I’m planning on revisiting last year’s entries for RPGaDay to see if my answers have changed at all, but the first few entries won’t — they’re about the first RPGs played, GMed, and purchased. So I’ll be reposting these from my G+ feed from last year over the next few days, eventually getting caught up to Now, Last Year by the end of the week.
#RPGaDAY, Last Year: Day 1:Â What was the first roleplaying game you played?
My first roleplaying game was the same thing as several other people in my feed: the Holmes version of Dungeons & Dragons. It was the one with the chits you could cut out and draw from a cup in case you didn’t have any polyhedral dice.
I picked this up in 1982 as a hand-me-down from adults who heard it was pretty cool but didn’t understand how to play. Back then, if you wanted to buy dice, you had to go into a store full of model trains, planes, and r/c cars. Maybe behind the sheets of balsawood, they would have some dice ready to buy. We picked some up from a store that summer. I devoured those booklets. I couldn’t wait to fly back home and play with my friends.
When I returned home, I broke the game out and we were going to play with David and Eddie. I had a product that had just caves after caves printed on gridded paper. Eddie had us starting off in a cavern with three enemies: blink dogs, displacer beasts, and barbarian foes awaited. “No!†I cried out, because that didn’t make any sense: we all know that the blink dogs and the displacer beasts would have been fighting each other and the barbarians would be fighting them. These three wouldn’t be just hanging out together in an underground chamber waiting for a band of heroes to attack! So Eddie and David walked around the block and I became the GM.
Since then, I’ve always seemed to be the GM. (I really enjoy it.)
I still have some of those dice from the first dice purchases. There’s a powder blue set that came from another box set (or a separate purchase) and a multi-colored set. Of the multi-colored set, I still have a green d8 and yellow d20 that I can see. The d4 is around here somewhere. The powder blue one, I have a d6 that is still in fantastic shape. There’s a d10 (probably in the basement) and d12 in my stein of dice, right by the computer monitor I’m typing this on.
I hadn’t played D&D proper since AD&D 2nd Edition — third edition (and Pathfinder) seemed like an overwrought mess, fourth edition seemed to stray even further afield yet devolved into an overly-complex miniatures battle game. By the time 5e came out, I was done with fantasy roleplaying, but the new edition brought me back to the land of make-believe. And WotC’s campaigns, borrowing heavily from Paizo’s Adventure Path concept, have been…more or less good. The Elemental Evil campaign book could be a complete setting guide for the middle/interior of the Sword Coast. It’s just fantastic. The Starter Set’s adventure is also crazy fun. And we’ve been playing (off and on) as a family. It plays quickly, reminding me of the best of AD&D2ed with some goodness from the past decade of gaming. 4e didn’t feel like D&D to me. 5e does.
I’ve played Mayfair’s edition of Chill and loved it. When I heard of a potential 3rd Edition, I contacted Growling Door Games, and after a little bit of discussion, there I was, creating the graphics for the KS, laying out the quickstart, and designing the rulebook. And by designing the book, I mean actually designing the book — I had just come off of Firefly, where I was working from Daniel Solis’ design. While Firefly was a fun gig, I wasn’t as free to lay down some design work for a full product. The physical book arrived just three days ago, and it came out looking even better than I thought it would. I’m still amazed — here’s this thing that I did and it’s right here. It’s so…awesome. It makes me smile. Chill, 3rd Edition, is the most pleasing game I’ve backed.