Having fun in a group setting. Cooperation for achieving a mutual goal. Learning from mistakes. The real world is not so cut and dried.
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Day 27: If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything different when you first started gaming?
I am not sure how I could. Putting more role playing into our roll playing would have been good, but I don’t see that happening. We had to teach ourselves and learn from the experience of others.
Day 26: Do you still game with the people who introduced you to the hobby?
I play with my brother Robert very seldom. I would play with him every week if I lived close enough. We still talk about the game and what is going on.
Day 25: Longest running campaign/gaming group you’ve been in.
Robert, my brother, and our youngest brother, Kent, and some friends started a new campaign my first year of college. I got involved when I was home on breaks and the summer. That campaign started in 1983/84 is still going today, and I still have the same characters in that game. My main character had a situation that was on hold for 15 years until we played it out to learn if my character would be around/have an impact on the game in current time. Griswald is now basically a retired character. He is my favorite.
This is the campaign Robert came up with after “The Quest For The Dice of Destiny” halted and just stopped in mid adventure, mid situation. I still don’t know if Fasbold and Flaessan survived their encounter with a ghost.
Day 24: First movie that comes to mind that you associate with D&D. Why?
“Conan The Barbarian” with Arnold Swarzenegger because that movie came out at a time when we were playing D&D all the time in high school.
I know the Rankin & Bass cartoon of “The Hobbit” and Ralph Bakshi’s “Return of the King” also had an influence.
“The Vikings” with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis and any other movie from the 50’s and 60’s on TV at the time.
As I write this, “Excalibur” comes to mind. We laughed at the scene of what a king does in full armor, but the armor and the fighting was cool.
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” was good for the wacky side of things.
I am sure there were others, but I don’t recall them at the moment.
Day 23: First song that comes to mind that you associate with D&D. Why?
I recall a song that a friend came across, perhaps an early Dragon. “You Bash The Balrog, While I Climb The Tree.” Four of us, two brothers each from two families sang it. We recorded it on a cassette tape. I’m not sure if it was a handheld tape recorder or a higher end system.
I think we just made up our own tune. I still remember all the words, once I get going.
Also, “We must away ‘ere break of day” from “The Hobbit”. The tune we came up with was close to what is in the recent Peter Jackson movie.
Day 22: First D&D-based novel you ever read (Dragonlance Trilogy, Realms novels, etc.)
I’m not sure I ever have. I can’t recall. I have read so much over the years. The problem of getting older is not forgetting, but cycling through all the information to find the answer….
I do recall thinking they were a silly idea at the time. I said the same thing about the D&D cartoon, while watching every single episode…..
Day 21: First time you sold some of your D&D books–for whatever reason.
I never sold any, but I gave my blue box set to my youngest brother, Kent. He may still have it.
Day 20: First non-D&D RPG you played.
That’s a tough one. Metamorphosis Alpha, I think. It was lost in the great pipe burst of 2000.
Day 19: First gamer who just annoyed the hell out of you.
I have had little brothers of friends who played in high school who were whiny and had to have their way.
I have had know-it-alls who thought they had the best ideas and would argue rules, specifics of a scenario, or get off topic all the time.
There have also been those who chewed up pencils and leaned back in chairs and broke them.
It runs the whole spectrum. I have had different individuals in my experience who each have had a couple of the traits and thankfully none with all of them.
Game Masters of any RPG who do not explain the scenario and proceed as if everyone gets what the point of the play period is.
I remember we took turns having different people in Science Fiction Club in high school show us their favorite game. The guy who showed us Traveler with all of its different rule books did not have a well balanced scenario and people were dying without any understanding of why. The GM had read the rules and quickly explained them. We got the idea behind RPGs, but we did not understand key points about how Traveler was different. That was over 30 years ago, and I don’t remember specifics other than we were not happy with the experience and only tried Traveler a couple of times. My brother, Robert and I came up with our own science fiction RPG with simple rules and we played that until Star Frontiers came out with all it’s detail and simple mechanics.