How I got into role-playing.

[Jeph]

Clay would always play a wizard of some sort. Max liked being a dwarf, and Patrick would be a guy with a sword. I'd usually play a thief, and sam would run things.

We weren't playing D&D, mind, although that's still what we called it; we weren't even playing a role-playing game as conventional wisdom goes. It was more of a LARP sort of thing, although none of us had ever heard of the term at the time. But we'd romp around my backyard and into Patrick's or sometimes head down to Fallon Park, which had a few useful set pieces such as the gazebo, piknik shelter, creek, and the base of an old brick building on top of a large rock. Those would become our mighty rivers and towering fortresses, where we'd valiantly cleave through Dire Rats, sling about Rainbow Strikes, and eat Apple People until not a single one was left standing.

It all started when Sam and Max came back from seeing D&D: The Movie. They have horrible taste, and thus thought it the greatest thing since sliced bread. Their father had played in colledge, so they questioned him endlessly. They found out the basics of hack'n'slash Role-Playing. And they wanted to try it out.

Patrick, Clay and I were all for it. Cool! We get to be wizards and elves and dwarves and fighters and theives and all sorts of stuff that we, in truth, were not. Since Sam was the oldest, he'd be the Dungeon Master. We'd all rally at the swingset in Patricks yard, find sticks and pieces of plywood and bamboo for our armament, and then Sam would describe the entrance to the dungeon and give us a reason for going into it (usually to either get away from the Evil Empire or seek Immortality) and we'd be off.

When we found a monster, we'd fight it. We did this by taking turns telling Sam where we hit it. If that was the monster's Weak Spot, it would die. If that was its Tough Spot, it would be unharmed. If it was anything else, that part would be chopped off or paralyzed, which in most cases amounted to absolutely nothing, which was fine by us. Sometimes we needed to hit the Weak Spot a few times to kill it. If it hadn't bit the dust by the time we'd all launched our assault it would do something horrible to one of us, and we'd have part of our bodies paralyzed. If it bit our leg, we'd have to hop on one foot. If it clawed our eye, we'd close our eye. We romped around the yard tripping over each other, blindly bumping into trees, and being generally helpless, each with a variety of inaccessable limbs and external organs. We'd never die, though, and our injuries seldom had any effect on our competency.

When we killed a monster, there'd be stuff in it. Sometimes we'd find a box, and there'd be stuff in it, too. We found a lot of new weapons, which really amounted to nothing, some coins and gems, which could be spent for items of our choice when we ran into a shop or red dragon (because all red dragons were friendly and would sell stuff unless provoked and every dungeon was peppered with shops). We'd also sometimes find potions, which could heal us, and scrolls. We all looked forwards to scrolls, because that meant that Clay would learn a new spell.

Spells were the highlight of the game, but rare--Clay would maybe have five scrolls by the end of a medium sized dungeon. When Sam said he found a scroll, he'd also tell us the spell's name and what it did. We always rejoiced when we found a Rainbow Strike, because it was the best spell. It would kill all the monsters close together. After Clay cast a spell, Sam would tell him how many rooms he had to wait before he could cast it again. Little spells were usually two rooms. Rainbow Strike was six, which was the most.

One day, I ran into Sam and Max at the Temple Beth Myer. They had the coolest thing to show me: The D&D3e Monster Manual. They'd pooled their money and bought it. It was awesome! I was so jealous. But that was okay, because I could come down and look at it on weekends or whenever we played "D&D." After Sam and Max got the book, it completely changed the way we played. We'd ignore the stats. However, whenever we ran into a monster, Sam would give us the choice of either looking at the creature's picture, or having the description read to us (but never both unless Clay could cast the Monster Knowledge spell). I remember the time we fought the Yrthak, and noticed that its tongue was wierd when we saw the picture. So we chopped it off. It didn't kill it, but it meant we couldn't be blasted by sonic rays anymore.

Eventually, I started to run some games. When winter rolled round, and it rained alot, I had the idea to play inside, sitting around a table. That was pretty cool. A few days later, Patrick commented on how cool it would be to have a dungeon based on a theme, like in Zelda. I thought that idea was cool, too. So I dug up some graph paper and drew some maps. From then on, we'd play around my kitchen table, with me referencing the Master Map and drawing out the Player Map as we went. That was really fun too.

It was about then that I saw the DMG while playing Pokemon and Booksamillion, and asked my mom to get it for me for my birthday (which was the 31st). She did. It was great! It had excellent advice on making dungeons. But it kept using all these abbreviations and words I didn't under stand. So I spent most of my birthday money on the PHB, and finally I found out how to play the actual game. After I fully understood the rules, I borrowed Sam's monster manual and mapped out a short introductory dungeon using the D&D 3rd edition rules.

And thus ended the first stage of my carreer as a gamer.

[rafial]

Dang Jeph, reading that was inspiring, and brought back alot of good memories.  Thanks for posting it!

It all started when Sam and Max came back from seeing D&D: The Movie.

Wow, so something good did come out of it after all! :)

[Emily Care]

Sheer unmitigated fun. And they say role-playing isn't just cops & robbers with dice. Pshaw. ; )

--EC

[Peter Nordstrand]

Great post, Jeffrey. Very enjoyable. And unusual.

Thanx!

/Peter N

[Calithena]

Was anyone else cringing when they were about to get the D&D books? I was terrified that they were never going to have that wonderful time again and instead would start rules lawyering at each other and minimaxing their characters ad nauseam.

This was so wonderful it moved me nearly to tears, by the way - I was just terrified that it was not going to have a happy ending.

[Valamir]

Rainbow Strike.  Classic.

Ours was "Force of Oak" and involved winging acorns at each other.

[quozl]

Was anyone else cringing when they were about to get the D&D books?

Yes, I was.

Jeph, did you have more fun using the books or less?  I want to hear Part 2 of your story!

[Jeph]

It does have a happy ending. Not a happy middle, though...I grew apart from a few wonderful friends, but that's merely a sad symptom of growing up.

Truthfully, we had less fun with the books. Much less fun.

The first game I ran didn't go so well. I had mapped out a small town, written up stats for every NPC in the town, written the adventure line by line, and done just about everything else in the Big Book of 1001 Thing Not To Do When Running D&D. We spent one Sunday up in my room, making sure we had the rules crystal (the rules are about the only thing we did right) and creating characters, proclaiming them to be alternately stupid, underpowered, or clones of X, and remaking them again. In the end, we basically had what we always did--Clay was a wizard, Max a dwarf fighter, Patrick a human cleric with lots of combat abilities, and Sam an elf ranger.

The first scene I had the great wizard Bigby hire them in a tavern (wow) and teleport them to the entrance of a crypt (double wow). They fought some dire rats, then some skeletons, then some zombies, then some ghouls. I thought undead were the coolest.

Sam: "I'm board. Wanna go play football?"
Max: "Let's kill the ghouls first."
Patrick: "Yeah."
Clay: "Okay. I'll be QB."
Jeff: "SHUT UP!"

I actually yelled shut up at my friends. At the top of my voice. It embarrases me to this day. Luckily, we're all still on good terms. But that session just went south from there. So did the next, and the next, and the next.

...

From there everything just kind of changes. I grow appart from Patrick, make gaming friends at school, discover wargaming and exchange hoards of emails with Mike Rayhawk, creator of Brikwars. I get interested in designing wargames and boardgames, then role-playing games.

I join ENWorld. I run a game using Oriental Adventures for D&D, which is OK. I join RPG.Net. I join The Forge. I download a million free games, I buy Feng Shui, I buy Vampire, I buy Exalted.

I write The Spin System with Brian Leybourne. I write a Feng Shui to Starwars conversion which everyone seems to love. I write the first draft of Pagoda, and it only gets better from there. I write a ripoff of Wushu for the Matrix. I write a more original system for the Matrix. I read a bunch of Story Hours on ENWorld, including those of Piratecat, Jonrog1, and Sepulchrave II, and learn what a good game should feel like. In 9th grade I start a D&D campaign that's actually fun all round, and also introduces two friends to gaming. Luke Crane (abzu) contacts me and asks if I would like to contribute Pagoda to the No Press Anthology, and I say yes and playtest with my cousins.

I'm happy with how I game and how the gaming world sees me.

Lo, here I am today.

And tomorrow...

Peter's starting a new campaign, I'm playing a kickass wizard. ;^)
--Jeff

edited out some bad writing

[Brian Leybourne]

Hey man, you wrote the Spin System, I merely critiqued it a lot :-)

And we still play it now and then, it came out pretty good.

Brian.