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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ergeheilalt" data-source="post: 1033780" data-attributes="member: 3460">I'm eighteen, but started early so I'll give the first ones a shot:1a) I was about 11 or 12, started over the summer between 6th and 7th grade.2a) The adventures my friend and I ran were mostly maps drawn on graph paper with monsters scattered around the dungeon with no rhyme or reason. And traps, lots of sneaky traps. They all started as basic "We need your help dealing with (insert monster or magic item to be recovered)." They were fun, but could have used some more plot and actual role-playing.3a)My dad really didn't care one way or the other; although he was the one who threw the Fantasy and Sci-Fi books into my room and said I should read them. My mother, on the other hand, was mortified. She wasn't concerned about me spiritually, mentally, or maturity wise; rather, she was leery of the social repercussions gaming might leave on me. She had some kookie (that is kookie with backwards k's - I mean these people were weird and still are a bit scary) friends who played RPGs (D&D at first but then something called "Elf Quest". She was afraid I'd become a recluse and obsessive with in-game situations. After she sat in on a game and kind of got the feel for what exactly went on, she changed her mind and eventually was able to cope <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> .4a) My peers were influenced a lot by the media hype from the 80's. In middle school I was afraid of being branded an "uber nerd" - however, this could have stemmed from coming from outside the district and being insecure about my ranking in the social hierarchy that is Middle School. I had a very hard time finding anyone really interested in D&D - Pokemon or Magic, sure. D&D was hard to place; being that while I was in middle school D&D was old and burgeoning on a new edition. A few people I knew at my school played CRPGs and read Tolkien, Eddings, Brooks - staples of the school library fantasy selection. I'd say about 8 or so out of 180 people in my class year.5a) I had very little success in Middle School with D&D; however, high school exposed me to the spectrum of gaming. There were three groups on campus that did RPG things. I was the D&D guy; there was a guy who did homebrew systems; and another who did stuff with Magic and Role-playing (he was outside my social circle so there was little conversation that passed between us). I'm not sure if a group will be that successful with Middle Schoolers. At that point in time I was too interested in "fitting in", but high school had tons of people who were out-crowders and found weird hobbies to be fun and way to defy the “beautiful people” as one of my friends put it. I had a close friend who I shared my secret gaming hobby with and when his mother found out she had a cow of sorts. She asked that I did not refer to anything from “that game”. I definitely think the parent night is a good idea. A small slide show presentation would be great – it pacified my peers from launching rotten fruit at my senior project on the “Literary Influences on Role-playing Games”. Involving academics with the group was very enticing – many of my history and English projects were on fantasy and myth. Statistics and Probability was breeze after gaming for 4 years and is a definite plus.Something you might need to consider is the faculty. I had an eighth grade math teacher who made jokes about “pale D&D gamers in the summer time”. Some of the staff may still bear malice for gamers and although my teacher didn’t mean anything by his comments (just playing on a social preception), there might be some who view your ambitions with scorn or distaste.Funny enough, the afore mentioned teacher, did expose me to a lot of fantasy literature that year. I call that year my fantasy-binge year. I read something like 57 books over the course of the school year – all fantasy/sci fi books. I went from a crappy reader in seventh grade to college level in eighth grade. I would heartily endorse a recommended or suggested reading list.Best of luck to you – great idea,Erge*edit: spelling and grammer</blockquote>

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