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I was first introduced to that wonderful game known as AD&D in the summer of 1980, just prior to starting my senior year of high school. I’ll never forget my first dungeon crawl, played with the sharp-edged, soft plastic dice of those ancient days. (You know, the ones with the numbers you had to ink yourself? The ones that started off as d20s and ended up as marbles?) |
| My first PC was a nameless fighter, paired with a chaotic evil thief (though I wasn’t made aware of that little fact). We came to a room with a gelatinous cube inside, and before I knew what was happening, the thief shoved me in from behind and slammed the door; to this day I still can’t figure out how I killed the thing. When I finally caught up with the little bastard, he claimed to have been searching for another way in, so he "could hit it from behind." Yeah, right. | |
| Despite this sorry excuse of an adventure, I was hooked. By the time I left high school, I was running my own one-shot and short-term adventures. I was also going through my own munchkin phase, an embarrassing period that I’d just as soon forget. (While preparing this site, I went through reams of notes from this period—and promptly rejected entire pages as being "munchy to the max".) |
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| By the fall of 1983, I was ready to begin my first real campaign. It was set in the Isle of Farlann, a piece of real estate the size of England whose coast extended beyond Minarra’s Arctic Circle. It was during these three years that I developed many of my DMing habits, and learned to deal with my own "rapacious players," as Mr. Gygax so eloquently put it in the 1st Edition DMG. | |
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After several successful (and not so successful) campaigns, I found myself without a DM or a game of my own for a good five years. I finally found a new gaming group soon after starting my career in MIS, and started afresh. It was at this time that I met my future wife, Teresa, who was just returning to gaming after a dry spell of her own. |
| Accustomed to playing with rules lawyers, combat monsters, and hard-core role-players, I was totally put off stride by the laid back, "just wanna have fun" approach my new players were used to. It took years to find common ground, but things are pretty much cool now. I must admit that it was rougher on me, but since the group mainly consists of a wife, a niece, and two sisters- and a brother-in-law, the effort was certainly worthwhile. | |
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