Fuck Wil Wheaton, I Want to Game!

[freeport_pirate]

 It was 1987 and I was a freshman at New York University. I’m not sure why, but I thought at the time that I might not do much gaming at college. As it happened, however, I stumbled across a game group playing in the lounge of my dorm when returning from a punk rock show at CBGB. I talked to a guy named Sandeep and he invited me to the game the

Comments

I remember it well...

[ext_242507]

Your description of your marathon college gaming sessions took me back to 1974, playing original first edition brown box Dungeons & Dragons with my grad school roommate, John M (Mike) Ford as dungeon master. I miss those all-weekend game sessions at Indiana University, and I miss Mike even more. He and I we both part of the First Golden Age of Adventure Gaming. I think with all the great companies and designers thriving today, we are entering a Second Golden Age. I so wish he was here to see it. Thanks for triggering some great memories with this post.

Guy McLimore

Re: I remember it well...

[freeport_pirate]

It is indeed a shame that John can't be here to contribute to the hobby that's still going strong 40+ years later. He was a talented guy.

[orryn_emrys]

For us, it was summers during high school... 1E AD&D all-nighters, all the next day... basically until the DM (which was pretty much always me) lost consciousness. I can't honestly say I miss those days... but I can still wax pretty nostalgic about it. I still keep in touch with a few of those old players (and I eventually even married one, after more than a decade out of contact

[jdurall]

I am in awe of how Wil somehow managed to go from one of the most loathed guys in sci-fi/fantasy fandom to one of its beloved, without doing anything he didn't want to do or changing who he was as a person.

Overheard in 1987: "Get that kid off the bridge! He's RUINING the show!"
Overheard in 2010: "I just saw Wil Wheaton hanging out on the floor of Gen Con! Did you see him in 'Big Bang Theory'? You check out the Penny Arcade podcasts?"

[freeport_pirate]

It's an interesting study in getting somewhere by just being real. On Star Trek he was an actor with a gig. His rebirth was Wil being himself. And it helps that he's a super nice guy with genuine enthusiasm for all things nerdy.

[scholargipsy]

I was a freshman at NYU in 1989 (transferred to Columbia after that, so I did all my college gaming -- and Next Generation watching -- there), and it was fun to be reminded of the Washington Square Diner. Several letters in the neon window sign were invariably burned out, prompting us to call it the "Hingto Are," and inviting the following memorable exchange:

My Film Student Girlfriend: Let's get a bite to eat. How about the Hingto Are?
Other, Not-in-the-Know Tisch Student: No thanks, I just had Chinese for lunch.

Additionally, I bought my very first copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay from The Compleat Strategist during my freshman year, and the grim grottiness of the Warhammer universe is inextricably connected in my mind to that first year in New York, which with its Gothic architecture and ominous subway tunnels somehow channeled the same Cthulhu-meets-the-Holy-Roman-Empire vibe of WFRP. (Or maybe I was just a massive dork.)

[freeport_pirate]

Man, are you sure we didn't know each other? Because to this day, my gaming friends and I still call that place the Hingto Are for that very reason. And we pronounced "Are" with two syllables ("ah-ray").

[scholargipsy]

Hmmm...I was in a pretty insular phase during my one year at NYU, so it's unlikely that we met (I never joined the gaming club, though I wanted to). It's a shame, too -- I could name-drop Chris Pramas if I'd known you back then!

Your pronunciation of "Are" is identical to mine and my friends' back then. I wonder if it was one of those campus memes; alternately, we may well have had friends in common.