some fallout from the tail end of the Satanic Panic. Sometime later I'd read through some of the early Choose Your Own Adventure rip-off books that TSR had produced that were at the local library. Those books, and a similar series geared towards younger readers that I had a few copies of introduced me to a few of D&D's monsters years before I had even played the game: color-coded dragons, gorgons, gelatinous cubes, and elementals I definitely remember from those books.
Anyway, I was interested in the game, but didn't know anything abut it, so I asked to sit in an watch it and the DM agreed. So while about 10-12 people (!) all rolled up some characters and proceeded to play, I sat off to the side and looked through what I think was the rulebook for the Red Box (IIRC the book had a red cover. I don't remember much else about it. Like if Bargle was in it
.). So it was pretty much a game of Basic D&D characters being run by a killer 1e DM who I think just made stuff up as he went along. Awesome. Not much happened in the game, there was some rping then when night fell, the DM unleashed one of his favorite critters upon the inn where the PCs had rooms: a rust monster. They killed it, but not after a cleric picked up the rust monster to pet it (no, really), with the rather predictable result to her armor. The DM I think took the descripton of it "looks like an armadillo" literally, because it was the size of one. The DM unleashed the thing on the inn with the express purpose of rusting party's gear, that was the reason he liked the rust monster so much, but even he was surprised the cleric wanted to get touchy-feely with it.
Anyway, the next day I asked to play in a smaller game, and he agreed. So me and two other guys just used the character sheets rolled up for the other game, and proceeded to explore some underground tunnel. After forcing open a stick door we encounter some geezer who insisted we leave out weapons outside, which made me immediately suspiscious of his motives. I don't remember exactly what happened, but we were captured by a bunch of nasty female elves who if weren't drow sure as hell acted like them. I refused to be made a slave, and having been reading some Conan books at the time, took my cue from them, grabbed a spear from one of them and stabbed her. (This required two back-to-back natural 1 rolls, the DM mixing up 1 and 20 for some reason, and I actually made them.) My rebellion was very short lived, as the other elves beat me unconcious. Then another player followed my lead, only to have the elves make an example of my PC by stabbing a pair of spears into his throat. My first casualty! The third player spent the entire time trying to convince the elves to make him into a sex slave instead.
Anyway, that game fell apart a few days later after come of the councilors quit, and a few other wanted to play instead. So the next game had only six players, with me joining the group. Since I hadn't played before, guess which class I got volunteered to play. And not just any cleric, I got the cleric who'd fondled the rust monster! "I don't want this character". "We need a cleric, and you're playing a female, so you can do stuff like ride unicorns." Yeah, that's going to convince me. This is 7 years before the CoDzilla edition, and about another 10 years before brony subculture emerged. I didn't want to play a female character, especially one that had lost her armor because of the previous player's actions. And I hate unicorns. Well, I wanted to replace the armor, but the guy who was trying to get some serious femdom from those drow wannabes or whatever they were farted around for like 20 minutes or so rping with the DM trying to buy a +2 axe (what's that about magical Wal-Marts again?) for his character while the rest of us got more and more bored. So finally we all left town with or without him. We encountered a bunch of pixes or something in the forest and they claimed to have tons and tons of l33t magical swag. So the guy got his axe or whatever, and they offered me a helmet with levitation powers which I thought sounded pretty useful so I bought it. About a mile or so out of their village though, the stuff all suddenly disappeared, and my PC fell on her ass because I was using the helm to levitate above the ground just because. That game ended not long after that.
Anyway, that short campaign fell apart a few days later. Since they'd all pretty much thought the DM was a killer, they decided to move up to 2e from BECMI for moar powerz so we could survive like 2 or 3 more encounters. "This DM says he like to use medusas. 'You all see a sexy woman in the shadows', then when your PC gets closer he turns you all to stone! So everyone take the Blind-Fighting proficiency." So they cracked open the 2e PHB, and rolled up some illegal characters. I wanted to play a wizard, so they rolled up a gnome fighter/mage (for the Int bonus, but gnomes can only be illusionists in 2e) for me, and gave him enough spell slots for a 4th level specialist wizard. For some reason they actually did hit points legit and I had 7 hp (why'd they notfudge cheat on that?). So after doing race and class, and combining both secondary skills and NWPs together for some reason, and all the other bits of character creation we were ready to hurl our characters into the jaws of death. They also brought in a MC binder which had the basic monsters and some of the FR and DL monsters, and another player had bought a Dark Sun splat everyone was drooling over (Dragon Kings IIRC).
So our characters ended up being captured by press gangs, only for the ship we were on to shipwreck at a deserted island with the whole crew dead. We poked around the island for a bit and ran into some evil skeleton dude in black armor. He was in a talkative mood, but everything he said ended up in something like "I'm going to kill all of you," so eventually we just rolled for initiative. We had some damn lucky rolls too, I think the DM was trying to get a TPK with the guy, but we smashed his bony ass. While trying to describe him, the DM showed us the illo on the MC binder page he was using which just happened to be the death knight. If the DM was using a death knight he was pulling a LOT of punches, like not using its fireball or power word: kill abilities. Like I said, I think the DM just winged everything. A little later we made camp. On my watch, the DM said that the wind seemed like it was picking up so I said I was using the Weather Sense proficiency. Then he rolls 4d4 and says "You take 16 points of damage. You're dead." The wind was just an invisible stalker which was just hanging around to gank one of us then it left. The other players weren't at all sympathetic either: "Dude, that monster's worth 3000 XP which we all just lost! Thanks!"
So that was it for my first D&D experiences. I was hooked anyway. I eventually ended up getting the black box Basic set and started running my own games (imagine my surprise when I saw that a 1st level MU's spells slot was 1, and not 4/3). Didn't get many game products until after I had graduated and started working, first the Arms and Equipment Guide and Psionics Handbook at some point, and then later the 2e PHB because I couldn't find a copy of the RC. In spring of 1995 I began working on my library in earnest: first the revised 2e DMG and the MM, the Fighter and Wizard Handbooks, and the volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica that had been released. Eventually I grabbed most of the PHB splats and I took an interest in Planescape because I'd been facinated by the concept of the planes ever since I'd first flipped through that 1e PHB and say the diagram of the planes there. I played on and off, just mostly DMing for the rest of 2e, though the small groups I was gaming with eventually broke up. I then moved on to playing and then running some games online in chat room during the end of 2e. I switched to 3e when it came out, but after 3.5 was released, my campaign fell apart and I'd gotten tired of trying run games in a chat room because I had a lot of player attrition. I haven't played much since in the last 10 years though, the last few games were some games I played in here, and a game I even tried to run, but it fell apart on me largely because I wasn't used to the pacing of a message board campaign.
Those first few experiences did shape a good deal of my approaches to the game as a DM though. I try to avoid killer DMing because I've been on the receiving end and it's not all that enjoyable, but I do like to let the players think I'm a killer because it's fun. Player paranoia's more enjoyable for me as a DM than TPKs anyway. That first DM said he didn't like to use any of the modules and stuff, and that's partially influenced me into largely sticking with homebrews. That and the enjoyment of worldbuilding and not quite knowing how to get a game in an official setting off the ground.
From what I now know about the game, I can only conclude that he was a killer DM.
I hadn't played the game before but I was well aware of its existance from things like the D&D cartoon and all sorts of merchandising in the early 80s. And some fallout from the tail end of the Satanic Panic. Sometime later I'd read through some of the early Choose Your Own Adventure rip-off books that TSR had produced that were at the local library. Those books, and a similar series geared towards younger readers that I had a few copies of introduced me to a few of D&D's monsters years before I had even played the game: color-coded dragons, gorgons, gelatinous cubes, and elementals I definitely remember from those books.
Anyway, I was interested in the game, but didn't know anything abut it, so I asked to sit in an watch it and the DM agreed. So while about 10-12 people (!) all rolled up some characters and proceeded to play, I sat off to the side and looked through what I think was the rulebook for the Red Box (IIRC the book had a red cover. I don't remember much else about it. Like if Bargle was in it
killing Aleena
Anyway, the next day I asked to play in a smaller game, and he agreed. So me and two other guys just used the character sheets rolled up for the other game, and proceeded to explore some underground tunnel. After forcing open a stick door we encounter some geezer who insisted we leave out weapons outside, which made me immediately suspiscious of his motives. I don't remember exactly what happened, but we were captured by a bunch of nasty female elves who if weren't drow sure as hell acted like them. I refused to be made a slave, and having been reading some Conan books at the time, took my cue from them, grabbed a spear from one of them and stabbed her. (This required two back-to-back natural 1 rolls, the DM mixing up 1 and 20 for some reason, and I actually made them.) My rebellion was very short lived, as the other elves beat me unconcious. Then another player followed my lead, only to have the elves make an example of my PC by stabbing a pair of spears into his throat. My first casualty! The third player spent the entire time trying to convince the elves to make him into a sex slave instead.
Anyway, that game fell apart a few days later after come of the councilors quit, and a few other wanted to play instead. So the next game had only six players, with me joining the group. Since I hadn't played before, guess which class I got volunteered to play. And not just any cleric, I got the cleric who'd fondled the rust monster! "I don't want this character". "We need a cleric, and you're playing a female, so you can do stuff like ride unicorns." Yeah, that's going to convince me. This is 7 years before the CoDzilla edition, and about another 10 years before brony subculture emerged. I didn't want to play a female character, especially one that had lost her armor because of the previous player's actions. And I hate unicorns. Well, I wanted to replace the armor, but the guy who was trying to get some serious femdom from those drow wannabes or whatever they were farted around for like 20 minutes or so rping with the DM trying to buy a +2 axe (what's that about magical Wal-Marts again?) for his character while the rest of us got more and more bored. So finally we all left town with or without him. We encountered a bunch of pixes or something in the forest and they claimed to have tons and tons of l33t magical swag. So the guy got his axe or whatever, and they offered me a helmet with levitation powers which I thought sounded pretty useful so I bought it. About a mile or so out of their village though, the stuff all suddenly disappeared, and my PC fell on her ass because I was using the helm to levitate above the ground just because. That game ended not long after that.
Anyway, that short campaign fell apart a few days later. Since they'd all pretty much thought the DM was a killer, they decided to move up to 2e from BECMI for moar powerz so we could survive like 2 or 3 more encounters. "This DM says he like to use medusas. 'You all see a sexy woman in the shadows', then when your PC gets closer he turns you all to stone! So everyone take the Blind-Fighting proficiency." So they cracked open the 2e PHB, and rolled up some illegal characters. I wanted to play a wizard, so they rolled up a gnome fighter/mage (for the Int bonus, but gnomes can only be illusionists in 2e) for me, and gave him enough spell slots for a 4th level specialist wizard. For some reason they actually did hit points legit and I had 7 hp (why'd they not
So our characters ended up being captured by press gangs, only for the ship we were on to shipwreck at a deserted island with the whole crew dead. We poked around the island for a bit and ran into some evil skeleton dude in black armor. He was in a talkative mood, but everything he said ended up in something like "I'm going to kill all of you," so eventually we just rolled for initiative. We had some damn lucky rolls too, I think the DM was trying to get a TPK with the guy, but we smashed his bony ass. While trying to describe him, the DM showed us the illo on the MC binder page he was using which just happened to be the death knight. If the DM was using a death knight he was pulling a LOT of punches, like not using its fireball or power word: kill abilities. Like I said, I think the DM just winged everything. A little later we made camp. On my watch, the DM said that the wind seemed like it was picking up so I said I was using the Weather Sense proficiency. Then he rolls 4d4 and says "You take 16 points of damage. You're dead." The wind was just an invisible stalker which was just hanging around to gank one of us then it left. The other players weren't at all sympathetic either: "Dude, that monster's worth 3000 XP which we all just lost! Thanks!"
So that was it for my first D&D experiences. I was hooked anyway. I eventually ended up getting the black box Basic set and started running my own games (imagine my surprise when I saw that a 1st level MU's spells slot was 1, and not 4/3). Didn't get many game products until after I had graduated and started working, first the Arms and Equipment Guide and Psionics Handbook at some point, and then later the 2e PHB because I couldn't find a copy of the RC. In spring of 1995 I began working on my library in earnest: first the revised 2e DMG and the MM, the Fighter and Wizard Handbooks, and the volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica that had been released. Eventually I grabbed most of the PHB splats and I took an interest in Planescape because I'd been facinated by the concept of the planes ever since I'd first flipped through that 1e PHB and say the diagram of the planes there. I played on and off, just mostly DMing for the rest of 2e, though the small groups I was gaming with eventually broke up. I then moved on to playing and then running some games online in chat room during the end of 2e. I switched to 3e when it came out, but after 3.5 was released, my campaign fell apart and I'd gotten tired of trying run games in a chat room because I had a lot of player attrition. I haven't played much since in the last 10 years though, the last few games were some games I played in here, and a game I even tried to run, but it fell apart on me largely because I wasn't used to the pacing of a message board campaign.
Those first few experiences did shape a good deal of my approaches to the game as a DM though. I try to avoid killer DMing because I've been on the receiving end and it's not all that enjoyable, but I do like to let the players think I'm a killer because it's fun. Player paranoia's more enjoyable for me as a DM than TPKs anyway. That first DM said he didn't like to use any of the modules and stuff, and that's partially influenced me into largely sticking with homebrews. That and the enjoyment of worldbuilding and not quite knowing how to get a game in an official setting off the ground.
