I Discover Dungeons & Dragons
My gaming journey began in April of 1981, at a Boy Scout Meeting. It was my first Boy Scout meeting, and I didn't know quite what to expect. As I walked down the empty unlit corridor at our church-house towards the Scout room, I heard the faint sounds of animated discussion and occasional laughter spilling out with the light from the room at the end of the hall. Approaching with a slightly increased state of ease at the prospect of joining whatever fun they were having I turned the corner and entered the door. There were three boys in the room at a small table. They were excitedly gesticulating and talking more quickly than I could keep up about boots of speed, cloaks of invisibility, magical swords and rings of protection. I was immediately enchanted and my attention was riveted, but I still had little idea what they were doing. One of the boys seemed to be mediating and by his occasional comments and reminders to the other two boys I could tell they were trapped in some kind of a dome of force and trying desperately to escape or attack something that was within. My heart was pounding, not only with the excitement of the action being played out before me, but due to the fact that I seemed to have stepped into a new world!
What I vaguely got out of them was that they were playing a game called Dungeons & Dragons; and despite being rebuffed at the moment when I asked to join in I was determined that I _had_ to play this game. Well, I quickly got a chance some time later, when I was asked over to a scout leader's house with some of the boys. They had a game they were just beginning called Against the Giants, which they haughtily explained was for levels 8 through 12, but that they had a character I could use. Sliding me a piece of notebook paper I could see I had an 8th level Ranger named Sizzaxe, with a +3 battleaxe! I didn't know much more about it, but I was certain I could beat anything that came at me with such a magnificent hero.
In very little time we were approaching a massive log castle atop a grassy knoll, when a horde of ugly hill giants swarmed down upon us. Everyone was taking action, as I sat there stone dumb, held rapt by the unfolding narrative around me. What would the giants do? What was going to happen next? The magic user had readied some spell or other and the thief was slipping into the shadows. That's when the Dungeon Master (I had learned now that that was what the mediator was called) turned to me and asked hurriedly "what are you going to do?" I hesitated for only an instant and blurted out, "Attack the giants with my axe!" He said okay, bade me roll a funny die he called a "twenty-sider" which I did, only to evidently miss--or so he informed me.
Of course the giants reciprocated in kind. And since I was in front now, the thief in the shadows and the magic user in the back muttering incantations, all three hairy monsters raised their clubs to smash me. All three hit. Ouch. Triple ouch. I don't recall how much damage I took. But I recall the DM telling me--your dead, man.
Dead? Whaddya mean dead? It's over already?! When I asked what I was supposed to do now, he coldly informed me that the game was over for me for now. I could sit out and watch if I wanted. Well, I did for awhile, but later called mom to pick me up. But though I was bummed by Sizzaxe's untimely death, I was convinced of one thing. Not only was I destined to play more of this game, I _had_ to own it.
Today I still bear the name of Sizzaxe on almost all internet forums I frequent. Not only to commemorate the brave ranger fallen before his gigantic foes, but to memorialize my first session of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. And to remind myself that life as a player character hero is brutal and sometimes very short, and DMs deal out death like Halloween candy.
The Game is On!
That December I ask for one thing for Christmas: D&D books. Still just learning the game I ask for the Basic and Expert Set along with the Advanced Dungeon Masters Guide, Player's Handbook and Monster Manual. Not sure how they all fit together, I just assume that you were supposed to start with Basic, move onto Expert and then play Advanced. I had just jumped the normal process and was playing the Advanced Game with my friends at Scouts. Not wanting to miss anything foundational to the later game, I ask for all three. And get them! Best Christmas ever!!
As soon as Christmas holiday break for school was over I walked to the bus stop with my new books in my backpack. I had never really been able to connect to anyone at school in any real meaningful way. At least not at my junior high. But there were two guys that talked about comic books and early Japanese animated cartoons at the bus stop. They seemed like pretty good friends and their interests were similar to mine. I had talked to them some, but they were better artists than me and both drew cool sci fi comic books that I could never quite compete with. They would tell each other stories about their comics and put themselves in the stories they imagined. They were prime for rpg play without ever knowing it! I couldn't wait to let them see my new books. Especially the Monster Manual. So I went out on a limb and that first morning back told them my story hook: "I crash landed on a strange magical planet. My ship was beyond repair. The planet teemed with fantastic life forms, with dragons, unicorns and evil ogres and the like. Magic seemed to work there and it seemed I would be stranded there forever, but that was okay because I didn't mind living in this cool new place." They bit hook, line and sinker. At first they had all sorts of questions and didn't seem to quite "get" this new focus on magic and unicorns, it was a bit out of their normal milieu. But that was okay. I answered their questions by declaring that I could show them what I was talking about. And I whipped out the Monster Manual, and turned right to Unicorns. They were all over that like white on rice. "Wow!" "Oh cool, let me look at that!!" " What are these numbers? What is AC, HP?" and on and on. They were hooked. "You can actually play this game and interact with these things, just like the stories we tell. Even better it had rules that allowed you to advance and become more powerful!" "Could we play?" "You bet! How about this afternoon at my house?"
Thus began my first gaming group with me as DM. And it was more fun than I had even been having as a player. ***
It was then that I realized that Basic and Expert went together and they were a very different game from what we had been playing. It definitely seemed like a simpler game, and I disliked the idea of having such limited options. We tried a bit to play around with it, but quickly realized this was not the game we were used to. I was a bit narrow-minded about it, but Basic & Expert seemed like less of a game than AD&D.
The Challenge
Well, things went along great for several years. Until the era of yellow journalism hit. Many may not recall the huge media assault waged on Dungeons & Dragons and inspired by a small but very vocal group of fundamental right wing religious groups like BADD, "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons" and Jack Chick and his blanket smear campaign. In retrospect we know what prompted these zealots to act. In the early 80's there was a growing conspiracy theory that blamed almost all of the world's ills on black robed satanists that to them seemed to be lurking behind every middle class home in America. There were heinous allegations against parents subjecting their children to satanic rituals, dark occult initiations and sacrifices. This supposedly epic plague of satanic abuse turned out to be total tripe and a pack of stinking lies. But that didn't stop sick-minded do-gooders from dragging many people's names through the mud, often through the public humiliation of court trials. Dungeons & Dragons got caught up in this mess of the day and was said to cause delinquent criminal behavior, suicide and was alleged to be nothing but a tool to induct children into satanic or occult groups. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth as we shall shortly see.
D&D was a game. And though the creative milieu of D&D was set in a world of magic, myth and legend, the purpose was to imaginatively experience this setting within a game of heroes, priests and wizards. Naturally some who played did begin to learn more about ancient religions, and even in some cases the historical practice of magic. But even then this research was often academic. D&D players sometimes had a familiarity with myth and mythic archetypes frequently lost to the modern individual. And some few decided to pursue this interest further. But one thing becomes very clear if you took the time to do a little studying. the world and setting outlined in D&D had little to do with the reality experienced by people in the workaday world, whether a player was Hindu, Christian, Muslim or Pagan. Most practitioners of esoteric religio-magical practices or pagans don't play D&D or other RPGs. Nor do they care to. But they don't condemn the practice like many Christian groups do.
The response to these attacks were met by a passionate but considered response from the gaming community. Sociological and psychological studies were done to actually assess the effects of roleplaying games on gamers. Statistics were compiled to carefully analyze other gamer behaviors such as social behaviors, community behaviors and private practices. What was found is that gamers are less likely to commit crimes, were prosocial in many ways, developed better than average problem-solving skills, tended to be more intelligent or knowledgeable than the baseline, and were less likely to commit suicide than the average. But, unfortunately it took years to meet this assault with this research. And those intervening years were very hard on me.
One might wonder why I'm even writing so extensively on this topic as it has now faded into relative obscurity in the gaming world. Well, because it affected me very personally. I was about 14, when a local informal church meeting was held at a person's house by an itinerant church speaker. He had evidently been steeped in this conspiracy nonsense and focused his meeting on the evils of rock music and D&D. I didn't attend the meeting, but I do recall my gaming friends at church telling me they were selling or worse, burning their gaming stuff. Not by their choice of course, but their parents were making them. Of them all only one continued to game. I was stunned. I was hurt, and another more serious thing occurred: my faith in my church was also shaken to the core.
Here was an activity I loved, a pastime that had been nothing but good for me and for those I played with. And now the source or moral direction in my life, my church, was telling me it was an evil dangerous game. And moreover, we were being told this decision that church members were not allowed to play, was a commandment, a directions from church leaders. Well this was simply false. This was one church speaker, a lay member that was waging a personal campaign. A campaign that we have already seen was based upon an ideology rooted in misplaced fears, lies and false conspiracies. My parents were of course very sensitive to how this was affecting me. Knowing nothing of what this speaker had actually said they appealed to my youth leaders of the day to know how to handle it. A wise and good leader told them that it was just a game and he didn't see any harm in it. He had watched us play many times, and he knew there was nothing but fun and uplifting times in the game. So my parents told me that it was my decision, but they and my youth leader felt like it was fine.
But the damage had been done. I agonized for days and weeks, praying fervently to get some personal direction on the issue. I never received any personal feeling one way or the other on the matter, which made me more uncertain than ever. From that time on I was playing spiritual ping pong with myself. Every time anything went wrong for me I couldn't help but wonder if it was the fact that I still played the game. This kind of moral authoritarianism was very damaging to me; and it set me up for later mistakes in my life. My experience was more negatively affected by this thoughtless, idiotic speaker than the game. The game had been a source of much good, and now the church seemed to telling me to question what my experience had taught me. This caused an enormous amount of anxiety in me and not a small bit of depression. It as only much later in life that I would come to terms with this inner battle, but I mention it here, because it has become very important to me to fight against this happening to anyone else I know.
There are now many excellent websites that inform people about these issues to which they can turn for information, solace and comfort. You can find these organized and reviewed for you in my links section. The situation, in fact, has sort of reversed. There are Christian gaming groups, churches now house regular gaming sessions, and there has developed a strong grass roots support network for gamers on this and numerous other issues. I speak of it here, because this was the first time in my life I had experienced spiritual abuse so common in organized religion. It was wrong, it was irrational and it was very hurtful. And, as I said, am dedicated to not allowing this to happen to anyone else. Yet, I am still very active in my church as it is important to my spirituality and I know I can do more good within the system than without. So, thank you for bearing with me, on what is a truly important part of my gaming character.
The Definition of an Age
This effect lingered on for awhile, and RPGers were relegated by it to the fringes of much of society. People didn't know quite what to make of us. We were very active in school, and many of us were high achievers. Though we had our share of underachievers as well. Gifted kids who never got along with the academic demands of school. What drew us together was a love of all things fantasy. Tolkien, Zelazney, Pratchett, Conan movies, comic books, Mythology, legends, and the rising dawn of video games (though this last one never gained near as much sway over me as it has some). We were in a sense nerds, but of a very special order. We weren't just nerds in the sense that we did well at school. But we debated life on other planets, we could discourse at length on the differences and similarities between Roman and Greek mythology. We understood the different subdivisions of the hobbit races and often wrote notes to each other in runic alphabets, or even better languages and alphabets of our own creation. We mapped out dungeons on endless reams of graph paper, wrote fantasy stories and spent most of our time in the school library.
And of course we played. We played after school, on the bus, at over nighters, at birthday parties, in cabins on my friend's riverfront property and in short whenever we could. At the Junior High there had been a club, so it only seemed natural that we would start a club at the High School as well. ***
Transitions
I, of course, continued to play and loved every minute of it. However, graduation came and friends went their separate ways. I entered the military and afterwards college. By the early 90's or so I had stopped gaming more because of life's demands and my changing responsibilities than anything else. And coincidentally this was the era of the death of 2e and TSR and the birth of 3e. I was busy doing a short stint in the Army, finishing college, serving a mission for my church and getting married. I also lived in 3 different countries and as many different states during that time. So gaming took a bit of a back seat.
By the time I had settled down, was expecting our first child in 1999, working a steady job and getting my teaching certification my thoughts began to turn to gaming once again. I had continued writing fantasy and weird fiction, throughout the years, but really longed to sit down and enjoy my true love once again. There is after all nothing like tabletop roleplaying. But where? And with whom? I was by then living in a small rural part of Northeastern Utah with no gamers in site, let alone a hobby shop. So it wasn't until about 2003 when I had been teaching for awhile that the kids at the school where I taught began bringing in D&D books. They were all 3rd edition books and somewhat different from what I was used to. When they found out I played D&D they began to beg me to start a school gaming club. But I really wasn't sure about gaming with kids less than half my age, so I put them off for about two years. And I was still a relatively new teacher, and a bit afraid of being the one who brought in D&D to our school--still carrying around with me the pains of the past.
Then a friend of mine opened a hobby shop in town. This was about 2002 actually and I was astounded to think he was going to try and make a go of it. He bought lots of 2e inventory and of course the new 3e stuff as well. He stocked his shelves with lots of Magic the Gathering too, which was just becoming really hot. He lasted about two years, and still owes his ex-father in law about $10,000 for financing the venture. The shop changed hands until it fell in with a young man who sort of reinvented the store into a combined hobby/toy shop. He pushed gas operated planes and cars alot, as well as model trains (a passion of his) other sundry models and lots of puzzles. He also renamed the place Wild on Hobbies. I spent alot of time there, buying model rockets and occasionally pouring over his 3rd edition books. Of course I would never buy any--I was a 1e man through and through, right?
About this time my brother had gotten back into gaming and was highly recommending 3rd edition to me. I had taught him gaming with 1e, and was a little disappointed he would sell out, but wished him well nonetheless. But secretly inside I knew he was gaming and I wasn't. I envied him. I asked around the shop occasionally for an old school game and was informed there was a 2e game going on, but they were sporadic at best, and tended to game late into the night. Not suited to a Daddy schedule. So I simply bided my time and longed for the good old days. Coincidentally this was the same period when the old school movement was also getting started, but I wasn't aware of it too much at the time.
The RPG Club Starts
It was in 2003 I think that I decided to begin rebuilding my 1e library and so re-purchased all the old core rules online and began buying out of print modules and supplements. It felt good to have them, and sort of strengthened my desire to play the way the game was "meant to be played." I began bringing some of my old books to school to show around, and found out lots of kids fathers and mothers had played AD&D back in the day. This gave me lots of hope, because that meant there were old school gamers out there that might want to jump back in the hobby. But that was never to be. And finally in 2005/6 I joined the masses and bought my first 3.5 books.
It was a short jump to starting our club that year, 2006, and we were off to a running start. I actually embraced 3.5 completely and the club went well for the first year. We did play 2e for half a year when a school counselor came in to help me run the club, but were back to 3.5 as soon as he left. Then in the club's second year 06/07 we ran into trouble. A parent complained that a Dungeons and Dragons club was being allowed in the school. "What corrupt influences were we allowing children to be introduced to?" they asked. The principal referred the parent to me and I had a long and sad conversation with the man. He claimed a local kid had killed himself playing Everquest, and that his friends who played D&D had all become mixed up criminals that destroyed their lives. Though I tried to be empathetic, I was still caught off guard. I cited research on the positive aspects of gaming; I cited counterexamples; I talked suicide and crime statistics that showed gamers were less than likely to kill themselves or commit crime; I referred him to articles--but in the end he could not be convinced.
After much consideration and discussion with the principal we came upon a plan to reestablish the game club. It required cancelling the club temporarily much to the outrage of students and parents who loved the club. But it didn't take long for us to get back on the go. That was the birth of the school RPG club community committee. Made up of any who would like to join, we had quite a few parents and students come out to act as support and oversight to our activities. With this move we had communitywide support and parental oversight. We did change the name of the club from the Dungeons & Dragons club to the RPG club, and as much as I didn't like this move, discretion is the better part of valor. And by 2008 we were off and running again.
That was the beginning of my blog as well, and the transition ultimately to 4e as our game of choice. Because 3.5 had sold me so thoroughly on its design and game play I was very open to a move to 4e. I just assumed it would be just as good. And truthfully it was. It was everything I had hoped and more. There were some changes I was dubious about but the game played very well. And we were having a great time in the 2008/9 school year.
And Then Came the OSR
Then everything went to hell. Due to my website and the club going so well, I was doing a lot more research online about gaming and the current developments therein. That's when I ran across the OSR movement. To put it in a nutshell the OSR totally turned my gaming on it's head. It would not be until 2011 that I had begun to come to terms with were I was again. The OSR made me question my motives, my assumptions, and my gaming. Was I old school or not? And if so why was I not playing an old school game? The descriptions of old school were naturally music to my ears, and I of course assumed the only way you really played that way was to play an old school game. And it had to be rules lite, right?
All you have to do is read through those years on my blog to see my confusion. I forced the club to shift games to OSRIC and then back and forth all over the place from year to year and sometimes month to month. I didn't know where the heck I was or where I wanted my gaming to go. In a way I realized that we had been having a great time with 3.5 and were having a great time with 4e. But now I found problems with maps and minis in 4e, with powers, and skill systems and on and on. I picked systems apart and always found something I didn't like. It didn't matter whether it was old school or new, lite or heavy or what. I was my own worst adviser and the world's worst critic. Just read my blog to get some ideas about where I was and where I wasn't.
I suppose in at least one way the OSR was good for me. It cause me to question everything. And in the end I even questioned the OSR itself. I'm not saying the movement is bad or anything. I think it serves a vital function in the gaming world. But in the end gaming is about gamers. It is about creativity and the imagination. Gaming is also a very personal experience. I don't think there is one right way to game or one wrong way to game. I think there is your way to game. And as is always the case with us humans, we are always changing. Thus our gaming will change and evolve as well.
Do I still consider myself an old school gamer? Yeah, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. At least not likely. I'm an old gamer that is still gaming today. That's about as far as I'm willing to extend the definition. Read my blog to get more on my ideas. At times it may seem very contradictory, my irrational rhetoric. But what can I say. I'm just a free wheeling GM playing games I love.
