Atlas Games has published a list of 31 writing prompts that relate to an individual’s experiences with role-playing games. I believe the idea is that you post an answer to each one throughout the month of the January. I however will not be doing so because I do not want to flood my blog with that content for the month. Therefore, I will sprinkle my answers throughout the year.
P.S. Since Atlas is a table top role-playing company so the answers to the questions will be related to that, not video games.
REVERB GAMERS 2012, #1: What was your first roleplaying experience? Who introduced you to it? How did that introduction shape the gamer you’ve become?
My first role-playing experience was with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons second edition in the spring of 1999. A couple of my friends strong armed me into it due to our shared interest in role-playing video games, and fantasy novels. I was reticent to play due to my mothers initial, misplaced, believe that D&D was associated with devil worship. However, after reviewing the material I was prepared for the following social complications that arrose.
We each had purchased a copy of the Player’s Handbook, and one of us had purchased the DM’s Guide. The initial plan was to rotate as DM. I am not exactly sure where the initial monsters came from because I do not recall getting the monster manual until later.
The first session we all took brief turns behind the DM screen, and brutally slaughtered each other because we had no sence of balance and difficulty in encounter design. As I recall my wizard did not fair well, as he fell before acting, and ending up drowning in a pool of filth. It did not take very many attempts before I realized that I enjoyed being the DM much more than playing, so I bought the DM Guide from my friend, and proceeded to write up our first adventure.
Our initial experience had a single profound effect: the desire to teach others. When we were first getting started we had to piece together what to do out of the core rule books, no one would help us. We were able to find other groups in the area, but they had no interest in assisting a group of high school kids get started. As a result, we mostly got the core of the game running but hand waved a lot of it. In fact, in recent months reading through Dungeon World has codified many of the aspects of the way we used to play. I did not want anyone else to experience the same thing. So, I couple years later I started running games at a local FLGS to help connected experienced players with new players. Unfortunately, this was not quite as successful as I would have liked due to my time constraints.
I took some time off gaming for graduate school, and when I returned I decided to take the reigns and start organized sanctioned RPGA play at another FLGS. This program was considerably more successful, and I’m pleased to see the amount of youth getting into the hobby now. But, I do have to say that 10 year old DM’s have NO mercy.