Gaming and me

Jul 21, 2009 20:39

I think it's pretty obvious that the main focus in my life of late--outside of work and school--has been my RPG collection. I don't know if it's clear to people who have become acquainted with me after high school--i.e., in the past ten years--that this isn't a sudden new hobby. In fact, it's one of my oldest hobbies.

It's funny, really--now that I think back on it I can remember quite clearly how I got my start in gaming. I had an Atari as a kid and spent a lot of time goofing off with it, but it wasn't a Nintendo or a Sega, so eventually I ran low on interest. Fortunately I was always a voracious reader once I finally learned how, and fantasy was the genre of choice. Dad read us Narnia and The Hobbit before I'd learned to read at all, and the Prydain Chronicles were my first on-my-own books.

I remember wandering into a Coles (that's a bookstore chain in Canada) before a trip or something, and picking up a copy of Island of the Lizard King, which was a Fighting Fantasy adventure game book. From there I got into AD&D 2nd Edition--eventually--and while I only had the PHB back then, and had no idea how the game actually worked, it never stopped me from rolling up characters for fun. I read a bunch of the novels, too, mostly Dragonlance.

I continued getting Fighting Fantasy books and goofing off with those, and then around in seventh grade a friend of mine got Vampire: the Masquerade as a gift. We were pretty floored by a system we understood the rules for and a slick, modern setting, so the World of Darkness quickly became our setting of choice. Other friends grabbed ICE's Middle Earth Roleplaying game or the Amber Diceless RPG, but for the most part I picked up the World of Darkness games. Throughout high school, they were the most heavily played games in my group--especially Changeling, as one may have gathered from the large number of books on my shelf for that line. By the end of high school, my interests had started moving into Trinity and other games, and D&D3 had just come out and somewhat revitalized my interest in that game line.

And then I went off to university, and I left most of my game books at home for space reasons. We tried a few abortive games--I was introduced to Legend of Five Rings during this period, and I played a bit of D&D 3 and 3.5, more online than off, but I was far from my regular group and so my games grew more sporadic, and my interest in anime and video games (having my own discretionary cash meant I could finally get modern consoles) grew during this period. Eventually I settled into the acceptance that I was too far from people who I could game with regularly, and, since the World of Darkness I knew had ended and I wasn't playing anything else regularly, my purchasing of game books trailed off.

I even sold off my World of Darkness books eventually--I was going to Korea and didn't know if I would be back any time soon. Fortunately I sold them to a friend who was willing to sell them back upon my return and revival of interest in gaming.

It was a combination of the release of D&D 4th edition (magnificent in its ease of use) and the increase in technology to the point where voice-chat and virtual tables were reasonably stable, that revitalized my interest in gaming. Combined with a steadily-declining interest in anime and a realization that most of the video games being produced didn't appeal to me so much anymore, it became a much more appealing time to return to my oldest hobby...

Anyway. That's enough of that rambling.

life, wod, rpgs, l5r, d&d

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