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Post by Mr Darke on Feb 25, 2015 11:26:18 GMT -5
This thread is for any questions you may have regarding the campaign.
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Post by Mr Darke on Mar 4, 2015 16:13:13 GMT -5
How it Began
Jumping off a point made in the Design Philosophy thread, I thought it would be a good idea to show how things were ran when I was first introduced to the game. This is in no way exhaustive and is working on 20+ years of memory so things may be a bit messed up. Also many of the old notes are now lost due to moves, idea purges and other things. So there is very little remaining of the early stuff.
My first exposure to D&D came through advertisements in comic books. I would look over full page ads for various books, the Forgotten Realms setting and other material from TSR. I was also a fan of movies like Dragonslayer, Excalibur, Beastmaster and others. Mixed with this was also a love for the stories of Kings like Arthur and David, Robin Hood and the Arabian Nights. My grandmother had an old library of children's books that were my mothers and I read them constantly. Other things like the Time Life Enchanted World books and such helped fuel and imagination that would lead me to want to play D&D/AD&D and even use elements that I had only read about in my playing. Baseball bats became swords, the land we lived on were the wilds of a kingdom, a cellar was a dungeon entrance and an old barn and inn and tavern. Before playing the game I had begun and imaginary world based on all of the above. It seems I was just waiting to find the game to take it to the next level.
However there was a minor problem. I live in the Bible Belt and while the Satanic Panic was dying in other parts of the nation it was still alive in SW Missouri. D&D was pure evil, Satanists were everywhere (quite possibly more numerous than the commies) and imagined threats were the norm. Add in a reactionary set of parents and you get a good idea that I would never get to buy the game. The funny thing was that I was allowed to read the stories, watch the movies and even draw some pictures. But, D&D was never to be discussed.
That changed in mid 89 or 90 (AD&D 2e) when I got to play my first game at a friend's house. I had two characters (Human Cleric and Dwarf Fighter) and all I did was fight monsters but it was amazing. I read the books with gusto and got it. I can remember thinking that this game must have been made for me. It wasn't long before I was doing what I could to get my own copies and set up my own game.
One thing to remember is that outside of the core books there was precious little gaming material to be had where I lived. The closest game shop was 40 miles away (a long trip for those that relied on parental transport) and there was little money. Thankfully a comic shop helped me get the core books even though he charged more for ordering them. Beyond that though, there was little 'official' material to be had so we made most of what we did up. Ideas were gained by stories, video games, and movies. As well we borrowed from the little official stuff we had which was about 3 Dragon mags, one module, the core 1e books and a TSR catalog.
At this point I want to take a side road about how I got D&D sold to my parents. As I said they bought into the panic level of the day and thought the game was evil. Well, they had heard about the demons, devils and other stuff in the game. They also heard that the game held true magic rituals and such. The friend that introduced the game to me was over with his books and let my parents look them over. Thankfully they were the 2e books with much of the 'offending material' cut out. They gave AD&D a look over and saw nothing wrong with it. So you can say what you want about the 2e era of TSR, if it wasn't for 2e I and others would not have gotten a pass to play if certain changes wasn't made. For all that critics say is wrong with 2e, the game did get new gamers in and quelled the panic around it.
I think I will stop here for now as typing is killing my shoulder right now. More later.
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Post by Admin Pete on Mar 4, 2015 17:01:29 GMT -5
This is great stuff, you should copy paste this first post into the Introductions thread. Removing the "occult" stuff doesn't bother me a bit since I never use that stuff anyway.
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Post by Mr Darke on Mar 4, 2015 19:07:44 GMT -5
After I get this finished I'll do it. I thought this would be a good conversation starter for this thread.
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