Wik
First Post
Ah, gather 'round children, for I shall tell you a tale...
My father started gaming in the late 70s. There were six boys in his family (and two girls!), and, since their father had died a few years earlier from cancer, the family survived on the paycheques of my teacher grandmother and the contributions of the elder brothers in the family working menial jobs.
Entertainment was expensive. But one of them got a copy of Dungeons and Dragons (I have no idea who, or how they came across it), and they were all able to play. After all, a group of six boys is about the perfect size for a group. I think, actually, there were two groups of players, the older boys and the younger boys, plus friends.
Flash Forward a decade. My dad, now in the military, gets posted to Toronto. He has few friends, and a lot of spare time. Our family isn't the richest, so cheap entertainment is a plus. My dad decides to introduce me to the game.
Around 1989 (just after the 2e PHB was released, which refreshed my dad's love of the game), I had my first game. I was six. We made characters using the 2nd edition PHB, got magical items from the 2e DMG, but used the monsters from the 1e Monster Manuals. We each had a character (I had an elven ranger named "Nelf", which actually stood for "Neutral Elf!"). We used the 1e Random Dungeon creator appendix in the 1e DMG, though I have to admit my dad fudged the numbers a fair bit. I didn't know, nor did I care. I really could see my character crawling through the dungeons and doing some heavy killing.
We did this for a few years, usually both of us playing rangers (though I think I went through a "Paladin" phase for a bit), until we moved to B.C. In fifth grade (I had now been playing for something like four years!), I made friends with a guy whose brothers had been big gamers and had passed many of their books down to him. We started playing BECMI D&D (I had discovered it in my dad's gaming pile, and while I knew I was an "advanced" player - ha!- I felt it might be easier to use BECMI when gaming with "newcomers"), and introduced a couple of our friends into the game to round out our parties. My dad often played.
Then we went through our SHADOWRUN phase, and then we went into our "Let's buy a game, play it once, and then never look at it again!" phase - games like MECHWARRIOR (though we were pretty consistent with our BATTLETECH Love), FENG SHUI, EARTHDAWN, ROBOTECH, NINJAS AND SUPERSPIES, and ALTERNITY fell into this mould. We also had small-scale D6 STAR WARS, RIFTS, and SHADOWRUN campaigns.
I think in seventh grade, I actually ran a library game during lunch hour that averaged at least twelve players a game. At it's zenith, the game had twenty players, at three tables. I would run an encounter from the 1e Book of Lairs (I preferred #2, though I'm now quite upset that I must have lost my copy of #1). The game ended when I was unable to manage a hissy-fit from a player because there were not enough magical items to go around, and his character missed out on getting the Ring of Regeneration. "Well, THIS is fair!" he screamed, and stormed out. Campaign over.
After that, the game collapsed into a smaller group, and we mostly stuck with AD&D, SHADOWRUN, and DARK SUN. And fun was had by all.
My father started gaming in the late 70s. There were six boys in his family (and two girls!), and, since their father had died a few years earlier from cancer, the family survived on the paycheques of my teacher grandmother and the contributions of the elder brothers in the family working menial jobs.
Entertainment was expensive. But one of them got a copy of Dungeons and Dragons (I have no idea who, or how they came across it), and they were all able to play. After all, a group of six boys is about the perfect size for a group. I think, actually, there were two groups of players, the older boys and the younger boys, plus friends.
Flash Forward a decade. My dad, now in the military, gets posted to Toronto. He has few friends, and a lot of spare time. Our family isn't the richest, so cheap entertainment is a plus. My dad decides to introduce me to the game.
Around 1989 (just after the 2e PHB was released, which refreshed my dad's love of the game), I had my first game. I was six. We made characters using the 2nd edition PHB, got magical items from the 2e DMG, but used the monsters from the 1e Monster Manuals. We each had a character (I had an elven ranger named "Nelf", which actually stood for "Neutral Elf!"). We used the 1e Random Dungeon creator appendix in the 1e DMG, though I have to admit my dad fudged the numbers a fair bit. I didn't know, nor did I care. I really could see my character crawling through the dungeons and doing some heavy killing.
We did this for a few years, usually both of us playing rangers (though I think I went through a "Paladin" phase for a bit), until we moved to B.C. In fifth grade (I had now been playing for something like four years!), I made friends with a guy whose brothers had been big gamers and had passed many of their books down to him. We started playing BECMI D&D (I had discovered it in my dad's gaming pile, and while I knew I was an "advanced" player - ha!- I felt it might be easier to use BECMI when gaming with "newcomers"), and introduced a couple of our friends into the game to round out our parties. My dad often played.
Then we went through our SHADOWRUN phase, and then we went into our "Let's buy a game, play it once, and then never look at it again!" phase - games like MECHWARRIOR (though we were pretty consistent with our BATTLETECH Love), FENG SHUI, EARTHDAWN, ROBOTECH, NINJAS AND SUPERSPIES, and ALTERNITY fell into this mould. We also had small-scale D6 STAR WARS, RIFTS, and SHADOWRUN campaigns.
I think in seventh grade, I actually ran a library game during lunch hour that averaged at least twelve players a game. At it's zenith, the game had twenty players, at three tables. I would run an encounter from the 1e Book of Lairs (I preferred #2, though I'm now quite upset that I must have lost my copy of #1). The game ended when I was unable to manage a hissy-fit from a player because there were not enough magical items to go around, and his character missed out on getting the Ring of Regeneration. "Well, THIS is fair!" he screamed, and stormed out. Campaign over.
After that, the game collapsed into a smaller group, and we mostly stuck with AD&D, SHADOWRUN, and DARK SUN. And fun was had by all.
