These are chits. You had to cut them out yourself. No wonder old gamers are so angry. |
This boxed set ended up in my possession because my step-father was an avid reader and loved fantasy and science fiction, which was certainly one of the areas that allowed us to get along despite the awkwardness of being a step-dad and a step-son. He brought home the game one night, very excited to play with the family, which meant me and his kids, who were five and seven years younger than me. What the hell, I was up for it. The cover art, which looks so dated now, was a colorful portrait of wonderment; the wizard with the pointy hat. The fighter in plate mail. The dragon! On a horde of gold! This was not Monopoly.
It’s hard for anyone under the age of 50 to remember when there weren’t video games. When there weren’t decades of movies with incredible special effects. There was only Jason and the Argonauts, and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and a handful of other fantasy epics, mostly in the sword and sandal sub-genre. Dungeons and Dragonswas initially an attempt to simulate the action and adventure and scope found in books.
Hard to believe this goofy-looking game changed the world, but it did. |
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much this game felt like contraband. There was a seductive crudeness of presentation—a smaller game box, the—let’s call it “charming”—artwork, the lack of components, and so on. It was a game, specifically supposed to fire your imagination, but there weren’t TV commercials for it (not yet) and there wasn’t any photography of weird-looking kids in turtlenecks, laughing as they played the game (again, not yet). This was something else, man. This article gives you a concentrated set of examples that defined my initial D&D experience, right here.
Dave Trampier's Harpy from the AD&D Monster Manual. |
When I finally started playing AD&D, I most frequently took on the mantle of Dungeon Master. This suited me fine, as I liked the theatrics and also the creativity of making dungeons, playing NPCs, and all of that fun stuff. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had a core of folks to play with and we rolled dice whenever we could. Somewhere along the way, my Greyhawk campaign turned into Lankhmar, and then I put it aside for other things. Second edition Dungeons and Dragons was coming out, and I didn’t like THAC0, or the 3-Ring Binder Monster Manual. Mostly, I was tired of playing what I thought of as generic fantasy and wanted a break. This took me into a number of other games that I played over the years, games like Call of Cthulhu, Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, Justice, Inc., Cyberpunk, Chill, and many others. At the tender age of 25, I thought I’d left D&D behind entirely.
Boy, was I wrong about that.
0 Yorumlar