Well, I made it back for another post. Hopefully I can get a routine going with these, but we’ll see how it goes. Today’s prompt for #RPGaDay2023 is the First RPG Gamemaster. This one is gonna come a little out of left field, but that’s just the kinda guy I am.
Growing up in in the 80s right in the middle of nowhere, yet still somehow within 30 miles as the roc flies of the birthplace of Dungeons and Dragons, my opportunities to spend time with others that knew of or were interested in playing this crazy looking game with a weird blue map in a little red box were practically non-existent. Yet I was still intrigued by this game of strange dice and desperate heroes seeking wealth and glory within a horrific dungeon where death lurked around every corner. I made up my own characters and did what would now be called solo gaming coming up with all kinds of fantastical stories about the adventures of Conan the fighter and his crew of misfits raiding some caves, and castles.
The first time I engaged with a Dungeons and Dragons product where I was not responsible for an awful and purely juvenile plot came surprisingly early, and is a route that I expect a lot of younger gamers are probably quite familiar with. My first Dungeon Master was none other than our home 386 running an expertly crafted module called Pool of Radiance.
Around my 10th birthday my father had gotten a new computer and we’d played through some of the early adventure gaming classics (Secret of Monkey Island, Kings Quest, Zork, etc) when I saw that box on the shelf at the local Computer store, the kind of place where they had these big colorful boxes with 5.25” floppy discs inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes? How would they do the same game I’d read through a thousand times on a computer? I begged my father for a copy and he relented. I came home, cheated up a perfectly fair and balanced party and immediately proceeded to get them all killed. This game was brutal! In my head the heroes always won like in the movies, but here my entire party was wiped out just wandering around the cemetery right in town.
Eventually after a crazily frustrating amount of time I started to learn the rules of a game I had barely understood. I got spells that would disable entire groups of creatures, armor that could prevent the deadly attacks, healing spells to survive long enough to find a safe place to camp and get back to town. Slowly, one 16x16 map at a time, I explored that city… I discovered a vast wilderness outside of town, and eventually I fought and killed that dragon on the box. We had won. That party of stupidly named adventurers had gone from a clueless ten year old boy sitting at his father’s computer to a clueless eleven year old boy sitting at that same computer. I craved more and continued to chase after these amazing games.
I went to Krynn and fought the War of the Lance. Plundered the Treasures of the Savage Frontier. Was a gladiator & thief in the heart of Hillsfar. Saw the Eye of the Beholder. Got my ass beat for running up a $300 phone bill playing Neverwinter Nights on AOL, and so much more. But still there had been something missing in all of these adventures. I had still, six years later, still never gotten to play in a game with any other people.
It was around this time that my father began dating his current wife and I met her children. Including my future step-brother who I shall call Jason here in order to protect the innocent. We had both seen some of the same D&D stuff and were interested in trying to play a game. So obviously we made the only sensible choice available to us at the time.
It was an absolute disaster. But it was probably the most glorious disaster I’ve ever played in. Gone was the full party of maximized PCs that I controlled as a deadly combat unit. Here was Jean the Cyberknight with a psionic force sword and a flying dragon mount cruising the skies outside of Coalition territory. Playing some kind of post apocalypse sheriff fighting off DBees and all around having no freakin’ clue how any of the rules actually worked.
Eventually I’d graduate high school, enlist in the Army and escape that nowhere town. Play games with dozens of other soldiers and so much more, but that’s a story for another time.
