Jon, my former virtual landlord (and still host for my original blog archives), sent along a link to this article. Knowing Jon’s distaste for such things, he must have been grimacing when he clicked Send:
I was initiated into the mysteries of gaming via a grade school classmate’s copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. A mysterious artifact, this red box contained a set of waxy, dull-edged dice and a couple of thin rulebooks. Designed to be played on its own or as an introduction to the complexities of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the Basic Set-or “Red Box” as it came to be known by gamers-became the key to an entire universe of adventure and magic. Little did I know at the time this would be the beginning of a lifelong love affair with gaming and fantasy in general.
With the news that D&D publishers Wizards of the Coast intends to release a new edition of the introductory rule set-in a red box no less-I thought it might be fun to ask a few writers about their own early experiences with the world’s best known fantasy role-playing game.
My first experience with the game was in high school, where a classmate found out that I was into wargames and wanted to “help me” by diverting me away from such evil warmongering stuff. His gaming methadone involved mass slaughter of beings and beasts in a “dungeon” he’d created. About a dozen of us were introduced to the game in the same session . . . let’s just say that it didn’t go terribly well. With no experienced players in the pack, we specialized in aggravating the Dungeon Master (the person running the game for us). After about an hour, the DM was deliberately killing us off as fast as he could.
I played several other role playing game systems after that, but never found one I was comfortable with. I ended up “rolling my own” by basing it on Metagaming’s Melee and Wizard games (both designs originally by the great Steve Jackson) for the combat and magic systems. I found this worked best for my occasional RPG sessions, as I hate-with-a-passion being in games with rules lawyers (the archetypical one has memorized all the rulebooks, tables, supplements, and so on). If I don’t explain why something is happening, they have to concentrate on what to do about it instead of getting into heated arguments about die roll modifiers and such.
In the early 1980’s, I ended up working at Mr. Gameway’s Ark in Toronto (which appears to be Google-proof . . . or doesn’t have more than occasional mentions in mailing list conversations), which was the largest independent game store in town. I got to read the rules of dozens of RPG systems, but perhaps I was spoiled for choice . . . I never did end up playing any.
Ok, if you must know…
My introduction to the game occurred in, oddly enough, Ottawa Tech Writer Guy’s father’s garage. This would have been in grade 8 or thereabouts. A game of sorts was in progress when I arrived, and I joined in with a spare character that someone happened to have. The party encountered a medusa shortly after I joined, and I immediately developed a phobia for the things. So much so that I had my character rig up a staff with a hand-held mirror so that we could look around corners with some measure of safety. I was impressed that the game allowed for this sort of thing — I seem to recall the DM rolling or looking something up or whatever to determine if our countermeasure was successful each time it was used.
That was pretty much the only time I played. I tried to join some campaigns with a friend at U of T, but the sessions never really got going. The groups there had several lawyers on staff, and they argued incessantly about trivial nonsense — such as which editions of reference materials to use — before the game could even get started.
Was not much into any sort of role playing stuff until I joined a Hello Kitty BDSM LARP group a couple of years ago. After that, I’ve never looked back — but I always make sure to look behind.
Comment by Jon — February 24, 2010 @ 16:35
The more you know people . . . I’d never have guessed that you’d ever actually played an RPG. You tend to react with such utter disgust when other geek-friendly topics come up in conversation that I naturally assumed that you’d also avoided being anywhere near one of the wellsprings of early geek-dom.
Learn something new everyday.
Comment by Nicholas — February 24, 2010 @ 16:45
Oh, and feel free not to elaborate on that LARP you’re tied up with. Some things are definitely better left to the imagination. Or, as in this case, to a special imagination-free mental lock-box.
Comment by Nicholas — February 24, 2010 @ 16:46
I think our disconnect here comes from our definition of “geek” and “geeky”. When I was in high school, the geeks were the computer/math/science geniuses who worked part-time for the board of education as computer consultants. They played every instrument in the school band. They surprised everyone at the annual Talent Night with a stand-up routine that was uproariously funny — but the most surprising thing was their delivery: a self confidence and a presence that said more about them in a few minutes than we had been able to learn during five years of classes together. These were the geeks that I knew. None of them played D&D. None of them read sci-fi fantasy, or took Tolkien seriously. None of them affected mannerisms learned from British programming on TVO, repeated Monty Python skits endlessly, or pretended to be anything beyond who they were.
The people you consider to be geeks were, in my experince, known by a different name: losers.
I don’t associate RPGs with geeks, but instead with socially isolated, academically mediocre, extensively but poorly read near shut-ins who probably considered themselves to be geeks, but who did not have any of the redeeming qualities of the true geek. Not particularly good at anything but the rote memorization required to play a board game without having to buy the rulebooks, these people were about as distant from what I knew as geeks as I was.
Comment by Jon — February 24, 2010 @ 19:56
I was already in college before I saw D&D. Had (suffered?) a year of the old Avlon Hill counters on paper war simulation games already. Of course there was always massive modification of the basic rule structures being undertaken to conform more closely to our concepts of ‘reality’. Was given the original set of five small rule books – this before any of the ‘Advanced’ distortion of the starting concept for the whole thing. That the rules were intended as a GUIDE, and the DM would imagine the playing field entirely from imagination (not via published adventure manuals.) How on earth could anyone cope with the kind of players I ended up DM for? Max the Mouse. Powered Armour. Divine Intervention, resulting in screwing a goddess?? (That last the result of rolling four 20’s in a row). The fun became in the mental challanges, combat a very distant second. Never have found a computer version game that matched the inventiveness and pure craziness of those games…
Comment by Darrell — February 25, 2010 @ 09:55
Well, that doesn’t describe any of the geeks I went to school with . . . I wonder how common your experience is. Geeks in my day (before personal computers were in any way common) didn’t have the opportunity to excel in ways that non-geeks would recognize or respect. Our school board, for example had one computer . . . my only computer course in school involved filling in mark-sense cards, submitting them for batch runs, and getting the print-out back a few days later. I was literally able to re-capitulate the entire year’s work in an afternoon on a Commodore VIC-20 I borrowed from Clive ten years later.
Geeks in my day were the few, the hunted, and the weak. The jocks ruled our high school halls, and got away with all sorts of bullying with (effectively) no penalty.
Comment by Nicholas — February 25, 2010 @ 11:02
I wonder if there was a direct correlation between gamers who tried to enhance or modify the basic rules of a game and those who went on to become “serious” D&D players. By “serious”, I mean the DMs, not the players. I ruined the resale value for several “classic” wargames by adding markings to counters, coming up with new morale tables, trying to add different combat results based on formations, and other monstrosities.
Exactly my feelings. I felt that the pre-packaged “adventures” were an abomination: the whole point of the game was to exercise the imagination, not to follow someone else’s script.
Comment by Nicholas — February 25, 2010 @ 11:08