Roleplaying through the ages

Hello... this is a history of my more memorable moments in roleplaying,
good and bad. I will try to keep things in cronologigical order...

In brief
As it says, just so this isn't a blank page. My hope is to have
a seperate link to each charatcer/phase/event. We'll just have
to wait and see.

In brief, Take 2
I started Fantasy Roleplaying in 1977. I was a sophmore at Helix
High School... ah the memories. I had played board games and card 
games... war games and even some computer games! This however was
something new... and I loved it from day one. 
     Our first DM, Kathy explained the basics, and off we went... 
we'd all read Tolkein, so orc's and Balrog's were everywhere... the
first day, me and Jeff didn't even have dice! We were so intrigued 
that after the club ended for the day, we sat on the grass and played 
as crude and rough a game as you'll ever see. We made a chart on a 
piece of paper, and tossed a pencil up in the air, it's landing angle 
determining the outcome. Within a week we had dice, and a few 
(ack! copywrite infringment!) A few xeroxed pages from the old Blue 
basic book.
     I have since seen, and actually own the older white books...
and have had many an arguement with it's fans... I stand firm on my 
contention that they were pretty bad... But what I wouldn't give for 
an old Greyhawk Rod of Lordly Might! Awesome.
     Of course with my ego, I was running my own world pretty quick. 
It was mostly maze creation. Nobody mapped (imagine! Oh such innocent days)
One fun memory was when a neigbor decided part way through the dungeon
to follow the right wall exclusivly. Honest to gosh, it was an independent
wall... I gave him the same 6 options about a dozen times in a row...
(left or straight? follow the right wall... Right, left or straight? follow 
the right wall...) A DOZEN TIME!!! Before I started laughing... it was about
a dozen more before he got the hint... amazing.
     My junior year the club got larger... and we discovered Arduin! For those
of you unfamiliar with the system, it was a classic! They had actually assumed
a D&D misprint, % Liar (it was supposed to say % Lair... how often the monster
would be found at home) was honest, and had a stat for how often a monster would
lie! It had a great sense of humor, and a facinating system that NOBODY ever got
right. To be fair, I suspect in the hands of now deceased founder David Hargreave 
(sp?) it was a top notch worl, with a rich history and some of the most memorable 
NPC's ever... but in anyone else's hands, it was a joke. There was a service known
as Multi-versal that sold magic items, and even created them on commission! My insane
(actual alignment option!) Barbarian Centaur with his unpronouncable name
in Mikes world, with his Drunken Jawa (from Star Wars! Mikes idea, not Arduins)
mage companion came into possession of 100,000 gold pieces! In a story I will relate
later... the point now is with that much gold, I became very nearly god-like.
     Of course in the early days, most worlds were gross... a truism that seems
to extend to today. Kathy's world had a sword called a Dath Sar... just seeing it
made you insane, and you only had a 1 in 10,000 chance of surviving touching one!
Everybody had one but me. I never survived more than a half hour in her world.
Once a party member shot me in the back of the head with a bow, point blank! Less
than a minute into the adventure. I feud that exists, amazingly enough, to this 
day... hehehe 
     I once actually lasted several months! Avoiding monsters, me and my horse got
past the first room, where several pre-carnation had died upon opening the wrong
door, and decided at the end of the day to curl up and take a nap... Kathy
then went to Europe... Italy? I think, maybe England... her world was stolen
so she had to re-create her very rich world from scratch... and declared the event
an earthquake... what a great mind she had! Anyway, once she returned, I woke up
got out of the bag, and managed to get ambushed within 10 minutes!
     Revenge was sweet though. She had a personal character who ran in her world...
when I remember his name, I'll put it here... she ran through my world, and even 
adopted  a baby dragon! It was a wild world, a small plateau, and 7 levels of dungeon.
Our teacher/sponsor made me close the casino, and house of ill repute. Hehehe
Mr. Luke... nice guy... really! There was a lake where you could for a small fee
you could feed Nessy (the Loch Ness monster) ground orc bits. One of the monsters
I had roaming the world were the infamous Chaotic Strangers... exact duplicates
of the party, only oppositly aligned. They loved to wait on the far side a pit, and 
push you in when you landed... her character died such a death... she took it VERY 
persoanlly. 
     A few months later, I gave her the character back, but demanded the right
to retain one eye, which would stay in Hades for the duration... whenever he
opened the wrong eye lid...aaarrrggghhhhhh!!! 
     In 1979 I bought the AD&D DM's guide on the day it hit the market. It didn't
even have the grey lines designed to make charts more legible! I knew that book
forward and back... For the most part we distained modules as the sign of a lazy
DM... Real life taught me better, but I still prefer making my own. Those were
great days... sophisticated enough to have exciting games, innocent enough to
not noticed the ... oh, I don't know, naivity? Highest charisma ran the party...
locations like the Great Kofax desert... rivers that ran from one ocean to
the other...(ack! That was mine... what a hoot) I think I in many ways I peaked 
as a DM then... I've done good work since, and maybe it was just the quality of 
players I had, but we had real party integrity, and I was capable of really getting
emotional reactions from the players... 
    Methalonia Barth... perhaps the greatest PC I've ever had the joy of knowing.
She ran through my world for quite awhile... and through a bizarre series of
events earned the nick-name Methalonia Barth the Leftless... She was in a party
that was excited to find platemail as treasure, at second level! Yes, I over
reacted to the Monty Haul syndrome, but the party was happy... They had many
interesting adventures, including the Paladin who actually rolled soul-mate
(a 12 reaction from both characters) from a wild bull. Rode that damn thing
to the end of his days... a wild night with a Lepracaun, a full blown seige
where the Paladin's god made a short appearence (I'll explain that later too...
what a goof!) and unfortunatly, the loss of an NPC so close the Methalonia Barth
that she went into semi-retirement. I still have a copy of the character sheet...
     Other roleplaying games were showing up... Boot Hill, Traveller, a game
which had the distinction of being the only game I've ever seen where rolling
up the characters was more fun than playing! And of course, Gamma World...
the original post holacaust world. 
     I created my own systems for things around this time... charts for D&D
a system for rolling up D&D characters using the Traveller system, and a
very succesfully played form of post holacaust world... today! No robots, no
lasers, everything into was today stuff... 
    Still, D&D was the main game... I wen't through some strange world...
fought Cylons, Stromtroopers, and even went through a world where puns 
were a criminal offense... so of course we all punned as much as possible.
Two worlds in my college years that stick out... Frank, and Bob...
    Both DM's had good traits... and bad of course... a common trait they
both had was the golden haired boy syndrome... by this I mean they played 
favorites. In Bob's world, I refused... and got burned of course. 
     Bob was as prepared a DM as I've ever seen, and more. His HOUSE was
dedicated to the game... he had maps up in the kitchen, a massive collection
of miniatures and modules, a spare bedroom with about 2000 coke bottles
in it, to avoid soda breaks, he had it all. Here we had our MARATHONS...
two and three days straight...  What was wrong you ask? He was never a player...
We learned from this man how monsters got treasure... The primary example
G3... the Lair of the Fire Giants... a tough adventure at best... he designed
a party to meet the modules suggestions... then increased the monsters damage 
average from about 12 to about 18... allowed them to redesign the interior...
oh it was brutal. 
   Well, enough for now, my hands hurt.... hope you like it so far...
let me know what you think if you drop by... my e-mail address in on the main page.