Not Your Father's D&D

[the black knight]

Since the late 70's.

 

[ForceUser]

1. How old were you when you started playing?
2. How often did you play?
3. What did you like best about the game when young?
4. Were you ever taught to run the game or create adventures?
5. Did you find any gaming materials hard to read or difficult to understand?
6. Now that you are grown, do you plan on teaching your own kids to play D&D?
7. What would you do differently? The same?

1. I was 14.
2. I played weekend marathon sessions about once a month.
3. I cared primarily about making my character powerful.
4. No, I learned on my own, both through observation of another DM as well as trial-and-error.
5. Yes. The first book I laid hands on was the original Unearthed Arcana. It was dense with Gygaxian syntax.
6. If I ever have kids, I'll let you know.
7. If I could do it all over again, I would not abandon campaigns as easily as I did in my early twenties. I really missed out on running some long-term epic campaigns.

 

[ForceUser]

I never DM'd for that group, but I have subsequently DM'd a group that also includes my parents. And, in fact, they're playing in the same 3.5 campaign I'm playing in at present...

-Hyp.

Wow. That's awesome. My parents didn't much care about D&D either way, and to this day I think my dad just shrugs it off as my wierd hobby if he thinks of it at all. My mom is oblivious. I can't imagine gaming with my parents--I'd be mortified trying to explain the game to them, because doing so would make me feel juvenile and silly. I still have a hang-up about discussing D&D with anyone who isn't a gamer, because I experienced the "Satanism" stigma from adults and other kids in my community back in the 1980s. :\

 

[Galethorn]

Originally Posted by howandwhy99
1. How old were you when you started playing?
2. How often did you play?
3. What did you like best about the game when young?
4. Were you ever taught to run the game or create adventures?
5. Did you find any gaming materials hard to read or difficult to understand?
6. Now that you are grown, do you plan on teaching your own kids to play D&D?
7. What would you do differently? The same?

1. 12, in the summer of 2000 (I have a fall birthday)
2. I played...maybe three times before 2002 when I managed to put a motley group together out of interested friends, at which point we played every weekend.
3. Doing 'cool stuff'; sort of the 'theme' aspect of the story, if not actual plot; a session where we went into a dank barrow mound to destroy a rampaging ghost was better than just beating people up in a city.
4. After playing those first sessions, I moved into 'DM mode' in my two years of reading up, but ended up being a player after my first attempt at a campaign sort of fizzled.
5. Not at all.
6. I don't have any kids; I'm not even going to be 18 for another month! However, I do plan on teaching it to whatever kids I end up having in the future.
7. I'd actually have a 'functioning' group to start out with, so I'd have a firm understanding of the way the game 'works' before trying to DM anything.

 

[Hairfoot]

I went to a...non-traditional school.

While some schools were purging students of these Satanic, suicide-inducing games, we had a thriving group of 9-12s, DMed by a teacher's aid.

 

[Philip]

First-generation gamer.

I taught my father to play when I was 12.

Hijack: did anyone teach their parent(s) to play?

 

[diaglo]

1. i was gaming straight out of the womb. Lets pretend. became army men. became wargames. then OD&D.

2. 3-4hrs/session; 5 sessions/week; 50 weeks/year; for 10+ years. nowadays i game about once a fortnight for 6hours

3. all of it.

4. not really. playing lets pretend with my older sisters got me to use my imagination. so coming up with something from an everyday item... a stick became a wand. a ball became a bomb. an old dryer cardboard dryer box became a castle... and then playing with the army men and putting them on furniture or building them fortifications or... well... all it took was a lot of lets pretend.

5. certainly couldn't read much at first and understand it. heck, i'm still bad with rules. but concepts i got down pretty well.

6. can't have kids. but i don't limit myself to the young... just the young at heart. i'm teaching a group about OD&D right now and being taught in return.

7. ban every edition after OD&D from the table.

 

[CarlZog]

I'm a first gen player. I was wargaming before I started RPGs, but my folks never understood any of it, and thought the whole hobby was a little silly. I do remember trying to run a Basic D&D game for my parents and little brother shortly after I started playing. I wanted them to understand what it was all about and why I liked it.

As I recall, they didn't take it very seriously, making a lot of stupid jokes, and declaring that they were doing ridiculous things. After a couple hours of feeling like I was just being made fun of, I said, "Fine. Forget it." That was the end of that.

Carl

 

[Zander]

Vader: Obi-Wan never told you what your father's D&D was.

Luke: He told me enough. He told me you killed his character.

Vader: I am the dungeon master.

Luke: Nooooo!

Vader: Search your heart, Luke. You know this to be true.


Sorry about this 'diaglo' moment. Couldn't resist.

 

[Zander]

1st gen gamer. Introduced to it by friends 22+ years ago. After all this time, my parents still don't know what D&D is!