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<blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 5249967" data-attributes="member: 25619">The New Neighbor + family influences from the 1930s'In 1981, we got new neighbors, diagonally across the street.&nbsp; They were Indian-American, and had just moved to exurban NY from suburban Illinois.&nbsp; Sharad had been in a gifted program in Illinois, and had learned D&amp;D there.About the first idea he had after meeting me was asking did I want to play?&nbsp; I was hesitant, and told him I'd heard about the satanism accusations.&nbsp; He handed me the AD&amp;D PHB and talked me into making up a paladin.The next day, his little brother (aged 7), who had apparently made his character overnight, and me say on the floor in front of the coffee table, while Sharad sat on the couch, and told us our characters were walking up to the gate of a castle, which he described in intricate and intriguing detail (he'd just been on a trip to visit his cousins in Scotland and had taken extensive mental notes about Edinburgh Castle).&nbsp; I was hooked just walking into the Keep on the Borderlands and answering the guard's questions about who our characters were.But before that, there were preparatory experiences for years:1) Watching Erol Flynn's &quot;Robin Hood&quot; on TV with my dad (from his childhood days), plus other similar black &amp; white medieval adventure movies.&nbsp; I believe one was &quot;The Black Shield of Falworth&quot;, with the memorably Brooklyn accented line:&nbsp; &quot;Yonder lies my fadder's cast-tell.&quot;2) Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and obsessing over the arms &amp; armor exhibit.3) Reading a National Geographic article and studying a map of castle, monestary, etc. ruins in the UK.4) Reading Caesar's Gallic Wars (in English) in about 4th grade, and getting in trouble because it was obviously &quot;too hard&quot; a book for a little kid to read, so my book report must be plagarism instead.&nbsp; <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&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />5) Reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Beowulf with translated English across the page from the original Old English (my dad was an English professor, which in those days meant learning Old English in grad school).6) Watching: lots of World War II movies like &quot;The Longest Day&quot;, &quot;Gunga Din&quot; (another of my dad's childhood favorites) and other &quot;Saturday at the Bijou&quot; 1930's action movies, lots of kung fu movies with bad lip syncing on Saturday afternoons on New York's Channel 5, and of course &quot;Star Wars&quot;.&nbsp; I was primed for stories of little guys/groups of little guys taking on world destroying evil and beating it, one little fight at a time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="haakon1, post: 5249967, member: 25619"] [b]The New Neighbor + family influences from the 1930s'[/b] In 1981, we got new neighbors, diagonally across the street. They were Indian-American, and had just moved to exurban NY from suburban Illinois. Sharad had been in a gifted program in Illinois, and had learned D&D there. About the first idea he had after meeting me was asking did I want to play? I was hesitant, and told him I'd heard about the satanism accusations. He handed me the AD&D PHB and talked me into making up a paladin. The next day, his little brother (aged 7), who had apparently made his character overnight, and me say on the floor in front of the coffee table, while Sharad sat on the couch, and told us our characters were walking up to the gate of a castle, which he described in intricate and intriguing detail (he'd just been on a trip to visit his cousins in Scotland and had taken extensive mental notes about Edinburgh Castle). I was hooked just walking into the Keep on the Borderlands and answering the guard's questions about who our characters were. But before that, there were preparatory experiences for years: 1) Watching Erol Flynn's "Robin Hood" on TV with my dad (from his childhood days), plus other similar black & white medieval adventure movies. I believe one was "The Black Shield of Falworth", with the memorably Brooklyn accented line: "Yonder lies my fadder's cast-tell." 2) Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and obsessing over the arms & armor exhibit. 3) Reading a National Geographic article and studying a map of castle, monestary, etc. ruins in the UK. 4) Reading Caesar's Gallic Wars (in English) in about 4th grade, and getting in trouble because it was obviously "too hard" a book for a little kid to read, so my book report must be plagarism instead. :) 5) Reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Beowulf with translated English across the page from the original Old English (my dad was an English professor, which in those days meant learning Old English in grad school). 6) Watching: lots of World War II movies like "The Longest Day", "Gunga Din" (another of my dad's childhood favorites) and other "Saturday at the Bijou" 1930's action movies, lots of kung fu movies with bad lip syncing on Saturday afternoons on New York's Channel 5, and of course "Star Wars". I was primed for stories of little guys/groups of little guys taking on world destroying evil and beating it, one little fight at a time. [/QUOTE]

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