Yet another bit of my juvenile past, pulled from the
dusty doom of a storage unit. I played a fair bit of D&D as a kid. My first exposure was when I got the Red box from a distant relative at the beginning of a long summer on a mountain in Wyoming. It was hit or miss over the next few years, but it was a steady part of my childhood.
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| Re-discovered modules. |
After that first summer, playing Keep on the Borderlands solo, I didn't play again until the next summer. I went to summer camp, two weeks away from home. While there I hung out with some kids who talked about D&D the whole time. I later discovered they were playing something that resembled D&D but they were not playing the real game, and they were the worst sort of Munchkins.
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| The village of Hommlet is the only one that's really stuck with me over the years. |
This was not a great experience but it was not long before I found someone else to play with. My best friend at church was into D&D, though neither of us realized the other had the interest. Once we figured it out we would sneak off to the basement during church and play D&D. I'm not sure my parents ever figured out my sudden conversion, but they were happy I was excited about church and I was happy to sit in the basement and roleplay.
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| The DragonLance modules and the Isle of Dread were all favorites. |
After we moved to Colorado I had no one to game with. Indeed, I didn't have friends at all for a couple of years. All of my gaming was solo. In addition to endless games of
Battletech and massive lego battles, I did quite a bit of D&D. It was more of a dungeon crawl than role playing, but it was fun all the same.
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| The Slave Lords modules were great fun. I never had the first one in the series. Red Arrow, Black Shield was a map based strategy game. I still have the pieces for it. |
I have not roleplayed since. The boys are, perhaps, close to the age where they might like it. I have a massive lot of Bones from Reaper sitting in my office. I have my old D&D stuff. It may not be too long before we try some simple adventures to see if they like it.
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| For gamers of a certain age this should really take you back. |
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| And this. Countless hours were spent staring at these images. |
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III
Did a little D&D but Merp was our poison of choice
ReplyDeleteIan
I didn't know other options even existed, at the time. It scratched the itch. It was also pretty simple back then.
DeleteToo cool! I ran some of these modules for my brother and 2 sisters when I'd come home from college. When my kids got older, we played D & D and pretty quickly, my son wanted to be the Dungeon Master. Good times, good memories. And good luck if you decide to run it with your boys.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
Monty,
DeleteI've actually been playing a little D&D with the boys the last week. Every night they ask, "can we play the game tonight"? They are loving it. We have mini's and terrain, because this is a gateway drug to wargamin, I hope, but at 6 and 8 they are great at using their imaginations. I'm very pleased.
My son and I have just started playing D&D together along with my long time gaming buddies. He's nearly 17. We've gone back to our roots and are playing the B series using the Red Box. I'm loving every minute, so is my son. Sounds like you are too.
ReplyDeleteMillsy, It's been a great feeling to have them both enjoying it so much. I'm glad to hear that your son is getting in to it too. Especially at that age it's got to be great to have that time together.
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