Good Gaming Memories?

[Scribble]

So I recently moved back east. To my home town actually... My dad was having surgery, and my wife was just finalizing her thesis, and since we'd planned to move back east anyway we decided to move closer to my dad to help with his recovery...

Anyway, I was driving with the wife through my home town the other day pointing out places from my past she hadn't already seen, when I came across one of my old friend's Grand mom's house.

Suddenly I pretty vividly remember playing Vampire in the attic on one October evening.

It was like the perfect setting for Vampire... October, the sun just going down, in the attic of a creepy old house.

It also made me realize that I have a lot of gaming memories tied to places around town. (I even used the town as a setting once in GURPS Horror...)

So what about you guys? Do you have any places you strongly associate with gaming memories?

 

[billd91]

We used to play around a kitchen table in a friend's mother's trailer. There was no air conditioning so we'd sit in the heat on a hot summer day until the Villians and Vigilantes chits would stick to our fingers just from the sweat.

Kitchen and dinning room tables figure heavily into our gaming experiences, in general. But so does the shop-class-made coffee table in another friend's basement.

 

[Rykion]

Back in High School I gamed in the basement at a friend's house. That basement was huge. It had a family room area with TV and large couch, a breakfast nook, a place for a ping pong table, a home office, a bathroom with a shower, a small room with Middle Eastern rugs and a hookah, a garage sized unfinished storage room, and a walk out back door. We usually gamed at the ping pong table. My friend's parents slept on the second floor and we still managed to make enough noise to wake them up. His father would shout incoherently through the house's intercom system telling us to shut up. Good times.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yes, very much so.

The places I tend to associate with "great gaming memories" were always the homes of others 30 years ago or thereabouts - back in high school. I think this is because, generally speaking, the times that I was at those places was mostly while I was gaming, so I don't have many strong memories of the places OTHER than while gaming there.

So yes, there are the basements of three of my friends I gamed with back in the late 70s and early 80s which have a lot of strong "great gaming memories". I can picture each of these basement gaming areas quite vividly in my mind's eye.

It's been a long time since I have been back to the town I grew up in - let alone the basements where those events took place. I believe that in every case, the homes have since been sold and the parents who owned them have moved on. Indeed, in one case, quite literally have "moved on" as they have both since passed away.

Thirty years really is a very long time. Half an adult lifetime away, for most of us.

So it isn't possible to ever visit this places again in the here and now. Even if I did, I am sure they would not look much like what they looked like back then.

Thirty years is a long time and those basement rooms exist only in memory now.

But that's okay. I can recall the furniture, paint and lighting to this day vividly and precisely -- all in 3D. I may have misspent a lot of my time over the years - but I never misspent THAT part of my life. I'd do it all over again - in a heartbeat.

Unlike most people here on ENWorld, I still game with two of the people I first started gaming with back-in-the-day. We all grew up and left our home town a 1,000 miles away, sure. But being from the Maritimes in Canada, a good portion of those who moved away always end up in the Toronto area -- so we never lost touch over the years.

Great gaming places are fond memories - but great gaming buddies? That's what the game is all about.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Anytime I drive by the plaza where the hobby shop that introduced me to D&D used to be, I get a little wistful remembering biking there on Saturdays or during the summer to play in the back room.

One that hit me really stong last summer came after hearing "Invisible Sun" by The Police on a warm, sunny day. I was hit with a memory of sitting at my father's desk with the windows open, listening to that song while I was drawing the design for my Fighter's first stronghold on a huge piece of graph paper.

 

[Scribble]

Anytime I drive by the plaza where the hobby shop that introduced me to D&D used to be, I get a little wistful remembering biking there on Saturdays or during the summer to play in the back room.

One that hit me really stong last summer came after hearing "Invisible Sun" by The Police on a warm, sunny day. I was hit with a memory of sitting at my father's desk with the windows open, listening to that song while I was drawing the design for my Fighter's first stronghold on a huge piece of graph paper.

Nice... stuff like that is great.

I have my own shopping plaza from when I first started gaming... It was a few doors down from a "Franks Nursery and Crafts." My mom I guess wanted company in the car, so whenever she went to the Franks, she'd have me tag along. Then while she shopped at Franks, I'd hang out at the hobby shop... She'd inevitably buy me something after wards too!

Both the hobby shop that was there, and the franks are long gone, but that Shopping Plaza always brings up good memories!

 

[jdrakeh]

Topeka, KS at the old Gatekeeper Hobbies location but, moreso than the city or the play location, I have fond memories of the people who I gamed with there. Primarily, Chad, Lance, and Tom. Good times, good times!

 

[possum]

I live 15 miles away from a small town library, and my family's doctor is in that town, even though we moved to a bigger city six years ago. Everytime I go to that smaller town, I visit that little library, even though it's much bigger counterpart is only a few miles away.

In that library is a little room, used as a lounge for the staff, as well as a meeting room. The town's D&D group used that room to play in, as the DM was the son of one of the librarians. When 3rd edition came out and the group made their switch, I was invited by them to join, as I had expressed interest when I met him in the Boy Scouts a year earlier.

The group lasted for two years until the DM graduated high school and went to college several miles away. We tried to keep it going, to no avail, and we all eventually went our separate ways. Still though, I look in that room, still looking the same after ten years, I have to smile in memories of a certain fighter, a certain mage, and a certain paladin that were my characters. I'll also never forget that since our high-level rogue had a initiative score so high (and rolled so well on it) that was impossible to beat, they house-ruled it that "*Name* always goes first."

 

[Desdichado]

I don't really, no. Not only that, my gaming when younger isn't something I'd want to revisit in any way anyway. My gaming as a young tyke was more a harsh crucible that forged me into the gamer I am today. Kinda like Salusa Secondus. I'm a Sardaukar gamer.

That doesn't mean I want to go back to Salusa Secondus and revisit it, though. Place sucks.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Two places stand out to me:

My friends garage. He owns the house now, but back in high school/college his mom had turned the garage into a craft store. So we had the necessary large table she used to teach classes upon. Being disconnected from the main house we could be as loud and obnoxious as we wanted and often played until the sun came up.

My old FLGS. The building was a former vaudville hall. During the days of prohibition the front portion of the building was a front, while guests cavorted in the back. It was (supposedly) a favorite hangout of Al Capone. The front was the hobby shop, the back was used for an organized gamers "guild." Lots of space, tables, the old stage. The owner shared all of his terrain, miniatures, books, games. I literally lived there.