Nostalgia Part II (Second Edition, et. al.)

This is a continuation of the previous message about my history as a player/DM and my style. None of you need to read this, but it might give you a bit of insight as to where I'm coming from and why I'm going to kill your character about once every six months . . . just kidding . . . mostly.

Second Edition, et. al.

So, during my senior year of high school TSR released Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition. My memories of this time are not as clear as my childhood times with the Basic Set and AD&D 1st Edition . . . or maybe I just liked the childhood years better and don't care to recall my "tweens".

For a couple or four years I played AD&D 2nd Edition with high school friends, college friends and anyone I could get to play. I think it was more out of habit than real fun. I tried. I tried alot, but I could never really get interested in anything, and no game ever lasted more than six months or so. I think mainly I had lost my wonder about the game. Eh, whatever. We played games here and there, but I have no really fond memories of anything gaming-related until about 1993.

I got married in the spring of 1993, and my wife gave birth to our first child shortly thereafter. About the same time I posted a "looking for gamers" notice in a comic/game shop in my home town. We got a decent-sized group, and I started running an irregular game on Saturday mornings. It was an absolute blast for a while. That campaign ran for about a year or so and was a lot of fun.

In 1994 a fellow D&D player, and one of my best friends, introduced me to Vampire: the Masquerade. Oops! For the next year or so I did nothing but play Vampire and eventually got into LARPing. Of course, I was not content to play . . . eventually my friend and I started up a LARP, and we were the ulitmate Storytellers. No horror idea was too evil, and no subject taboo. That game was a blast for about a year. I then moved out-of-state.

In my new home I eventually found some fellow gamers and joined the Camarilla, White Wolf's LARP fan club. For most of the next six years I played Vampire: the Masquerade live-action almost exclusively. I kept up with D&D, and even bought the Player's Option books when they came out, but I didn't play very much D&D during this time.

During my years of playing Vampire I adopted the "role-player not roll-player" snobbery that was common among the anst-ridden goth wannabe vampire players. I sneered at D&D and other pen-and-paper games as silly mechanics-based exercises that couldn't compare to "true" role-playing . . . live-action vampire. For all those people that I offended during this time . . . eh, get over it. I was enjoying myself, immersing myself in story and character development. It was cool for a while.

Eventually, I moved back home and called my old D&D/Vampire buddies . . . "Hey, we're puttin' the band back together" . . . sort of. It turns out the Vampire game that started in my apartment in 1994 was still running in 1999 (and would continue until about 2001). My buddy who had taken over most of the Storytelling duties told me about D&D 3rd Edtion, and I was hooked. We bought the books, he dropped the Vampire game, and we started playing D&D again . . .

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