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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RSKennan" data-source="post: 2118184" data-attributes="member: 8256">My mother is schizophrenic, with a religious bent. Way back when the D&D cartoon was on, she caught me watching it, ripped the TV out of the wall, and threw it outside....Fast forward a few years, and I'm a 4th (or 5th?) grader interested in mythology. I was living with my aunt and uncle. I discovered D&D 1e at the library I lived at, and I transcribed the books into composition notebooks. I had gotten through the PHB, DMG and MM, and was getting started on Oriental Adventures when some people came in to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... Their GM never showed up, so I ran the example of play from the DMG for them, and my first campaign was born. When 2e came out, I kind of conned my aunt into buying the PHB and DMG for me, since she was getting rid of me for the summer- I made her feel bad, even though I didn't have any personal issues with staying with cousins for the summer. She just couldn't take care of me while working as much as possible in the tourist trap we lived in. That money helped us sail through the rest of the year. I was kid, I just knew I wanted something... At any rate, the summer sucked except for those books. I had nothing in common with my cousins, so I mastered the rules and became really obsessed. when I went home and started school, my mediocre grades sunk lower. It's not that I didn't know the material, I just never did homework. It was D&D all day, every day. I went from being bored at school to having something to occupy my mind, and I went overboard. My uncle saw the severe change in me and started giving me Hell. Then, both of them started asking about it among their friends. My aunt got decent information- that it was ok in moderation- but my uncle heard about all the cult and satanism accusations. The rest of my time with them (through HS graduation) was rougher. I remember my uncle telling me that I couldn't bring my D&D books with me to a sleepover, and I consented, but hid them in the front of my pants... I was walking with my back unusually straight to hide them... and I got caught. If I remember right, I took off and brought them with me. Either way, we played that night- I didn't need the books at that point. Around Junior Year, I had learned rebellion, but slid away from D&D. I had a girlfriend, and we had better things to do than play D&D... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> so while there were semi-weekly games, the daily ones went away. Most of my other D&D friends were in the same boat, and we all got into trouble. The stuff we did was largely mischief, but one friend almost got shot by the police for having a realistic looking pellet gun when we were making a school movie. That same guy used to collect and make weapons. Another friend stole cars, vandalised buildings, and had the keys to every soda machine on Martha's Vineyard. We drank, etc... but we hardly played D&D. Even so, My aunt and uncle blamed D&D for these issues- the people who were getting into trouble were all of my old D&D buddies, and half the time, I was there for at least part of the trouble. Nowadays, they're ok with it, and realize that what little gaming I did  in HS prevented me from getting into worse trouble. Especially now that I've had a few things published, they realize that the time, if not well-spent, was building towards something. It's a funny thing to me to see the pride they have when they show a friend something I wrote, no matter how weird it is to them with their protestant sensibilities. Sorry for the long post. Good thread, though.</blockquote>

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