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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 3350538" data-attributes="member: 926">(hehe oops, warning: long post, I just went on and on and on... <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)The chance to create and portray cool and fantastic characters!  I had wanted to play for a long time before I ever got to, seeing adds for Spelljammer and the Forgotten Realms Adventures book in comics back when I started reading comics, but I never knew how to go about finding people to play with (I'm very bad bad meeting people and making friends, and always have been.)In the summer of '92 my mom forced me to go to this thing called Upward Bound.  It was for kids from low income households with good academic potential, as a way to encourage them to go to college, and my high school guidance counselor recommended to my mother that I go; not to encourage me to go to college (which I was already planning on doing) but as a way to try to make some friends and form a social life, which I absolutely did not have (neither a social life nor any friends.)  We would spend about 6 or 7 weeks during the summer (I forget how long, exactly) at a dorm at Penn State, attending special classes by high school and college teacher volunteers*, sit in on actual Penn State summer classes, go on educational trips to plays and the like, put on our own plays, do special projects, attend the Central Pennsylvania Summer Arts Festival held in downtown State College every year (great festival, by the way), and get a stipend of 15 dollars a week to spend as we wanted! (that was a lot for most of us who were in the program!!)  Not long after I started playing I found the local State College gaming store and a box of old used books they had, and bought literally about a hundred back issues of Dragon Magazine for half price each (about 10 a week at around $1.50 each, so probably about 70 or so, actually.  It was amazing how many they had, someone must have just dumped off their entire collection and I bought it all, 10 issues at a time), giving myself a nice crash course in how the game worked.Well, I resisted as hard as I could, and even threatened to run away from the place, because the thought of being shipped off someplace to live with a bunch of kids who I knew would hate me just as much as the ones at my high school did, but eventually I agreed to try it or a week.  I went, and the very first day I made a friend in my dorm roommate.  The first night there was a general gathering of the students in the lounge of the dorm to introduce everyone to each other (mostly the new kids, as most of the students had been going for years already), and I wore what was dressy or me at the time, a pair of jeans and a dress shirt with a tie.  And there I experienced something that guaranteed I would stay at Upward Bound the whole summer:  I had girls sitting all around me, asking about me, interested in me and wanting to know things about me!You see, they didn't know who I was from school, they didn't know I was a humongous dork, thy didn't know anything about me, but I do have to admit, I AM pretty good looking, and so I actually had pretty girls who wouldn't give me the time of day back at school talking to me all afternoon!  They didn't know me as the shy dorky kid who was too shy to talk to anyone and just drew all the time, to them I was the new, mysterious, cute guy who was siting by himself in the biggest chair in the room, with a gaggle of girls around me.  It was glorious!!!(it only took a week for that to pass and for them all to find out what a geek I am and completely stop talking to me, though <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />  But that week that sumer was one of the best times of my life, still.  I just wish I hadn't been so shy, I might have actually gotten a kiss or something out of it all.)  But, anyway... back to the question at hand: by the time the universe had reverted to normal and the girls once again avoided me like I was a leper, I had made a few more friends, all of which played D&D!!!  When I found out they played I absolutely begged them to let me try, and they were more than happy to!  So, for the next 6 or 7 weeks, every day after classes and study time, the 6  of us would gather in the dorm levels' study room t the big table, they'd break out their books, and I finally got to play D&D!  It was a mix of 1st Edition and 2nd Edition, depending on who was running (every one of the other players DM'd at one time or another, and there were 3 games running simultaneously, with them taking turns day by day and week by week.  The oddest group of people I'd have ever expected to be playing D&D, too (or accepting me as a friend!)  3 of them were football stars at their high school, and one was nearing his black belt in karate.  We played Ravenloft (I remember playing a m9odule where we had our souls transferred into marionettes, or "carrionettes", hehe!) and we also played in 2 homebrew settings.      But I remember my first character very well!  He was a 1st Edition half-elf Fighter/Thief, because I thought it would kind of be like a ninja, and I named him Shadoe Danser. (yeah, well hey, it was my first character ever! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />)  The rest of the party were walking through the woods and came upon me trying to fight off 2 owlbears by myself, and losing badly.  We fought them off, I joined the party, and somewhere along the way I fouund a magical silver morning star!  Then we came to the ogre lair where the party had been headed, we snuck in, found their bedroom/barracks chambers, and all snuck in without waking any of them.  We each stood at the foot of an ogres bed, and then we all attacked at once.  I actually remember wondering whether I should do that or not; I had chosen to be Neutral Good (still my favorite Alignment), and didn't know if it was right for me to just murder an ogre in his sleep.  (I had grasped the concept of Alignment immediately <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)  The rest of the party convinced me that these ogres were murdering monsters, who were probably sleeping off a disgusting meal of humans and elves they had just captured, and so I decided I do some avenging in the name of Good!  We all attacked, and I rolled a natural 20 on my very first attack roll ever playing D&D!  The DM got out his custom made "special" chart, a homemade Critical Hit table, and I rolled on it, rolled a 95, and got Instant Death!  I smashed my newfound silver morningstar into the ogres' back, wrenched it back out, part of it;s spine came out as well, wrapped around the weapon and stuck to its' shapr spikes.Talk about the best way imaginable to get a shy, friendless geek to get permanently and immediately hooked on the game!  Damn but I still smile when I think about that night <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />      Well, that's how I started gaming.  We also played Car Wars that summer, and RuneQuest (I think, all I remember from it are talking ducks and a ad DMPC who was a ripoff of the genie from the Disney Aladdin.  But Car Wars was fun enough for me to still have a copy beside me in my bedroom right now <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  We even played Rifts, too!  I made an elven Glitterboy!   Out of those 6 guys I started playing with, one of them is still one of my very best friends, and the other is at least a friend I still game with when he;s around.  I met my current DM through them, who is the cousin of my more distant friend, and one of the best friends of my closer friend, and we still all play together.  They've been pretty much the core gaming group ever since, adding my brother til he moved away, and a new friend of my brother just recently, but the same core group of us have been the stable nucleus of the group ever since that summer.  I still play a character I made that summer: Malachi Falcor, a Ranger that's gone from 1st Edition to go on to be converted to a Ranger21/Barbarian2/Wizard3 on the day 3E came out, and together that core group of us have crafted the coolest setting I can imagine, and we still play the same characters in the same setting after more than 14 years. I owe Upward Bound and Dungeons & Dragons my life... because at that point in my life I was so miserable and depressed, I had been not very far from ending it all that summer.  I went to Upward Bound for 4 more summers of playing D&D every night and loving it, and have been in love with it ever since.  My reasons for playing haven;t changed a bit: I do it for the opportunity to create, portray and grow interesting and cool characters, drawing them, writing about them, and imagining every aspect of them I can think of to make them as close to fully fleshed out living beings as I can.  And I love the Hell out of it.I just wish things had stayed better and not gone back downhill for me lately.  *(my favorite class was the Star Trek: The Next Generation class, in which we watched a new episode every other day and would then discuss the social, moral, and technological implications of the story, as well as it's literary value and the like.  It was taught by a husband and wife team of English and Literature teachers, who also played D&D, and were the two coolest teachers I have ever met.)</blockquote>

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