Nostalgia Part I (Ancient History)

For those of you that have never played with me as the Dungeon Master, I thought a few words about my history with the game and my play style would go far in helping you prepare for dealing with me as the DM. It is certainly not necessary for anyone to read this, but you might find it interesting or amusing.

Ancient History

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in the summer of 1981 with the Moldvay red (pink?) box set. My parents were recently divorced, and I spent every other weekend at my dad's place with my sister. One weekend while looking at stamps in a stamp/coin shop in the mall (I can't remember which one), I saw some D&D miniatures and the D&D Basic and Expert sets in the window. I was fascinated. I stared longingly through the window at the box, and left with my stamps . . . but no D&D.

Two weeks later when I showed up at my dad's place there was the Dungeons and Dragons basic set! I was ecstatic, and I spent the entire weekend reading and drawing dungeons and begging my sister and dad to play. Alas, there would be no games for me that summer. Although they tried to humor me, neither my dad nor my sister could get interested in the ramblings of a 10-year old kid trying to learn the rules and explain them at the same time.

When Fall arrived that year I met some kids at school that I managed to wrangle into playing D&D. What a blast! Ten year old boys have vivid immaginations, and we were quickly burning through all of the challenges in the Basic Set including The Keep on the Borderlands and looking forward to the blue box Expert Set.

I don't know when or how I got it (maybe for Christmas), but eventually the Expert Set was mine. Before the following summer we had exhausted the full contents of both the Basic and Expert sets and had 14th level heroes storming around simple, nonsensical dungeons crushing and blasting everything in their paths.

Within a year or so I got turned on to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by another kid at school. He had the Monster Manual with the bare-breasted female demons and devils and the gynosphinx! I had to get it. I later found out I also had to get the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide . . . ah, yes, the joys of reading Gygax at his best . . . or worst. While the DMG was absolutely one of the worst organized books ever, it was probably my favorite RPG book. You could pick up this book, turn to a page at random and be almost guaranteed to see something you had not seen before. Random encounters in the city? We got 'em; complete with street harlots and vampires! WTF?!?!

Years of fun followed . . . later came Fiend Folio, Deities and Demigods, Monster Manual II, and many others. Eventually my play time slowed as I entered high school and begin to think I might want to meet girls. Oops. Senior year . . . second edition . . .

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