The Gaming Den

In 1984 I got a bootleg copy of Wizardry and played it on the Apple IIe at school.

A few years later, in HS, I joined the gaming club, and played pretty much everything *but* D&D there - Car Wars and Paranoia were the games I most remember from that time.

Then in 1991 a series of coin flips (really) led me to Jenny and her gaming group, which at that time included included Bleys and , Raindog and I ended up sticking with that group and the various fragments of it for most of my gaming since.

While I was in the occasional D&D game in 2e, and GMmed a bunch of other stuff (Rifts, Champions, Rolemaster, Mekton Zeta, DC Heroes and stuff I have forgotten) it wasn't until 3e that I actually ran a game nor really got in-depth into that particular system.

Oh Mekton Zeta, why do you suck so fucking hard?

It's like a complicated Champions for mecha: spend an hour tweaking your design and then you have to redo it because its too awesome.

Cynic, you tell a good story. Keep doing that. Seriously.

I discovered my brother's D&D novels as a kid, and was hooked. First one I read was "Spellfire" by You Know Who, but I didn't really get the setting since, yeah. Then I devoured the 20-some odd DL books my brother had.

Eventually I stumbled onto a 3.0 game demo at the local library, so naturally I went for it. It was a pre-done character and module, and all of us were noobs (although I'd been reading outdated D&D fiction). my half-elven fighter mage kicked ass and took names, as did the fighter. Sadly, that was all the D&D I'd get for a couple years.

Then a friend (the batshit DM in Planescape) mentioned there was a D&D campaign on a messageboard we went to. So I hopped on board and had a lot of fun. I've been with the group for, oh, since grade 10 or so. I'm 21 now.

Around the same time I figured out the stoner punk-dude in my homeroom played D&D, and ended up gaming with him off and on for a couple years. It wasn't exactly balanced or amazing, but we all had fun. Oh, 2 AM raids of the grocery store and pizza runs... Memories~....

Started to play Battletech in 1991, and the people I played with had played Shadowrun already. I bought "Into the Shadows", a short story collection, and we started a Shadowrun campaign. That spawned into D&D shortly afterwards.

I'm an incredible newbie to the game, when I was younger (like single digits), I went on a roleplaying game kick. However, I didn't have friends or internets, so it was just me reading up on BESM 2e and DnD 3.0 along with some indie RPGs like Thrash and the Returner FFRPG.

Fast forward 8 years. I'm a high school senior and one of my nerdlier friends happened to have copies of the 3.5 core. My quad and I decided to play. I rolled up a Rogue and learned two things: one, this was an excellent way to release some creative juices with friends and two: Rogues, Wizards, Clerics, and Druids rule the roost. I got splattered a hell of a lot in that first game, but I was still MVP.

From there I was hooked; I went on a splatbook binge and trawled the CO boards over at WotC. I became obsessed with optimization and crazy builds, much to the chagrin of my "Core is fine" comrades. One thing led to another, I read K's Necromancy Handbook, heard Frank Trollman spoken of in hushed whispers of scorn, came to the Gaming Den via the Tomes and here I am.

This is more of a "How I got to the Den" but since I've only been playing for like 6 months (with three of them being as a TGD lurker) the two are inextricably linked.

I'll just copypaste my early history with D&D from a MySpace blog entry:

Let's start at the beginning, back when the Sun first collapsed from a cloud of interstellar dust.... Well, okay, maybe not that far back. I remember wanting to play D&D from the first time I ever heard about it in an ad on the back of a comic book when I was about 10 years old. This was before I'd read any fantasy fiction, and I had only heard of elves and dwarves in fairy tales. But the ad's tale (told in comic panels, naturally) of the party making it's way through the mysterious dungeon and trying to dodge the green slime falling from the ceiling seemed really cool. Over the next couple of years, I saw D&D rules and miniatures sold in local toy stores. Any game that used such elaborate playing pieces just had to be cool, I thought.

Unfortunately, just as there were many obstacles between Ralph and his Red Rider BB gun in A Christmas Story, there were insurmountable obstacles between me and my dream of fantasy roleplaying. In the early 80s, the Dallas Egbert incident was still fresh in the public mind.* Thus, my grandmother and other family members were sure that the game caused kids to go crazy and kill themselves. Nevertheless, in 8th grade, one of my friends got a copy of one of the Red Box editions and showed it to me.

After reading the first chapter, a solo mini-adventure designed to demonstrate the concept of roleplaying to beginners, I realized this was the coolest thing ever. It was a game without a board (unlike the Dungeon boardgame I'd managed to get for Christmas in '81) because the players discovered what the dungeon looked like as they went along, just as if you were exploring an unknown environment in real life. Furthermore, though the minis were helpful, they weren't necessary. Ultimately, all combat in the game took place in the imaginations of the players and Dungeon Master. The aspiring writer in me loved that aspect of it.

My first actual playing experience came the summer after I graduated high school, when my cousin started bringing his boxed set(s) over and running a campaign in which I ran six characters. Well, in a way, we both ran the six characters. D&D really wasn't designed to be a solo game, so he had me roll up a party of 6, and we both made up backstory and roleplaying elements, while I got to run all of them in combat. We had crazy stuff like the friendship between the intelligent, refined elf and the big dumb fighter who just happened to be a connoisseur of fine wine. It was goofy, and completely unlike the typical RPG experience, but it was fun.

My first "standard" play experience happened in the fourth year of my first run at college, when I finally got the courage to look into the Wright State Adventurers' Guild. I wound up in groups that a lot of people would find a nightmare, but I made lemons out of lemonade because the experience of playing D&D as it was intended to be played was such heady stuff.

Picking up the story, I basically played D&D on and off through the mid-90s. Then when 3e came out, I bought all the core books and a bunch of the splats, even though I didn't have a group. Then, when I finally joined the internet-connected world, I played in a 3.0 PBP. Sadly, I haven't really played any more since the stress of my job from hell forced me to leave that game.

I was introduced to D&D 1e at a JCC after school program. I only played for one 3-hour session there, but I was hooked. A friend of the family who was babysitting me at the time (this was in 2nd grade) gave me his books, namely the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Deities and Demigods, and the red box. After that I played 'D&D' with my best friend, mostly making shit up and playing things like Yog-Sothoth vs. Tiamat. In fourth grade I borrowed the 2e PHB from a classmate (and moved away without giving it back ). In Minnesota I met two brothers who were into D&D and we played 2e and Alternity together for the next 6 or so years. When 3e came out I briefly attended the road show at the University of Minnesota (I was in high school), and then went out and bought the PHB. So on and so forth.

I got into DnD officially in the second semester of my first year of college. So...Three years ago?

Someone I knew online invited me into a game, which worked out okay.

But I'd been reading Order of the Stick beforehand, and I'd read the Drizzt books, so I was surprised at how much of the rules shows up in other media.

Pretty soon, I found F&K stuff and when I read it, a lot of stuff just came together for me. I'd been discontented with the blandness of the melee classes and people had told me things like "The fighter's bonus feats ARE his class features," which didn't seem to click.

Then I found the Den and, well...Yeah.

My own story for gaming started back in grade 4.

I saw these older kids talking about fighting orcs, and shooting fireballs, and throwing daggers through metal gates in order to hit a button to open the gate, and I asked what they were doing.

They were basically playing a free-form, talking-focused game of D&D.

Soon enough I was joining these older kids, I was... some sort of guy with a green magic arrow that could be shot over and over out of a bow. The arrow was a "gift" from a trap, it was actually stuck in my character's shoulder for an extended period of time before I could use it, or get it removed.

Eventually the year ended and my lighting sword, and magic arrow using fighter (? we never clarified the class I was.... like ever) was retired.

That left deep impressions in me, and I was always looking at D&D stuff.

The thing is... I didn't know that what I had been playing was D&D. So... I sort of took an omni-directional approach. I was interested in fantasy and science fiction in general, but really, I've been intestested in everything in terms of literature.

I got a set of "Battlemasters", and started painting minis. With testor paints ( it was terrible, no primer, and paint not designed for plastic models). Me and my brother played lots of Battlemasters, we actually didn't know the rules that well, specifically the defense rolls rules, and the amount of dice that a unit was supposed to use (the dice are attack & defense, with more powerful units getting more dice, we didn't actaully -realize- that fact, ever; only now, years later can I say that I know better).

Later I got a copy of Battletech (but not "Space Marine", the epic version of 40k). Me and my brother played very little of this, compared to how much time we spent desgining super- optimized mechs. Crazy assasin mechs designed to jump in and around other mechs before opening up with an alpha-strike of machine-guns and small lasers on the back of an other mech's armour, or super long-ranged assault weight gun platforms. Plus everything inbetween.

Later on, in high school, in the 90's one of my friends went out and bought the core books for 2nd Ed. We rolled up... a bunch of characters; and then later went out and bought some of the class handbooks.

My friend both DMed the sessions, and played his wizard, I played the party's melee damage and tank, my friend's youngest brother played an assasin, and my friends second oldest brother played.. well, essentially a retarded fighter (he charged around without really thinking, he fell into a -lot- of pits).

There was no cleric, but you know what? When the DM is -also- the player of the Wizard who rolled a "1" for HP at level 1, you can just say "we rest until we're all healed", and you know what? It worked out just fine.

It took a whole other edition before that was commonplace.

Later on, my brother joined and made a Samurai. Now, Samurai has this ability where they could get an Str of 18/00 for a few rounds. That actually meant nothing to my brother. He rolled an 18/98 for strength. The third adventure was when his Samurai joined us. Having two competent melee characters made a huge difference, the caster and assasin could hang back, while we, and the npc fighter hirelings (we... seriously used the "pre-generated" characters as minions) went into the thick of it.

Now, the samurai seemed pretty much the same as my axe and sheild using fighter; until we faced that 3rd adventure's end boss, a dragon. Katanas deal more damage against large creatures (or.. at least we -thought- that's how it worked); the dragon died after a very large crit from the Samurai's katana.

The "game" pretty much ended when we were just assaulting dragons for their treasure. It was difficult, but we did planning, buying attack dogs, by the horde, and a war elephant (my brother's samurai bought it, and rode it). Of course, the loot was good, mostly b/c we divided up the treasure as we found it, and then actually individually rolled what was found. My brother's ridiculous luck netted him a +6 ring of protection, he rolled a natty 100 on the d%.

After that I went through an RPing dry spell, and picked up the 3.5 books around ... 2005 or so.

I guess I was probably 7 or 8 years old when I started so 22-23 years ago. The first book I read on my own was the player's guide for the red box edition that my older brother had. It pretty much inspired me to read watching him play. I started playing Palladium a year or two later mostly TMNT. Then I found WEG's SWRPG and Battletech and stuck mostly to those until high school where I began playing in a Mage the ascension campaign that was the best campaign I've been involved in so far (It lasted 5 years which was sweet). 3e then became our default game with a new group which we stuck to until fairly recently. At one point I had over 30 gaming systems.

This place has has kind of ruined me for rpgs because while before I knew something was wrong with many games, it is only here I've seen the errors and problems of games spelled out. Every game I looked at since being here has its flaws just jumping out at me. Thanks a lot guys

Some the games I have fond memories of include:
Basic D&D and the Mystara setting
Twilight 2000
TMNT
GURPS as a fantasy game
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
SWRPG
Toon
3e before i understood too much
Battletech before the Clans
Fading Suns
Mage
Conspiracy X
Earthdawn

I got into DnD through a my friends who I played Paranoia with.