What got you into D&D?
vince garcia
actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
"You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
time in books and games), and the rest is history.
Gosh those were great days!
Sea Wasp
> In my case, it started when Bakshi's LOTR came out. I'd never read the
> actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
> fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
> story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
> the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
> into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
>
> "You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
>
> Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
> characters named Raven and Nightshadow
Was this 1978? Because I knew TWO such characters in that year.
Hell, I knew two real-life "Raven"s.
I got into it in 1977 when one of the computer geeks mentioned it and
invited me to drop by the Studio of Bridge and Games on Saturday. As
soon as I saw the rulebooks I knew I was going to love this game.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
D.J.
Seeing the book at a university in Texas the day I was leaving,
changing majors and leaving the area, I saw the first edition
players handbook on a table in one of the classes. I oohed and aahed
over it and asked if I could look at it. Turns out there was a group
of gamers there, but they didn't think I was interested. They showed
me the TSR dice they had.
I had found the blue d&d book and the 2nd edition of Tunnels and
Trolls at a game store in another area. I commuted around 60 miles
to that university every day, so it wasn't always easy to look
locally for books. The closest game store to my home was around 30
miles in another direction. He had the old TSR cheap soft plastic
dice sets, T&T, T&T solo adventures, and the blue d&d book.
After I moved to Mississippi, I found a game warehouse run by some
guy named Lou Zocchi. I bought dice, modules, and the AD&D books
there. Later I got miniatures and floor tiles. I found the floor
tiles to be too expensive so I found some slightly used manila
folders, of the type used in offices for filingm and nade them into
floor tiles by using the drafting gear I had bought for one of my
university classes.
I ran my first game in Zocchi's warehouse in January, 1979.
JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/testy/ Apr 24, 2007 1E AD&D blog
http://www.drivein-jim.net/ March 2, 2007: Drive-In movie theatres
http://poetry.drivein-jim.net/ poetry blog Mar 27, 2007
SeaHen
> Seeing the book at a university in Texas the day I was leaving,
> changing majors and leaving the area, I saw the first edition
> players handbook on a table in one of the classes. I oohed and aahed
> over it and asked if I could look at it. Turns out there was a group
> of gamers there, but they didn't think I was interested. They showed
> me the TSR dice they had.
>
> I had found the blue d&d book and the 2nd edition of Tunnels and
> Trolls at a game store in another area. I commuted around 60 miles
> to that university every day, so it wasn't always easy to look
> locally for books. The closest game store to my home was around 30
> miles in another direction. He had the old TSR cheap soft plastic
> dice sets, T&T, T&T solo adventures, and the blue d&d book.
>
> After I moved to Mississippi, I found a game warehouse run by some
> guy named Lou Zocchi. I bought dice, modules, and the AD&D books
> there. Later I got miniatures and floor tiles. I found the floor
> tiles to be too expensive so I found some slightly used manila
> folders, of the type used in offices for filingm and nade them into
> floor tiles by using the drafting gear I had bought for one of my
> university classes.
>
> I ran my first game in Zocchi's warehouse in January, 1979.
>
> JimP.
If you're not going to post this until 3:58, why am I reading it now? Is
this a problem with your server or mine?
--
Proud member of the Online Campaign for Real English. If you believe in
capital letters, correct spelling and good sentence structure then copy
this into your signature.
D.J.
<seahen12...@gmail.com> wrote:
]If you're not going to post this until 3:58, why am I reading it now? Is
vagaries of the internet. Its the way it actually works. Oh, and we
aren't all in the same time zone. :-)
JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/testy/ Apr 28, 2007 1E AD&D blog
Ken Andrews
Too far back; I don't recall.
It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
while I was climbing a ladder.
decalod85
I came to D&D after playing games like Phantasy on
C64 and Wizardry on the Apple II. Kind of the opposite
of today where we are losing players to MMORPG
games...
Christopher Adams
nine or so, and I was pretty intrigued by the game the kids were playing at the
start of the book. The next year, I saw a copy of the one-volume U.K. edition of
the "Red Box" Basic Set (it didn't come in a box at all) on a bookstore's sales
tables at the local shopping centre, and persuaded my mother to get it for me.
We'd just moved interstate, so I didn't really know anyone, and my brother
wasn't interested, so the only gaming I got to do was the solo introductory
stuff in that book. At the time, I thought the Elf class was cool, so when my
brother noticed the Elven Nations trilogy of Dragonlance books at another
bookstore, I got hooked. They led me to the main Dragonlance trilogies
(Chronicles, Legends, et cetera) and those ads in every novel for the game
supplements led me to pick up the Dragonlance Adventures hardback.
Unfortunately, this was 1990 or 1991, so when I went looking for the actual AD&D
rules they told me that Second Edition was out and didn't really work with what
I had, but I bought them anyway. I knew a few gamers in high school, though we
played more Cyberpunk 2020 than AD&D. It wasn't until I came to university in
1999 that I really started gaming regularly. I had kept up with a lot of
developments in AD&D all through the Nineties - I was long past my interest in
Dragonlance, although I have a huge and mostly complete-for-the-time collection
of novels to show for it, and was more into Planescape and Ravenloft by that
point.
--
Christopher Adams - St Ives, New South Wales
-------
What can change the nature of a man?
-------
Sydney-based gamers - Get in touch with
SUTEKH at the University of Sydney!
http://forum.sutekh.info/
SeaHen
were great days!
>
> Too far back; I don't recall.
>
> It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
> was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
> while I was climbing a ladder.
I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
Keith Davies
> Ken Andrews wrote:
> were great days!
>>
>> Too far back; I don't recall.
>>
>> It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
>> was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
>> while I was climbing a ladder.
>
> I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
"max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
order, play what you get, and WE LIKED IT!
Keith
--
Keith Davies "History is made by stupid people
keith....@kjdavies.org "Clever people wouldn't even try
keith....@gmail.com "If you want a place in the history books
http://www.kjdavies.org/ "Then do something dumb before you die."
-- The Arrogant Worms
SeaHen
> I came to D&D after playing games like Phantasy on
> C64 and Wizardry on the Apple II. Kind of the opposite
> of today where we are losing players to MMORPG
> games...
I too was exposed to computer RPGs well before pen-and-paper. The first
that I remember was called Castle of the Winds, the demo of which came
with a book about sound cards. Then at Mom's I played a little Baldur's
Gate, and that got my curiosity going.
At my last high school, I heard some other students talking about D&D.
None played the game at school (those whom I asked told me they were
worried about bullying), but some had played it on their vacations.
(Apparently, there was a D&D march break camp that had nine players to a
game -- counsellors as DMs -- and during combat you'd be standing
outside talking to friends for ten minutes between turns, and then you'd
have to make your tactical decisions pretty fast, roll your dice, get
back in line and repeat.)
But it wasn't until I got to my current high school in September '05 and
answered a PA announcement for the after-school Strategy Gaming Club
that I saw a game in progress and decided to download a copy the PHB
(nobody had a dead-tree copy).
The club's staff supervisor decided to DM a tournament module that would
be four hours. Because he played 2nd Edition and we were all familiar
with 3.5 Edition if any, it came out in practice to more like five and a
half hours. Because none of us could stay until 9:00 PM, this meant
three sessions. At least one PC had to repeatedly change hands, with
various players doubling up, because someone was absent. And we all
died. But it was fun, and I knew D&D was for me.
SeaHen
> "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
> order, play what you get
Before or after choosing race and class?
Justin Alexander
games in which a Gamemaster described the world while other players
played characters in that world just kind of percolated into my
consciousness.
I know E.T. (and the novelization of E.T.) is in there somewhere. I
know that the ads TSR used to take out in Marvel Comics in the 1980s
played a part. There were probably other influences. (Oddly, at this
point, I don't remember really connecting this rough conceptual
understanding I had of pen-and-paper games with the CRPGs like Ultima
that I was already playing.)
The first RPG I ever actually saw was the BATMAN ROLEPLAYING GAME.
This was a spin-off of Mayfair's DC Heroes, and I spotted it used in a
long comic box at a small comic book convention in Minneapolis, MN.
(This was a great little convention: They had Stan Lee, Jim Lee, Chris
Claremont, and a half dozen other major names of the time. But the
convention was so small, despite somehow attracting this talent, that
you were able to get meaningful face-time and interaction with them.)
The game was like $5 or $10 and I snapped it up.
(Why it was being sold used still leaves me a little baffled. This was
the summer of 1989, so the game would have only just been released to
tie-in with the Batman film release.)
Unfortunately, the game was completely impenetrable to me. If the game
was designed to meaningfully tie into the Batman film (released that
same summer) and attract new fans, then it failed miserably for my 10
year old self. I couldn't figure out what you supposed to *do* with
it.
So, in lieu of that, I ended up making my own BATMAN game. My brother
played Batman and every single action was resolved using an opposed
roll of 1d6: I, as GM, rolled an unmodified 1d6. My brother, as
Batman, rolled an unmodified 1d6. If his roll was higher, he
succeeded. If my roll was higher, he failed.
And we rolled for literally every declared action, leading to the one
moment of hilarity I can remember from that game: Batman crashing the
batmobile on his way back to the batcave.
Shortly after this, my father dug out an old copy of Middle Earth
Roleplaying that he had acquired somehow (he never played himself). I
read through that and found it nearly as impenetrable as the Batman
Roleplaying Game (although with MERP I at least managed to create a
character I never used for anything, IIRC).
Later that same year I finally convinced my mother to take me down to
the local game store (Pinnacle Games in Rochester, MN). Pinnacle Games
had the brand new 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook on display. But
the word "Advanced", combined with my experiences with both BATMAN and
MERP, steered me away from that and towards the 1984 red-box Basic Set
they also had displayed on top of the shelves. (I was under the
impression that the Basic game must naturally be a precursor to the
Advanced game.)
The red-box was just about perfect: The clear, transparent explanation
of what a typical RPG session would look like. A solo playing
experience so that you could get a taste of what the game had to offer
without trying to convince other people to learn it with you. An
advertisement for a subscription to DRAGON magazine (which I promptly
sent in, receiving issue #162 a couple months later).
DRAGON helped me realize my mistake vis-a-vis the relationship between
Basic Set D&D and Advanced D&D, so I ended up picking up the PHB and
DMG later that fall. I ended up picking up a used copy of the 1st
Edition Monster Manual instead of the 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendium
and, in point of fact, continued using the 1st Edition MM until the
2nd Edition Monstrous Manual came out many years later.
--
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Shawn Roske
i beat wizardry I once. it was awesome. a peak experience.
my first character was a 1st level thief in a party of 8th levels. the
game was run my my friend's brother and his gang of older teens, back in
85. he lasted one encounter then was killed on a poison needle trap.
Jim Davies
Having just discovered computers, I pinched it. Within was a NASCOM
BASIC listing of a game called "Cells and Serpents", an extremely
crude text-mode dungeon hack. I refactored this for my Commodore PET
and was hooked (I have a DOS version if anyone's desperate).
At I bashed a version into the [boarding] school computer, and someone
saw me playing it. He mentioned a guy who played "Dungeons and
Dragons", which confused me somewhat because I'd never imagined
playing such a thing without a PC.
My first game was as a 1st-level MU accompanying a 1st-level bard into
Module B1. It was utterly bizarre in retrospect. After buying all the
usual gear, I had 190cp left. So I bought 190 songbirds and led them
around the dungeon. I shot my one Magic Missile into a red dragon,
achieving not much, so we left. The bard got bitten by a giant spider
so I carted him around on a Tenser's Floating Disk. Somewhere I picked
up a vorpal sword and used it to carve channels in the ground to empty
pools of acid. Or something. It was a long time ago. But I loved it.
--
Jim or Sarah Davies, but probably Jim
D&D and Star Fleet Battles stuff on http://www.axsm89.dsl.pipex.com
becaue pipex's technical support is crap and so http://www.aaargh.org doesn't work.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
D.J.
wrote:
]I came to D&D after playing games like Phantasy on
]C64 and Wizardry on the Apple II. Kind of the opposite
]of today where we are losing players to MMORPG
]games...
I'm not lost to MMORPGs, I like them. I've been playing Everquest
for 2 years now. I tried several others, but prefer EQ. SOE has some
problems though. I have also continued to place my old AD&D campaign
up on my crestar website, and expand it way beyond the lands my
players and I went through.
Erol K. Bayburt
Zeroth, I was a SF fan in high school. I read LOTR multiple times,
plus other SF works, and I did some world-building toward writing some
stories of my own. (I never got into fanfic; for me the fun part is
creating the characters & background, so why should I let someone else
do that while I take on the parts of story-writing that are work?)
First, there were the Metagaming ads in the back of the science
fiction mags in my high school. They looked really interesting
(especially the ones for Melee and Wizard) but I felt inhibited about
ordering things via mail.
Second, when I started college, I saw a flyer for "Bilbo's Birthday
Party" - an event hosted by the university Tolkien Society. Of course
I went, and there I learned about (among other things) this game
called "Dungeons and Dragons."
Third, I discovered a hobby store just off campus that sold the
Metagaming microgames I had known from the ads, and back issues of The
Dragon, and the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" Monster Manual and
Players' Handbook (the DMG had not yet been published) and those odd
platonic-solid dice, and... I was hooked.
--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com
Christopher Adams
>
> I'm not lost to MMORPGs, I like them.
I introduced one of my World of Warcraft guild leaders to D&D. Admittedly, she
lives with my wife's old DM, so it may have come up sooner or later, but it
would definitely have been later (if at all) without my prodding them both back
into it.
Keith Davies
> Keith Davies wrote:
>> "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
>> order, play what you get
>
> Before or after choosing race and class?
Choosing race *and* class? Race *was* a class!
*If* you had stats good enough to be good at more than one class you
might be able to pick which one you'd follow -- for the rest of your
life, none of this 'multiclassing' silliness!
Choice? What's *that*? You played what you were given by the dice.
Tetsubo
> SeaHen <seahen12...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Ken Andrews wrote:
>>were great days!
>>
>>>Too far back; I don't recall.
>>>
>>>It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
>>>was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
>>>while I was climbing a ladder.
>>
>>I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
>
>
> "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
> order, play what you get, and WE LIKED IT!
>
>
> Keith
I (and a room full of witnesses) once watch a friend roll six 17's in a
row that way... unbelievable...
--
Tetsubo
--------------------------------------
"The apparent lesson of the Inquisition is that insistence on
uniformity of belief is fatal to intellectual, moral and spiritual health."
-The Uses Of The Past-, Herbert J. Muller
BLUP
Tetsubo
I got into the game in 1978. A friend that knew I liked fantasy novels
invited me to a game. It was held at another player's house and we gamed
on a 500 year old British dining table with individually carved high
backed chairs. The best atmosphere I've ever gamed with... I loved that
campaign...
The Black Guardian
Well, Tolkein's epic classic was one of the first true novels I ever
read. I was probably around 6 years old (around 1971 or 1972). So, it
was in my blood at a very early age.
I remember buying the Basic Set in 1977, but I didn't really do much
with it. The game seemed pretty cool, but I didn't know anyone who
played. So, it sat collecting dust mostly. I was mostly fascinated
with those dice. I'd never seen dice with anything but 6 sides.
About two years later, my cousin introduced me to the "Advanced" game.
I was immediately hooked.
cop...@yahoo.com
in high school. In the summer of 1983 I added the little black book
version of Traveller. The only other game I played significantly in
the 80's was d6 Star Wars (1987). Since 1990, I've played and GMed
almost all GURPS (with my last AD&D session around 1996).
Unlike many gamers in those years, I did not read LotR (I read The
Hobbit and hated it). I didn'd read any REH or Lieber until the 90's.
I was actually far more interested in horror and mysteries than
fantasy and sci-fi (and I still am). I also never got into superhero
comics, prefering titles like Sgt. Rock, Haunted Tank and Weird War
Tales
Brandon.
vince garcia
LOL--and that was such a weird experience back then, too :)
Actually, around the same time a friend who was working at radio shack
when their first computer, the TRS 80, came out had an early electronic
version of D&D on the store's demo, and I played it. It didn't do that
much for me, taking a real version of the game to actually hook me
vince garcia
>
> Keith Davies wrote:
>
> > SeaHen <seahen12...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Ken Andrews wrote:
> >>were great days!
> >>
> >>>Too far back; I don't recall.
> >>>
> >>>It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
> >>>was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
> >>>while I was climbing a ladder.
> >>
> >>I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
> >
> >
> > "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
> > order, play what you get, and WE LIKED IT!
> >
> >
> > Keith
>
> I (and a room full of witnesses) once watch a friend roll six 17's in a
> row that way... unbelievable...
>
> --
> Tetsubo
> --------------------------------------
>
That brings back to mind Sturmabteilungen ("Sturm"), the cavalier I
created when UA first came out and the cavalier had D12 hit dice. For
like 7 straight levels I threw a 12 for hit points as the other players
watched. Then they revised the hit die in a DRAGON update to a D10, and
my DM wanted me to reroll his HP rather than cut 2 pts per die off the
total, which was what I wanted to do.
Let's just say it was a long night that night...
vince garcia
and some of our group loved Zork, tho i never played it
Sea Wasp
> SeaHen <seahen12...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Ken Andrews wrote:
>>were great days!
>>
>>>Too far back; I don't recall.
>>>
>>>It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
>>>was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
>>>while I was climbing a ladder.
>>
>>I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
>
>
> "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
> order, play what you get, and WE LIKED IT!
Damn straight! These young punks, playing with their "point buy"
newfangled stuff, don't know what it was like to play a 1-hp first
level mage whose randomly-rolled starting spell was "detect magic"! Or
the 1-hp fighter with an 8 strength -- because that was your HIGH score!!
Sea Wasp
> decalod85 wrote:
>
>> I came to D&D after playing games like Phantasy on
>> C64 and Wizardry on the Apple II. Kind of the opposite
>> of today where we are losing players to MMORPG
>> games...
>
>
> I too was exposed to computer RPGs well before pen-and-paper. The first
> that I remember was called Castle of the Winds, the demo of which came
Physically impossible for us older types, since we started gaming
before there was such a thing as the PC. Though I did shortly
thereafter encounter "Adventure" on a mainframe.
Sea Wasp
> Keith Davies wrote:
>
>> "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
>> order, play what you get
>
>
> Before or after choosing race and class?
>
>
Before, generally.
Varl
--
"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating
Trials of Ascension- An MMOG made by gamers for gamers.
http://www.shadowpool.com
SeaHen
> In 1980, I saw a copy of Computing Today in a dentist's waiting room.
Your dentist kept computing mags in his waitig room? Wow! Even today, I
have a hard time finding Wired, let alone something like Maximum PC or
EGM, in any waiting room I go to -- and computers are certainly more
mainstream now than they were then.
> I refactored this for my Commodore PET
> and was hooked (I have a DOS version if anyone's desperate).
I'd like a copy please.
> At I bashed a version into the [boarding] school computer, and someone
> saw me playing it. He mentioned a guy who played "Dungeons and
> Dragons", which confused me somewhat because I'd never imagined
> playing such a thing without a PC.
>
> My first game was as a 1st-level MU accompanying a 1st-level bard into
> Module B1. It was utterly bizarre in retrospect. After buying all the
> usual gear, I had 190cp left. So I bought 190 songbirds and led them
> around the dungeon.
Must have made for a heavy penalty on Move Silently. :-)
> I shot my one Magic Missile into a red dragon,
> achieving not much, so we left. The bard got bitten by a giant spider
> so I carted him around on a Tenser's Floating Disk.
I'm guessing the bard would have to have been a gnome or halfling (since
anyone else would be too heavy for a TFD)?
The Mad Afro
--
Jay Knioum
The Mad Afro
SeaHen
> It was held at another player's house and
> we gamed on a 500 year old British dining table with individually carved
> high backed chairs.
Your friend must have been rolling in cash!
Jim Davies
>Jim Davies wrote:
>> I refactored this for my Commodore PET
>> and was hooked (I have a DOS version if anyone's desperate).
>
>I'd like a copy please.
On it's way, as oo.zip. It's called Orcs n 'Oles. I'm guessing that
your +usenet is a spamfilter.
>>...So I bought 190 songbirds and led them
>> around the dungeon.
>
>Must have made for a heavy penalty on Move Silently. :-)
Heh. I wasn't a thief, so by definition couldn't move silently at all.
>> I shot my one Magic Missile into a red dragon,
>> achieving not much, so we left. The bard got bitten by a giant spider
>> so I carted him around on a Tenser's Floating Disk.
>
>I'm guessing the bard would have to have been a gnome or halfling (since
>anyone else would be too heavy for a TFD)?
Considering that I was riding around on it as well, I doubt that we
were following the rules quite that closely...
Werebat
The Mad Afro wrote:
> I think it was the picture of the succubus in the 1e Monster Manual.
She was a little rubenesque, wasn't she?
- Ron ^*^
Tetsubo
> Tetsubo wrote:
>
>> It was held at another player's house and we gamed on a 500 year old
>> British dining table with individually carved high backed chairs.
>
>
> Your friend must have been rolling in cash!
>
His father was the director of a museum , British and I believe came
from Old Money. He had an American Revolution era Brown Bess in his
closet... and an early American Civil War gladius style sword kicking
around. Plus some Chinese jade that had to have been at least 5000+
years old...
D.T.Collins
"vince garcia" wrote:
> In my case, it started when Bakshi's LOTR came out. I'd never read the
> actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
> fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
> story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
> the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
> into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
>
> "You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
>
> Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
> characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
> time in books and games), and the rest is history.
>
> Gosh those were great days!
I had been playing Avalon Hill Wargames for several years already in 77 when
my other gaming friends asked me to join them in a Medieval Fantasy game
called D&D. Rolled up a human fighter like seawasp says, 3d6 straight up,
and ended up adventuring for all of an hour, getting trapped in the claws of
a giant crab somewhere in Spain after the Apocalyptic WWIII. Started the
very next session as a Wizard joining a dungeon crawl, and that was all she
wrote. Couldn't afford the original white bookset right off, so had to
settle for using Judges Guild's ready ref sheets with our existing
characters to play. Ready ref sheets had monsters, treasure, weapons and
combat tables, along with fast chargen in them where you rolled for
everything for your character including alignment and played the alignment
you rolled. Did that for about six months until I was able to afford the
white bookset.
Re,
Dirk
Some Guy
> In my case, it started when Bakshi's LOTR came out. I'd never read the
> actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
> fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
> story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
> the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
> into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
>
> "You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
>
> Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
> characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
> time in books and games), and the rest is history.
>
> Gosh those were great days!
My brother got me into D&D. He'd played once with someone he'd met in
one of his classes and told me about it, so I asked to go along to the
next game, which was with people a couple of years older than me, none
of whom I knew.
They were in the middle of an adventure, so I couldn't be a PC but the
DM had me play one of his NPCs, a potboy who was secretly working for an
evil high priest who worshipped a demon named Gothmog. I'd never
role-played before so I wasn't really sure what I was doing, but I did
my best. The high point of that was when the player whose character was
a paladin named Lord Tedric of Torn picked me up and held me against the
door when he found out my character had tried to poison his drink--that
is, the player actually picked ME up and held ME against the door just
as his character was doing in the game. This guy was big and strong,
and for a minute I thought he'd really gotten carried away and was going
to strangle me. Of course he didn't, and the game went on, with me
watching the rest of it in fascination, especially when the maps came
out and the dungeon crawl part started.
Highlights of that game: Intricate hand-drawn map with two levels, each
controlled by a different demon (Gothmog on the first, and Gothmog's
boss Morgoth on the second); a pit trap whose floor was not filled with
anything dangerous, but was instead a large human breast that the player
who fell in had to walk across barefoot for some reason to keep it from
giggling (we were all in high school, and virgins to boot); a wagon of
infinite holding that the characters found and could shrink down to fit
through small corridors; suits of plate mail that the characters could
wear one over the other like suits of clothing to get a better AC; and
an early phone modem, the kind where you called the computer up and then
stuck the handset into a device shaped to hold it. He'd written a dice
rolling program on the computer at school and had to dial in to school
to run it, and that's how they did all the dice rolling that day. I was
so naive I thought you HAD to do that to play the game until they told
me otherwise, and before they did I wondered how I was going to play
since I didn't have a phone modem.
After the game, on the way home, my brother said to me (in reference to
the DM): "You and he are going to be friends for the rest of your
life." And you know what, he was right. We've been close friends for
almost 30 years now, and what's funny is that was the only time he was
ever a DM. He's been a player under me as DM ever since then, because
once I was introduced to it, I hungered to DM and have rarely looked
back since.
Gosh, those were great days!
Some Guy
Yeah, so? She was still hot, wings and all.
Jim Davies
inscribed:
[to SeaHen]
>On it's way, as oo.zip. It's called Orcs n 'Oles. I'm guessing that
>your +usenet is a spamfilter.
Hmf. It bounced, so I'll try it again.
SeaHen
> On the grave of SeaHen <seahen12...@gmail.com> is inscribed:
>
>> Jim Davies wrote:
>>> I refactored this for my Commodore PET
>>> and was hooked (I have a DOS version if anyone's desperate).
>> I'd like a copy please.
>
> On it's way, as oo.zip. It's called Orcs n 'Oles. I'm guessing that
> your +usenet is a spamfilter.
Could you send it again with a different file extension? I thought Gmail
had changed its rules about executable attachments, but apparently not.
The Mad Afro
Dude, I was 13. She looked better than the electric-guitar-playing
viking warrior chicks I drew on my Trapper-Keeper, anyway.
If you people are looking for a semi-serious answer; I was a complete
dork for Conan comics and Arthurian legends, and D&D let me indulge in
a bit of vicarious asskickery, especially since I was at the age where
folks looked askance when I busted out the GI Joe figures. Then, years
later, somebody talked me into running a game, and the handbasket has
been riding a slow boat to hell ever since.
Then I found RGFD, and I was home. Awwww....
Aaron F. Bourque
>What got you into D&D?
My older brother played the game at our church, and I watched him. It
seemed like they were having a good time, and I loved the maps.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque
SeaHen
> My older brother played the game at our church, and I watched him. It
> seemed like they were having a good time, and I loved the maps.
Your church actually allowed D&D WITHIN ITS WALLS? When was this, and
what denomination was it?
Aaron F. Bourque
> Aaron F. Bourque wrote:
> > My older brother played the game at our church, and I watched him. It
> > seemed like they were having a good time, and I loved the maps.
>
> Your church actually allowed D&D WITHIN ITS WALLS? When was this, and
> what denomination was it?
Early, mid-80s? Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Gary Thompson
> On Apr 28, 6:08 am, vince garcia <vggarci...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > In my case, it started when Bakshi's LOTR came out. I'd never read the
> > actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
> > fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
> > story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
> > the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
> > into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
>
> > "You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
>
> > Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
> > characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
> > time in books and games), and the rest is history.
>
> > Gosh those were great days!
>
> C64 and Wizardry on the Apple II. Kind of the opposite
> of today where we are losing players to MMORPG
> games...
It was Tunnels of Doom on the TI-99/4A for me, but the same idea. Its
gameplay is why I still prefer roguelikes to Ultima-descended rpgs.
lbeu...@aol.com
game. I had no clue of what to expect. Was it some kind of
Battleships? It was actually a D&D first edition game. A played an
evil fighter and was thrilled by it. My first encounter was a boar on
a hunting trip. After one hit from it, I went for a tree and was
rescued by the party. My heart was pounding. That game (not the boar)
was exciting. Unfortunately it was the only session I played for a
year or so. I then heard of a game called "das Schwarze Auge" (English
version: the Dark Eye). I bought the rules and mastered for my group
of players (between 6 and 9 in numbers at the time), all absolute
rookies in role-playing-games. We played for several years and changed
much of the rules, to the point where the original version wasn't
recognizable any more. Finally, we decided the whole system was crappy
and changed to AD&D second edition. When the D&D third edition came
out, I pre-ordered it and I convinced my group to change the system
again (about two weeks after the official release). We currently play
3.45 (very close to 3.5).
My favourite player quotations from the early days (mostly sitcom and
inspired by one particular player):
"Are wolves mammals?" "No. They hatch from eggs."
"So I hear laughing? Which language?"
"Is there any grass on the meadow?"
"Well, an elk? And it looks right at me? I throw my shuriken." The
group stood still and watched their Ninja crisscrossing in front of
them while being chased by the elk.
"You sneaky little thief, I'll give you about 1 minute to get up that
tree, while I search for my axe." The thief actually went up the tree
and it WAS chopped down.
"So the paladin [a partymember] finally stands in a Darkness? I attack
him. I have Blind Fight, you know?" It wasn't of much help.
Man, this was fun. And it still is! At no other game I laughed that
hard.
--
LB
Keith Davies
> Jim Davies wrote:
>> On the grave of SeaHen <seahen12...@gmail.com> is inscribed:
>>
>>> Jim Davies wrote:
>>>> I refactored this for my Commodore PET
>>>> and was hooked (I have a DOS version if anyone's desperate).
>>> I'd like a copy please.
>>
>> On it's way, as oo.zip. It's called Orcs n 'Oles. I'm guessing that
>> your +usenet is a spamfilter.
>
> Could you send it again with a different file extension? I thought Gmail
> had changed its rules about executable attachments, but apparently not.
Changing the extension might not be sufficient. I've tried to mail a
virus through gmail[1] and it found it no matter what I did. They
appear to scan files pretty aggressively.
[1] not trying to attack anyone, I was trying to test *my* filters
(dspam + clamav). It was a very benign virus, a standard signature
used for doing exactly this.
Keith
--
Keith Davies "History is made by stupid people
keith....@kjdavies.org "Clever people wouldn't even try
keith....@gmail.com "If you want a place in the history books
http://www.kjdavies.org/ "Then do something dumb before you die."
-- The Arrogant Worms
Werebat
The Mad Afro wrote:
> On Apr 29, 4:09 pm, Werebat <ronpoir...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>The Mad Afro wrote:
>>
>>>I think it was the picture of the succubus in the 1e Monster Manual.
>>
>>She was a little rubenesque, wasn't she?
>
>
> Dude, I was 13. She looked better than the electric-guitar-playing
> viking warrior chicks I drew on my Trapper-Keeper, anyway.
Oh, I'm not saying I didn't have any fantasies of my own. I distinctly
remember a somewhat less well-endowed mermaid somewhere in those old
books, as well as the gynosphinx. RrRRrRrr.
Glasya, from MMIII, was also pretty hot as I recall.
But none of them really held much of a candle to good old National
Geographic, back in the day.
> If you people are looking for a semi-serious answer; I was a complete
> dork for Conan comics and Arthurian legends, and D&D let me indulge in
> a bit of vicarious asskickery, especially since I was at the age where
> folks looked askance when I busted out the GI Joe figures. Then, years
> later, somebody talked me into running a game, and the handbasket has
> been riding a slow boat to hell ever since.
My Godfather got my father and I involved when I was probably 5 years
old, around 1978. Dad sorta did it for a lark and then lost interest
(he's more into twitch games like the Diablos), I kept at it and when I
was 12 my Godfather invited me to play in his group. That was pretty
cool. Everyone else was in their 30s or so and I got to be "grown up"
and stay out until midnight drinking soda and eating pizza.
One of those old players still games with us, and another one went on to
become a senator (I think it's amusing that he always used to play a
thief). Another (my Godfather's brother) has an 18-year-old son who
games with us now. I've been gaming regularly ever since, except for 6
months when I attended college in New Mexico as an exchange student (and
even then I was in on a game or two of Vampire, slipped into the most
active dating phase of my life -- I always chalked that up to college
guys from "somewhere else" being "exotic", or maybe just "safe to take a
chance on because they're guaranteed to leave in a little while if it
doesn't work out").
I spent a lot of time with my Godfather, he got to know my college
friends pretty well and we all gamed at his place for years, and then he
passed away unexpectedly about six years ago. He did live to see me
name my first son after him, which is good. Actually I just put his
picture up in the new gaming area of my basement. His old gaming table
is still used at the house of the other local DM, who also knew him.
He was the first person I know who died who I could really call a
friend. Since he died I've lost two others (his sister, who was my
Godmother, and my mother, who died a year ago on Thursday).
Well this got suddenly morbid. Anyway, that's how I got involved in gaming.
- Ron ^*^
Sea Wasp
The succubus in Eldrich Wizardry was an old-time favorite. Said book
also had the naked girl on the cover, which helped.
Ken Andrews
>Ken Andrews wrote:
>> Too far back; I don't recall.
>>
>> It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
>> was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
>> while I was climbing a ladder.
>
>I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
First year the game came out? No, they didn't.
Later I read something where Gygax said that the way they played was,
they rerolled their characters' HP at the start of a session, so one
session you might be thoroughly buff, another, well, you just weren't
feeling all that well. He was surprised, apparently, when people
would roll their values and *keep* them from session to session.
Blackheart
My mom used to work for Random House during the TSR days. Since Random
House was their distributor, she could get anything for half price. I
saw the Monster Manual in a book store one day told my mom it looked
cool and she started getting me books instead of giving me allowance.
at least it made mowing the lawn worthwhile...
Jim Davies
>Changing the extension might not be sufficient. I've tried to mail a
>virus through gmail[1] and it found it no matter what I did. They
>appear to scan files pretty aggressively.
My usual solution to this is to use .7z files, made by 7zip. Which is
freeware and very good. I've not encountered a firewall that'll stop
it.
But in this case, I'll slap it on my website as a zip instead. Give me
a day or two.
Justisaur
> In my case, it started when Bakshi's LOTR came out. I'd never read the
> actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
> fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
> story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
> the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
> into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
>
> "You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
>
> Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
> characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
> time in books and games), and the rest is history.
>
> Gosh those were great days!
My, I guess you could say step dad, bought me the blue box for my
birthday. Somewhere around my 8th or 9th one. He was a sci-fi
reader and had let me read a couple of his books, which I loved, and
must have figured that was a good gift. He didn't play it though.
Well thanks 'dad'. Here I am ~30 years later still playing this game!
(or suffering withdrawals right now as I'm too busy preparing to
move)
- Justisaur
Justisaur
> SeaHen <seahen123+use...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Keith Davies wrote:
> >> "max the first HD?" Un*thinkable*. Ability scores were rolled 3d6, in
> >> order, play what you get
>
> > Before or after choosing race and class?
>
> Choosing race *and* class? Race *was* a class!
>
> *If* you had stats good enough to be good at more than one class you
> might be able to pick which one you'd follow -- for the rest of your
> life, none of this 'multiclassing' silliness!
>
> Choice? What's *that*? You played what you were given by the dice.
>
Most of my players are old (well relatively) grognards, who remember
those days, sometimes fondly. I remember one of them recently rolling
D20 to see which class he was going to play (1-13 alphabetical order,
reroll over 13). Funny thing, he always played rangers, and guess
what his die roll came up.
- Justisaur
number six
fascinated by it. When I was in Jr High, they had a series of novels
that were like choose your own adventure with dice. Those factors and
the Dragonlance novels convinced a group of us we were going to start
playing. One weekend, I played poker with my dad and his drunken
friends and won like 50 bucks (as a kid in the eighties, that was a
small fortune). A friend of mine already had acquired the Red Box, but
we hadn't played yet. I went to the bookstore with the intention of
buying the Expert set for us. Thank the gods, some twenty something
nerd was there at the Waldenbooks. I went for the Expert set, and he
sort of laughed and said, "_These_ are the ones you want," pointing at
the 1e DMG and PHB. Of course, I was out double the money (like I said
earlier, 30 bucks was a lot of money to a twelve year old in the
eighties), but to this day I smile when I think about that guy.
Thanks, buddy.
Jim Davies
inscribed:
>But in this case, I'll slap it on my website as a zip instead. Give me
>a day or two.
OK, it's now at http://www.axsm89.dsl.pipex.com/Other/oo.htm
Help yourself.
Glenn Dowdy
"Sea Wasp" <seawasp...@sgeObviousinc.com> wrote in message
news:4634A2A...@sgeObviousinc.com...
> Keith Davies wrote:
>> SeaHen <seahen12...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Ken Andrews wrote:
>>>were great days!
>>>
>>>>Too far back; I don't recall.
>>>>
>>>>It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
>>>>was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
>>>>while I was climbing a ladder.
>>>
>>>I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
>>
>>
>
> Damn straight! These young punks, playing with their "point buy"
> newfangled stuff, don't know what it was like to play a 1-hp first level
> mage whose randomly-rolled starting spell was "detect magic"! Or the 1-hp
> fighter with an 8 strength -- because that was your HIGH score!!
>
My first DM gave my hoka 20 Int magic user _two_ spells; however, I had to
memorize a four line poem and recite it perfectly each time for the spell to
work.
"As an arrow, swiftly fly
None can avoid, how e'er he try.
Do damage midst the ghastly throng,
Strike so deeply, strike so strong".
But can I remember _useful_ stuff, oh, no.
Glenn D.
Ken Andrews
> "Sea Wasp" <seawasp...@sgeObviousinc.com> wrote in message
Wing feather, bat leather, hollow bone.
Gift of Icarus and Oberon.
Dream of the earthbound, spin and flow,
Fledge, and flutter, and fan, and go!
And to get rid of the wings:
Wing feather, bat leather, hollow bone.
Gift of Icarus and Oberon.
Dream of the earthbound, spin and flow,
Flicker, and furl, and fold, and no!
Those two poems / spells are from a book that I haven't seen since about
1970.
Sheldon England
late 70s when I visited cousins. One cousin pulled out the AD&D PH and
helped me and another cousin roll up our first characters. (I was a half
elf named Legolas ... ahem). We were aged 10-12 at the time.
The adventuring was way cool. I loved the maps and the art in the books.
The combat was a blast! Roleplaying ... not so much. :P
It turns out my cousin didn't quite have the hang of GMing down yet and
I don't know what module we were playing but I do recall entering a room
that first day and getting a description similar to:
"You enter a stone chamber from the only visible door. The room
is 20 feet by 20 feet with a high ceiling. Standing in the
centre of the room is a 40 foot tall gargoyle that only has one
hit point. Buried in the buck and filth along the east wall are
gems and coins worth 500 gold pieces."
Needless to say, I attacked and killed the gargoyle, grabbed the gems
and coins, and went home that day thinking 'this can't be the right way
to play.' So the next weekend I bought the books and from then on *I*
was the GM.
Hardly played for a decade, then a friend introduced me to Megatraveler
which got me back into pencil and paper gaming. Now with disposable
income, I bought all the 2nd Edition books, tons of figurines, Dungeons,
Dragon, and also enjoyed Top Secret SI and Cyberpunk 2020. My homebrew
campaigns included an Oriental Adventures setting that lasted a few
years (including Castle Ravenloft modified to suit the samurai, ninja,
shukenja, bushi adventurers) and a hybrid that combined Megatraveler,
Top Secret, Cyberpunk and a bit of 2nd Edition (James Bond in space, if
you will) ... and then life got busy and I essentially stopped playing,
gave away most of my stuff to a gaming pal, and moved along.
A few years ago that same friend asked if I was interested in joining
his home game ... so I started buying the 3.5 books, learning the new
rules, and now a group of seven of us play every two weeks -- currently
doing the Age of Worms path. I really enjoy the freedom of playing
instead of GMing all the time and am having a blast now, almost 30 years
after being introduced to this game.
FWIW.
- Sheldon
~consul
>> "You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
> C64 and Wizardry on the Apple II. Kind of the opposite
> of today where we are losing players to MMORPG
> games...
That's how it was for me. I played Atari's Warlord, Wizardry, Rogue, and other askey text rpgs, and went from that to table tpgs in jr high.
--
"... respect, all good works are not done by only good folk. For here, at the end of all things, we shall do what needs to be done."
--till next time, Jameson Stalanthas Yu -x- <<poetry.dolphins-cove.com>>
~consul
> were great days!
>> Too far back; I don't recall.
>> It was 1974, and a friend bought the game. My very first character
>> was a fighter, 2 HP. I got attacked and killed by a giant dragonfly
>> while I was climbing a ladder.
> I'm guessing they didn't max the first HD in those days?
hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah! Heh ... made me tear up a bit at those early days. It was easy to lose a character, but it was also pretty simple to reroll a new one, at least for me.
~consul
> i beat wizardry I once. it was awesome. a peak experience.
Tiltawait! Tiltawait! Tiltawait! Tiltawait! Tiltawait! Tiltawait! Tiltawait!
~consul
> Third, I discovered a hobby store just off campus that sold the
> Metagaming microgames I had known from the ads, and back issues of The
> Dragon, and the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" Monster Manual and
> Players' Handbook (the DMG had not yet been published) and those odd
> platonic-solid dice, and... I was hooked.
Did anyone else get their Dragon magazine from their neighborhood public library? For me, my library stocked them, and had a really large collection of them. Sure, they were dog earered and some issues were missing, but I must have blown 2x the cover cost each year making photocopies of various issues and articles that caught my eye.
Local book stores didn't carry it for some reason back in the day. Most still don't. :(
~consul
> SeaHen wrote:
>> I too was exposed to computer RPGs well before pen-and-paper. The
>> first that I remember was called Castle of the Winds, the demo of
>> which came with a book about sound cards..
> Physically impossible for us older types, since we started gaming
> before there was such a thing as the PC. Though I did shortly thereafter
> encounter "Adventure" on a mainframe.
Which came first? PC or the Atari/TRS80 systems?
~consul
>>> I refactored this for my Commodore PET
>>> and was hooked (I have a DOS version if anyone's desperate).
>> I'd like a copy please.
> On it's way, as oo.zip. It's called Orcs n 'Oles. I'm guessing that
> your +usenet is a spamfilter.
Could I get a copy as well? I am a big fan of those types of games. Use my email w/o the word INVALID in it.
~consul
>> memorize a four line poem and recite it perfectly each time for the spell
>> to work.
>> "As an arrow, swiftly fly
>> None can avoid, how e'er he try.
>> Do damage midst the ghastly throng,
>> Strike so deeply, strike so strong".
> Gift of Icarus and Oberon.
> Dream of the earthbound, spin and flow,
> Fledge, and flutter, and fan, and go!
> And to get rid of the wings:
> Wing feather, bat leather, hollow bone.
> Gift of Icarus and Oberon.
> Dream of the earthbound, spin and flow,
> Flicker, and furl, and fold, and no!
One of my early DMs also did that. I was allowed to use my 'spellbook' as reference. :) Thank goodness. I was also allowed to make up the rhymes myself, which since I liked to wrote poetry, even as a pre-teen, I was having a field day/week/month.
Of course, when the cartoon Visionaries came out, I promptly memorized then and used them as passwords for my geeky friends.
Sea Wasp
> and thus Sea Wasp inscribed for the ages ...
>
>>SeaHen wrote:
>>
>>>I too was exposed to computer RPGs well before pen-and-paper. The
>>>first that I remember was called Castle of the Winds, the demo of
>>>which came with a book about sound cards..
>>
>> Physically impossible for us older types, since we started gaming
>>before there was such a thing as the PC. Though I did shortly thereafter
>>encounter "Adventure" on a mainframe.
>
>
> Which came first? PC or the Atari/TRS80 systems?
Mainframes, you young punks.
D.J.
<seawasp...@sgeObviousinc.com> wrote:
] Mainframes, you young punks.
Yup. But I never really used one. I did play ADVEN on my Amiga1000
in 1988. A port from vms fortran sources.
JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/testy/ May 12, 2007 1E AD&D blog
http://www.drivein-jim.net/ March 2, 2007: Drive-In movie theatres
http://poetry.drivein-jim.net/ poetry blog Mar 27, 2007
SeaHen
> Which came first? PC or the Atari/TRS80 systems?
The TRS-80 and Atari 400/800 both predated the PC by several years.
--
Proud member of the Online Campaign for Real English. If you believe in
capital letters, correct spelling and good sentence structure then copy
this into your signature.
Ken Andrews
"~consul" <con...@INVALIDdolphins-cove.com> wrote in message
news:f24ksm$sec$7...@gist.usc.edu...
> and thus Sea Wasp inscribed for the ages ...
>> SeaHen wrote:
>>> I too was exposed to computer RPGs well before pen-and-paper. The
>>> first that I remember was called Castle of the Winds, the demo of
>>> which came with a book about sound cards..
>> Physically impossible for us older types, since we started gaming
>> before there was such a thing as the PC. Though I did shortly thereafter
>> encounter "Adventure" on a mainframe.
>
> Which came first? PC or the Atari/TRS80 systems?
The Trash 80 came out about 4 years before the PC.
Look up IBMPC on Wikipedia, you'll find this line:
"The original PC was an IBM attempt to get into the home computer market
then dominated by the Commodore PET, Apple II, and Tandy Corporation's
TRS-80..."
Jim Davies
inscribed:
>Could I get a copy as well? I am a big fan of those types of games. Use my email w/o the word INVALID in it.
On the website.
Tetsubo
I can remember taking a computer writing class in 1982 while a senior
in High School. We had ONE Trash 80 for the entire class. They even
taught us how to use punch cards, which I might well still have...
--
Tetsubo
--------------------------------------
"The apparent lesson of the Inquisition is that insistence on
uniformity of belief is fatal to intellectual, moral and spiritual health."
-The Uses Of The Past-, Herbert J. Muller
BLUP
drow
--
n_n n_n dr...@bin.sh (CARRIER LOST) <http://www.bin.sh/>
|"|n_n_n|"| ---------------------------------------------------------------
| | " " | | "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
|_|_[T]_|_| a man's character, give him power."
<http://direpress.bin.sh/tools/power.html>
Rast
Ken Andrews (gob...@degook.com) wrote:
> Later I read something where Gygax said that the way they played was,
> they rerolled their characters' HP at the start of a session, so one
> session you might be thoroughly buff, another, well, you just weren't
> feeling all that well. He was surprised, apparently, when people
> would roll their values and *keep* them from session to session.
Ah.
Suddenly the randomly rolled HD aspect of D&D seems a lot less stupid.
--
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness. Then I
am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious
commodity is so much misery." -- Jack Vance
Gas Spore Paladin
> On Tue, 01 May 2007 03:30:26 GMT,
>
> Ken Andrews (gob...@degook.com) wrote:
> > Later I read something where Gygax said that the way they played was,
> > they rerolled their characters' HP at the start of a session, so one
> > session you might be thoroughly buff, another, well, you just weren't
> > feeling all that well. He was surprised, apparently, when people
> > would roll their values and *keep* them from session to session.
Har ! Simular story - blue covered basis d&d softback book, for the
1st 3 weeks our DM used to roll hit points THEN use this for the HD to
look up the "to hit" for monsters
eg - a 1 hd orc, rolled 7 hp, use the "7hd" column to work out
THACO ....
Short campaigns indeed....
Some Guy
> ~consul wrote:
>> and thus Sea Wasp inscribed for the ages ...
>>> SeaHen wrote:
>>>
>>>> I too was exposed to computer RPGs well before pen-and-paper. The
>>>> first that I remember was called Castle of the Winds, the demo of
>>>> which came with a book about sound cards..
>>>
>>> Physically impossible for us older types, since we started gaming
>>> before there was such a thing as the PC. Though I did shortly thereafter
>>> encounter "Adventure" on a mainframe.
>>
>>
>> Which came first? PC or the Atari/TRS80 systems?
>
> Mainframes, you young punks.
>
Sometimes I tear up just at the mention of the term "PDP-11."
Sea Wasp
Ahh, the PDP-11/70 with the RSTS/E system. My learning bike, so to speak.
Ken Andrews
Mine was an HP-9825A with a PLOTTER!!! Yes, I used SFU's WYLBUR before
that, but the HP was the first one where I could experiment.
Ken Andrews
Well, that's one way to illustrate the danger involved in combat.
Gas Spore Paladin
In my case it was the desire to take drugs, listen to heavy metal
records backwards, develop secret magical powers to hex the bullies at
school and to provide a useful meeting place where I could discuss
suicide with my friends.
After two weeks I started to worship satan and NEVER wash my hands
after to the toilet
AND it made me believe in the theory of evolution, liberal politics
and free love
ALSO I am now tempted to go on a school killing spree
(but I will have to use a pointed stick because I live in the UK)
Hail Santa!
~consul
> memorize a four line poem and recite it perfectly each time for the spell to
> work.
> "As an arrow, swiftly fly
> None can avoid, how e'er he try.
> Do damage midst the ghastly throng,
> Strike so deeply, strike so strong".
> But can I remember _useful_ stuff, oh, no.
Crap, it's like me with the Visionaries spells. _Those_ I memorized, but the cast to Flowers for Algernon? Hah!
Ubiquitous
>In my case, it started when Bakshi's LOTR came out. I'd never read the
>actual books because they were so large (and I loathed the idea of
>fantasy, being a hard core sci-fi nut), but I wanted to know what the
>story was about. So I went and saw the cartoon, and was blown away by
>the story. I couldn't stop talking about it, and then a friend who was
>into the trilogy said he and a group played a game like LOTR called D&D.
>
>"You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
>
>Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
>characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
>time in books and games), and the rest is history.
>
>Gosh those were great days!
Indeed they were, Ken!
A friend and I started after he got the original blue/purple boxed set
as a gift.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
Del Rio
Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
>In article <46332E...@ix.netcom.com>, vggar...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>>
>>"You mean there's a game like LORD OF THE RINGS?!" I gasped.
That's what my friends told me: "It's like playing Tolkien."
That was enough to sell me on it. I totally didn't get it at
first, I read Spider Climb and said "I'm not eating a spider!".
That's how foreign the idea of roleplaying was - no one I'd met
head even *heard* of the idea before. And we had to explain to
basically every person who saw the book covers that, no, we
weren't devil worshippers or in some weird cult.
>>Then, so far as I know, I became the first person to create fantasy
>>characters named Raven and Nightshadow (very common names since that
>>time in books and games), and the rest is history.
What, your group's first raft of characters weren't all named
using the racial languages appendix in the Silmarillion? What
kind of heathen are you?? My character was the Aragorn analog,
another friend made the Legolas analog, another made the Gimli
analog, and we all made jeuvenile Bored of the Rings style
jokes about each other's races...
>>Gosh those were great days!
>
>Indeed they were, Ken!
>
>A friend and I started after he got the original blue/purple boxed set
>as a gift.
We were late to the table, the hardcovers had been out for
*months*... ;-)
The gaming we do these days is much more satisfying in many
ways, but I do miss the incredible sense of wonder of those
first couple of years...
--
"I know I promised, Lord, never again. But I also know
that YOU know what a weak-willed person I am."