Dungeons & Dragons

[rowjimmy]

D&D rules.

In the way back, shrouded by the mists of time and missing brain cells, cloaked in the smoke of cigarettes stolen from my parents, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons. From roughly 6th -> 9th grade, I played a lot of D&D with my friends in our parents' living rooms and in this rather excellent supervision-free barn loft behind one guy's house. The loft featured overstuffed chairs, carpet, a mini-fridge and a massive old-school console stereo on which we should have played records (but there weren't any) so we'd just play Pink Floyd & Metallica tapes over and over... But mostly, we played D&D.

I don't know if any of you ever played the game.

I loved it.

It's basically collective storytelling with randomizing elements (dice) in a fantastical setting. Being a Tolkien buff, I naturally enjoyed that setting. There are, however, hundreds of games and an equal number of settings for role playing that are all built upon the fundamental play system constructed for the first edition of D&D. So you could play in space, gothic-era London, noir-era Hollywood, wherever you want to go. But traditional D&D was my thing. Of course high school being what it is, interests changed and just before I moved away, I discovered the Grateful Dead. Then shit got real.

Flash forward 20+ years.

I ride the train daily for my commute. In the evenings, it's a 90 minute ride that has, for most of the past decade, included a card game with a recurring (though constantly, gradually, shifting) cast of characters. When I say card game, I mean classic playing cards. Mostly Sheepshead because the game was started on that train by a guy from Wisconsin (where Sheepshead is kind of a thing) and because it supports a lot of  players and they can easily drop in or out of the game when we reach their stop along the way. A couple guys close to my age joined the game over the past two years and we've become friends. Eventually, as we traded stories, finding common ground (because neither of them are big music guys), we came to D&D. We traded stories about epic campaigns slaying hoards of orcs and missing a roll and falling into a fucking pit full of spikes and dying because we rolled a 1.

Then we got to talking about playing again.

I knew that one of our former card players (whose new job took him off the train and back to commuting by car, the poor sucker) was an avid gamer and probably had played D&D at one time or another. I also knew a couple of guys in my town (husbands of my wife's best friends) who might've played when younger. I reached out to them and before long, the six of us gathered around my dining room table one Friday night in April (4/20!) and played.

It was fun.

It was nice not having to steal the beers from my dad.

It's become a regular thing.

It's gotten me writing again.

We meet in the basement of a bookshop owned by one of the players and take turns as the DM. I spent six weeks developing an environment and history for an adventure I'm guiding them through now and it's been great. Sadly, I haven't killed any of the characters yet. There's always next time, though.

[barnesy305]

No Dungeon Master worth his weight in geldings goes anywhere without his 20 sided dice. And you should have been listening to Hemispheres.

[PIE-GUY]

No Dungeon Master worth his weight in geldings goes anywhere without his 20 sided dice. And you should have been listening to Hemispheres.

I never played D&D, but Hemispheres was a big album for me... Perhaps you saw my story in another thread. 

[rowjimmy]

No Dungeon Master worth his weight in geldings goes anywhere without his 20 sided dice. And you should have been listening to Hemispheres.

For the first session at my house in April, I pulled a stack of records that included several Rush albums.

So, Barnesy, I've known you for what? 18 years? We've never discussed D&D but something tells me you used to play...

Probably this:

D&D rules.

[barnesy305]

Yeah I used to play until like 8th or 9th grade and then it was an excuse to have a bunch of friends sleep over so we could sneak out and go in the city or crash girls slumber parties.

And I remember reading the epic Hemispheres story PG, although I'm an Exit Stage Left guy myself.

[twatts]

AD&D, Gamma World, Twilight2000, Traveller, Battletech...  I played a lot from 6th grade through HS...  Later on in college, a roommate and I would play Battletech one-on-one...  I just recently sold everything to a local game shop owner for about $100...  I kept my Cthulhu Deities and Demigods though!

LOL, random googling just now found this:  http://www.angelfire.com/extreme/kengage/cthulhu/cthulhu.html

Terry

[khalpin]

Ironic....this topic came up yesterday while drinking with my best friend and talking about Elysian beers.  I casually mentioned that judging by the names of their beers(Perseus Porter, Dragonstooth Stout, Achilles IPA) the brewers are probably serious D&D geeks.  That turned the conversation to the old D&D days.  I hadn't thought about that in ages.  Sure was fun.

[shoreline99]

D&D rules.

Yeah, yeah. :slowlyraisesgeekhand:

[rowjimmy]

D&D rules.

Yeah, yeah. :slowlyraisesgeekhand:

No shame, dude.

[phil]

[VA $l!m]

No Dungeon Master worth his weight in geldings goes anywhere without his 20 sided dice. And you should have been listening to Hemispheres.

For the first session at my house in April, I pulled a stack of records that included several Rush albums.

So, Barnesy, I've known you for what? 18 years? We've never discussed D&D but something tells me you used to play...

Probably this:

D&D rules.

weird... i've known you for 19 years and i can't remember ever really talking about you playing D and d.
of course i was a HUGE D & D player from the age of...7? lol, seriously i was given the original box set when i lived in Baltimore in the late 70s, no lie.
mainly i played religiously in high school with my best frriends at the time. we also played many other major rpgs of the time.
most of my role playing has ended up inside a video game console these days. i mean... skyrim, c'mon, its like everything we dreamed about as kids. though i must say i do miss the pen and paper days.
a few years back out here in NE i tried to start pen a papering again with my one friend, but 2 man stuff gets to be alot of work and not much fun.
i did however manage to buy or scrounge up a bunch of shadowrun (my all time fav rpg) and D and D books.
one of my biggest regulars at my restaurant at the time was a family of stoners that was proabably the biggest D and D people in town.
never could find time to start playing with them but they hooked me up with a stack of spare d and d books which just sits in the corner of my room now.

i'd play again in a heartbeat if i had the people to do it with.
never liked DMing, proabably b/c in high school my friends had one guy that was a genius at it and he would run things 90% of the time.

[Igbo]

igbo runs out of this thread very quickly

[Superfreakie]

played D&D, then graduated to AD&D.

[rowjimmy]

Slim brings it with a great point that I was discussing with a member of my group last night.

A certain segment of the current video game industry leans heavily on those constructs originally developed for D&D.  Slim cited Skyrim, my friend last night cited Fallout and others from that developer. (I'm not a video gamer so I don't recall all of the names he rattled off.) D&D changed the face of gaming. the classic tabletop, paper & pen game is still as fun and relevant as ever.

Slim, have you checked out your local gaming shop? Lots of them host gaming sessions.

played D&D, then graduated to AD&D.

Naturally.

We play 2nd Edition AD&D.

But there are now 3e, 3.5e, 4 (which was wildly unpopular) and, D&DNext.

D&DNext won't be released until 2014 but they have releasing abridged portions of the ruleset for public playtest. It's a cool amalgam of all of the previous editions and promises to be pretty excellent.

[twatts]

Slim brings it with a great point that I was discussing with a member of my group last night.

A certain segment of the current video game industry leans heavily on those constructs originally developed for D&D.  Slim cited Skyrim, my friend last night cited Fallout and others from that developer. (I'm not a video gamer so I don't recall all of the names he rattled off.) D&D changed the face of gaming. the classic tabletop, paper & pen game is still as fun and relevant as ever.

Slim, have you checked out your local gaming shop? Lots of them host gaming sessions.

played D&D, then graduated to AD&D.

Naturally.

We play 2nd Edition AD&D.

But there are now 3e, 3.5e, 4 (which was wildly unpopular) and, D&DNext.

D&DNext won't be released until 2014 but they have releasing abridged portions of the ruleset for public playtest. It's a cool amalgam of all of the previous editions and promises to be pretty excellent.

I have a VG+ first edition Dieties and Demigods for sale...  It includes Cthulhu and Melnibonian Mythos...  You know you want it...

Terry