31 Questions for Barking Alien - Question 10

My first late post for the month! That's pretty good actually. 

Question #10 comes to us from Timothy S. Brannan, a fellow who has been reading and responding to my posts here and elsewhere for quite a while. Really happy to have him supplying a question. And it's a doozy...

What was your introduction to RPGs like? What game(s) did you play and how did your growth change from that?

This is a story I've told before but I'm going to try and give it to you from a different perspective. Here goes...

On August 28th of 1977, an 8 year old Adam was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons through the Holmes Basic Box Set by 7 year old Thomas Zizzo. Being the go-to guy for any geek question ranging from a Phaser's settings to a Superhero's origin, there was no way I was going to pass on the opportunity to participate in a game Tom described as, "It's like playing out a comic book. You create a character, go on adventures, defeat villains, and save people!".

Now here's there rub...

It's interesting to me that in these very first moments you can see the seeds of what will follow. The game is framed like writing or creating a comic book, not like telling a story in a book. Character, Adventure, Villains, and the act of Saving Civilians are a focus, while Killing Monsters and Gaining Treasure isn't mentioned at all. 

Right from the very beginning our frame of reference for running and playing D&D (and therefore roleplaying games in general as far as we knew) was not the literature that Gygax, Arneson, and the other early creators of the game had in mind. For us it was comic books, film, and television, including animation, that formed the basis of how we saw an RPG adventure or campaign unfolding. 

I only played that original campaign for about a dozen sessions and it wouldn't be until June of the following year that I got to play D&D again. This time I was made designated DM and the experience had me itching to stay on that side of the screen. Between 1978 and 1982 I would play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons and eventually a lot of Advanced D&D. I would also play and run a number of other games during this period, most notably a stint of Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha, a once-in-a-lifetime-lightning-in-a-bottle campaign of Boot Hill, and a session of Traveller that left me with a rather negative opinion of the game. 

One constant in this era of my time in the hobby was that the more I played D&D under other DMs, the more I disliked doing so. The game itself was starting to bug me but not nearly as much as the attitude of those who ran it. The AD&D players and DMs I met were so rigid, so antagonistic towards each other that I rapidly fell out of love with the game that got me into RPGs in the first place. 

My growth following 1982 was heavily influenced by the games I discovered, played, and ran but also, moreso, a desire not to do what those D&D gamers were doing. My goal was to do things differently and so far, its worked out pretty well. 

AD

Barking Alien