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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xyanthon" data-source="post: 2994670" data-attributes="member: 9181">My Intro to GamingI said through a friend, but that is not strictly the case.  When I was young, my mother, brother and I moved around quite a bit.  Every other weekend I would go stay with my dad who was big into science fiction and fantasy.  I remember him taking me to see John Boorman’s Excalibur in the theaters (this was around 1980 I believe, I was around 8 years old) and I was hooked on fantasy.When my mom moved back to Missouri from Texas halfway through my third grade year, I remember some of the other kids talking about this game Dungeons and Dragons.  While I don’t recall any of them actually playing at school, I know they gathered after school to play.  Unfortunately for me, they were all neighbors and too far for me to venture over to their house after school to play.  I think I pestered them quite a bit about details for the game.  So, not ever really knowing what the game was about, I set about creating my own version of Dungeons and Dragons based upon the information I could gather from the kids at school.  It was really more of a make believe (somewhat similar to LARPing today) game of pretend than any sort of formal gaming system.  The other kids all thought it was kind of silly, but I did persuade a few of the younger kids to play.Anyway, I don’t recall exactly what I said to my mother or how she knew about my interest in Dungeons and Dragons (I am sure that I spoke to her of it in some manner), but she purchased the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Coloring Album for me from the college bookstore.  Man, I was completely blown away by this!  I loved to draw (and I still do in the rare moments when I find the time) and this coloring book just totally catered to my blossoming third grader imagination.  I colored every picture, studied every inch of that book for inspiration.Unfortunately it was also at about the time the big satanic stigma was plaguing all of us grade school proto-gamers.  I didn’t get any more D&D books for quite sometime.  We later left Missouri for Illinois when my mom transferred jobs.  I was in 5th grade, still dreaming of this mysterious Dungeons and Dragons game that I thought I would never get to play.  However, much to my surprise and delight, for Christmas I received the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual with that glorious David Sutherland cover from my mom.  I sold GRIT newspapers (remember those ads in the back of comic books?) door-to-door until I had enough points to buy the Basic Dungeons and Dragons set.  It seemed a little more restrictive than what the Advanced rules promised so I ended up saving up my allowance money to buy a rather tattered copy of the Player’s Handbook off of a friend of mine. So it’s really hard to say exactly what my gateway was, either the kids at school that tantalized me with the idea, or my mom who got me the first few books.  While I’ve only been able to game on sporadic occasions since my youth, I’ve always maintained a love affair with the game.</blockquote>

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