Dungeons & Dragons: 5 Things
Recently I've been asking myself, "What should I write about in my blog?" There are a few things on my to-do list that I've meaning to write about, or write more about, for a while... but then it hit me. Dungeons & Dragons. I've been playing D&D for a long time yet I've written next to nothing about it in my blog! Here are Five Things:
1) My first experience playing D&D was as an adolescent, in 1982. My cousins brought the game with them on a trip to visit my family. They introduced me to it one evening. We did a mindless dungeon crawl. We played multiple characters each. They were just lists of stats. It didn't matter; I was hooked. We played nightly until they left.
2) Finding books was hard so I made my own rules system. I was hooked on the game. I wanted to play more. But in my quiet suburban town no stores carried any of the rulebooks. Asking friends didn't help as none of my friends at the time had heard about the game. So in frustration and out of desire to play, I made up my own D&D-like system! I've always had a strong memory and ability to learn by doing. I used my experience of playing a few nights sitting on my bedroom floor with my two cousins to create my own game. I played it for months.
3) Finding books was hard, part 2. Ultimately I did find a place to buy a D&D rulebook. I don't remember 100% where it was... but I remember how many the places it was not. My parents were unusually supportive of helping me find a D&D set when I made it clear it was the number 1 thing I wanted most as a gift or to buy with my own money. I remember one night in particular my dad drove me around to literally every store in town that carried games or books... including even the grocery store! (Grocery stores had half an aisle of kids' toys back then.) That night was a failure. Later on I found it- I think- at a hobby games store 15 miles away.
4) The first copy of the game I owned was Basic Dungeons & Dragons, aka the red box.
Sadly the the D&D game I finally bought was not the same one I'd played months earlier with my cousins. The publisher had recently come out with a simplified- some would say dumbed down- version of the game designed to appeal to a broader audience. It (over)simplified the character archetypes and came in a set of rules that covered only the basics of starting levels. If I'd known about the difference I would've kept looking for the more advanced rules! But again, information about D&D was so hard to come by then as a kid in the suburbs that I wasn't sure what I was missing for a few years to come.
5) Thirty-seven years and counting! Many people I mention Dungeons & Dragons to say, "Oh, yeah, I played that when I was a kid," or, "Wow, I haven't touched that since college." Well, I played it as a kid, I played it in high school, I played it in college; I've been playing it the whole way through up to present day. That original red box set has long since been retired. It's still on my bookshelf, but as I hinted above, I put it aside after a few years to switch to the fuller Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. Then I updated a few times, when the publisher came out with 2nd edition, then 3.0, then 3.5, not to mention countless intermediate books that extended each base edition. I stopped taking updates after 3.5 about 10 years ago. I figured I've bought enough. The combined D&D library Hawk and I own occupies four shelves in our bookcase!
But wait, there's more! Read Another 5 Things about D&D.
1) My first experience playing D&D was as an adolescent, in 1982. My cousins brought the game with them on a trip to visit my family. They introduced me to it one evening. We did a mindless dungeon crawl. We played multiple characters each. They were just lists of stats. It didn't matter; I was hooked. We played nightly until they left.
2) Finding books was hard so I made my own rules system. I was hooked on the game. I wanted to play more. But in my quiet suburban town no stores carried any of the rulebooks. Asking friends didn't help as none of my friends at the time had heard about the game. So in frustration and out of desire to play, I made up my own D&D-like system! I've always had a strong memory and ability to learn by doing. I used my experience of playing a few nights sitting on my bedroom floor with my two cousins to create my own game. I played it for months.
3) Finding books was hard, part 2. Ultimately I did find a place to buy a D&D rulebook. I don't remember 100% where it was... but I remember how many the places it was not. My parents were unusually supportive of helping me find a D&D set when I made it clear it was the number 1 thing I wanted most as a gift or to buy with my own money. I remember one night in particular my dad drove me around to literally every store in town that carried games or books... including even the grocery store! (Grocery stores had half an aisle of kids' toys back then.) That night was a failure. Later on I found it- I think- at a hobby games store 15 miles away.
4) The first copy of the game I owned was Basic Dungeons & Dragons, aka the red box.
Sadly the the D&D game I finally bought was not the same one I'd played months earlier with my cousins. The publisher had recently come out with a simplified- some would say dumbed down- version of the game designed to appeal to a broader audience. It (over)simplified the character archetypes and came in a set of rules that covered only the basics of starting levels. If I'd known about the difference I would've kept looking for the more advanced rules! But again, information about D&D was so hard to come by then as a kid in the suburbs that I wasn't sure what I was missing for a few years to come.
5) Thirty-seven years and counting! Many people I mention Dungeons & Dragons to say, "Oh, yeah, I played that when I was a kid," or, "Wow, I haven't touched that since college." Well, I played it as a kid, I played it in high school, I played it in college; I've been playing it the whole way through up to present day. That original red box set has long since been retired. It's still on my bookshelf, but as I hinted above, I put it aside after a few years to switch to the fuller Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. Then I updated a few times, when the publisher came out with 2nd edition, then 3.0, then 3.5, not to mention countless intermediate books that extended each base edition. I stopped taking updates after 3.5 about 10 years ago. I figured I've bought enough. The combined D&D library Hawk and I own occupies four shelves in our bookcase!
But wait, there's more! Read Another 5 Things about D&D.