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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gentlegamer" data-source="post: 5635378" data-attributes="member: 2425">When I was in 6th grade, a new student, Dan, who had attended private elementary school, told me about Dungeons & Dragons. At that time, D&D was a cartoon. I had no inkling that there was a game attached to it. I was very much into Choose Your Own Adventure books, as well as the Endless Quest books ("from the producers of the D&D game," which I found puzzling). Dan and other students had played "D&D," and this is how it was described to me (verbatim, to the best of my memory): "There's a Dungeon Master, and he draws a dungeon, and you explore it. He describes to you what you see, and hear as if you were really there, and you tell him what you want to do."Like a lightning bolt, my mind grasped the concept and I thought to myself, "That is the coolest thing I've ever heard!" That description Dan gave me of D&D (and role-playing) informs my view of the game-form to this very day. My reaction to it hasn't changed, despite the passage of 20+ years.Dan and I began playing "D&D" by making up dungeons and playing "one on one," each of us taking turns as Dungeon Master. We had no rules, and since Dan never mentioned any, I don't know if he had actually ever played with any. Our sessions of "D&D" were completely free form, based wholly on what I would now call descriptive action. Since we were both familiar with Choose Your Own Adventure and Endless Quest, we shunned combat, fearing for a quick death, which was a feature of both book series. We avoided fighting anything unless we had an object or situation that presented a "solution" to a monster encounter. Though neither of us had played them, we were handling monster encounters (at least from a combat perspective) somewhat like the computer adventure games of the time, where the solution wasn't fighting, but to use an item or other "indirect" solution to defeat it.These early experiences with role-playing established the foundation for my understanding of the game-form and it my firm belief that they constitute the true definition of what a role-playing game is, distinct from other game-forms.</blockquote>

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