Your college exp

[LightPhoenix]

No, not how much exp you got during college. But, for one, did you go to college? Where? Did you play dnd is college? How did college affect your dnd playing? I myself am about to attend and am curious how my elders made out.

I am in college, starting my senior year as a biochemistry student at Binghamton University. Yay for state schools, otherwise I probably wouldn't be in college at all.

Bing is an odd school - there really aren't too many role players on campus. I know of only one 3E group, and they weren't looking for new players. LARPing and anime are much more popular, although personally I didn't like many of the people in either club.

Anyway, I guess that a few years ago there was an actual RPing club on campus, but no one was really around to take charge of it and it died, so there's no more group. Lack of funding by the Student Association didn't help.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

did you go to college? Where? Did you play dnd is college? How did college affect your dnd playing?

I went to college in three places - George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia (class of '86), Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (class of '87), and the University of Texas at Austin (no class ).

I started playing in high school (1979). College (1982) marked the end of my role-playing experience. I got involved in forensics my sophomore year, and was too busy to play games. We competed almost every weekend from October - early December, and January - April. In the summers, I worked on forensics stuff for the next year (we had to audition every year to get on the team). In September, you polished your stuff and helped all the rookies get ready for their first tournament.

When I stopped playing, unlike Eric, I didnt' sell my books. I did have some of that "I'm too old for this" attitude, though. I did pick up the original T1-4: Temple of Elemental Evil when it finally came out. I hadn't played in years and had no intention of playing, but I think I just wanted to "complete the set" since I had bought T1: Village of Hommlet years before.

In 1999, I started lurking in 2 different 2e PBEM games (and I ended up playing in one of them fairly quickly).

In 2000, I went to GenCon, just "for the day" and to get the 3e PHB. Also, right before GenCon, my relatives delivered a lot of my stuff to my new house--including two boxes of 1st ed. stuff (Dieties and Demigods with Cthulu + Melnibonean Mythos, anyone?).

I searched for a 3e game, and finally found one locally in Spring of 2001. It's still going strong, though only 2 of the original players are still involved. I also starting playing in RPGA events in June of 2001.

Currently, I'm playing in one 2e pbem, one 3e pbem, one 3e tabletop game (2 sets of characters: our regular group and a "low level" group), two Call of Cthulhu d20 message board games (one with multiple characters), one Legend of the 5 Rings message board game. And then I've got two characters for the Living Greyhawk RPGA campaign and one character in the Living Death RPGA campaign.

I run some RPGA stuff once in a while, and I run a home campaign for my children and some of their friends. They've gone through Sunless Citadel and are just about to finish up the old U1-3 Saltmarsh series (thank you, conversion library!)

Guess I'm making up for lost time!

The very first time I played D&D (1979), I had to DM. If someone every gets me very drunk or bribes me sufficiently, I will relate (in public--on these boards) how bad a DM I was. Still, we all had fun (which is the important thing), and eventually those characters got run through the classic G1-2-3 modules, where they narrowly escaped a TPK.

 

[Strider The Ranger]

Well, I have yet to have that college experience, as I am going this fall to Westfield State College. Unfortunately, my roommates aren't into gaming. I am worried that I might not get to game as much, but I won't let that stop me. LOL come hell or high water, I WILL have a strong gaming group in college.
One cool thing about the college is that it will pay for any event or club as long as everyone is invited to attend.
As an afterthought, when I study abroad, I will be going to England, Ireland, and Scotland. Which will kick ass, and while there, I'm taking up jousting (the real stuff mind you, not the choreographed stuff) and sword fighting. It's gonna rule!!!

 

[Ashtal]

I had more time and more options for gaming during university, even access to a campus gaming club, but ironically all my gaming came out of contacts and open games set at the comic store where I used to hang out.

Especially the first two years. Your class time, compared to high school, drops by two thirds on average and your work load isn't as heavy as later years. More time = more gaming. I gamed more regularly and more often while in University than I ever did in the entire length of high school.

Vive la post-secondary education!!

 

[buzzard]

I went to Carnegie Mellon for well, ever myself. I did collect the matched trio of degrees though. I played off and on over the whole time I was there. Best campaign I've ever been in was one during grad school. It lasted a couple of years and had some very good players.

Buzzard

 

[Theron]

I gamed a lot through my college years (too much, frankly) but very little of it was at college. When I started (1981, Incarnate Word College in San Antonio), I was going through a very strong anti-D&D phase (I'd become a huge Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, and RuneQuest fanatic). The only game on campus pretty well summed up everything I hated about D&D at the time - enormous party constantly at each others' throats and about a million pages of homebrewed rules.

Then in the spring of 82, I discovered Champions and my fate was sealed. I didn't play on campus (by then I'd been forced by a low GPA to San Antonio College), but I spent almost every minute between classes working on my campaign or playing off-campus.

By 86 or so, I'd managed to pull my GPA out of the basement, but by then I was working full time, gaming in my off time, and had discovered the SCA. Money and fun took priority over school.

 

[Rune]

If you really want to know about my college experience, go here.

But I warn you, you'll lose 1d100 Sanity points.

 

[Forged Goo]

I went to school at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Played a lot during my freshman year but little sophomore or junior years. I got back into it again (thankfully) my senior year. My college gaming was some of the funnest (although not most productive) ever. When I graduated I lost easy access to other gamers and went online to play (a great time but just not the same as face to face). Now I have found some new face-to-face players and this board to rekindle my old passion.

Goo

 

[Desdichado]

No, no gaming in college. Then again, I was two or three years older than most starting freshmen, and I got married right after my freshman year. I also worked full time and took classes full time.

I did play some Blood Bowl in grad school here and there, though.

 

[ichabod]

While I only played D&D once the entire time I was in college, college had a profound impact on my later D&D play. That's because I played games in college like you wouldn't believe.

I went to University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. Small college, but the game club had close to 40 people show up for most of the club meetings. Both U of R and the Rochester Institute of Technology across town ran a convention every year. We'd help them staff theirs, and they'd help us staff ours. The only time I played D&D is when a group from U of R needed a player for RIT's tournament. The guy playing the kender had laryngitis and couldn't speak, but we managed to just barely win the tournament.

I also played and ran plenty of RPGs, including CyberPunk, Toon, The Fantasy Trip, Rolemaster, and my best ever campaign: GURPS Illuminati, with one player playing his dad, and the other playing his mailman.

Of course, magic came out while I was in college, and everybody was playing it. My last semester was especially insane. I got into this special program that required I make a specific list of classes for the next year and a half and take only those classes. Which was fine until the registrar changed all of the classes around. I was stuck with two hell semesters of five or six classes including graduate level work. But my last semester was three morning classes, two of them guts. I'd get up in the morning, go to class, then play pinball until the pizza place in the commons opened, and go upstairs to the game office (I had a key) and sit there and play games all day long.

I was one of three people from my class who ended up in the game industry. One went to work for InQuest, one for R. Talsorian, and I opened a game store and later worked for Iron Crown.