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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 5830683" data-attributes="member: 99817">Time for a trip down memory lane, I guess.I first played D&D at a games club in the local library, aged 9, in about 1980. There was lots of stuff going on - Car Wars, Boot Hill, D&D, Runequest, minis wargames with anti-grav tanks, OGRE, Traveller. I was a kid in a sweet shop with all this cool stuff going on and something new to see and play all the time.The first game I remember was Bone Hill and my ranger was dead after about 2 encounters. That meant writing out a new character sheet by hand, which was a pain. Character death was pretty frequent from what I recall, mainly due to overzealousness - but also because in those early games no-one knew what the monsters were capable of. There was nothing careful, planned or meticulous about our play. As players we explored haunted castles, caves and dungeons with enthusiasm and imagination, and almost zero rules knowledge.By the time I started roleplaying with friends away from the club, I had the Monster Manual and we had a few character sheets to go on. So we'd draw up a few caves and populate them and the 'rules' were a mash up of whatever mechanics each of us had scratched together from play and a feeling of what seemed reasonable or entertaining.Then I bought the PHB and my mate Tom bought the DMG and we had the printed rules for the first time...he ran the Slavers and Giants series for about eight or nine players......but that said, a lot of 'how' we played and what we did was still based on local custom or what we 'knew' from experience. It was a 'word of mouth' approach, with the DMG like a backstop for when our inherited knowledge couldn't fill in the blanks. I think D&D was fairly unique in that respect - other systems I played over the next couple of years (Traveller and RQ) were learned from the rulebooks and the rules got used more fastidiously, even though I would describe both as 'old school' as well.These days I have no great desire to run AD&D, RQ or Traveller - or Paranoia, Jorune, Twilight 2000, Call of Cthulhu or any of a couple of dozen other systems I played, ran and enjoyed in that early to mid-80s era.But I guess that leads to as accurate a definition of 'old school' as I need - stuff I used to play a long time ago but don't anymore.</blockquote>

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