Introductions

[serendipity]

I thought it might be nice to know a bit about everyone, just so we better understand your perspective when you post. If you feel comfortable doing so, please tell us what area of the country (or the world!) you're from; how long you've been gaming; whether you're a player, a DM, or both; and anything else you might want to share.

I'd start, but I thought our host might want that honor....

[Finarvyn]

I'm from downstate Illinois, but have lived in the Chicago area for about 20 years now. I am the DM of my group about 98% of the time, but give up the comfy chair occasionally to allow others to experience the fun of being in charge.

I began playing wargames and miniatures back in 1973 or 1974. We played Chainmail on a sand table in a friend’s garage. That same friend got a boxed set of OD&D for Christmas and that started me off on 30+ years of role-playing fun. One of the best times of my life was after about ten years of gaming, when my mother admitted that D&D was a legitimate hobby of mine and not "just a phase".

I was a Judges Guild subscriber from the beginning and we read the Dragon back when it was still called the Strategic Review. We attended a few GenCon sessions in the early 1980’s and evolved from OD&D to AD&D and then 2E as the years went on. During the past three decades I have read and played dozens of RPGs, as well as served as playtesters for several of them. Throughout the years, OD&D has remained my favorite game system.

My current gaming group playtestested Castles & Crusades and I have brought the “old school” philosophy to several people who had only played the other way. Now my children have joined our gaming group and I hope that they continue the tradition.

I started this message board in an attempt to have an impact on a gaming community that I have enjoyed interacting with for so long. I have no aspirations of trying to “compete” with Dragonsfoot or Knights & Knaves Alehouse but instead it is my hope that this message board will offer more focus on the edition that I enjoy the most. Most of those other boards seem to pick up the hobby with AD&D, but I wanted to focus on the brown books that I grew to love in 1975.

[crimhthanthegreat]

> Removed by staff. <

[jochen]

Hi all, the day I was born I guess even the OCE was not in stores anymore - which is true anyway because I don't know if we had the box sets in Germany at all. So how did I get attracted? It started for me when SSI came with the AD&D computer games that were mostly about character generation and combat, I would say. Well, I enjoyed these games so much that I started to make little colored tokens displaying all the monsters I encountered in the games. After some days I had a whole box of self-made monster tokens. I then went to a game shop and bought some polyhedron. I tried to understand the mechanics of these games as good as I could and I made note of everything I saw in the game. I did not care about if there actually was something like a AD&D Player's Handbook. This Idea just did not come to my mind and anyway I would not have been able to afford it, since I was a child and was nearly broke from buying the funny dice.

But then, with all notes taken, I gathered my friends and let them pick a type of character each. Then I painted a token for each player he could identify with. What shall I say? What we did then was playing a game made up from maybe the most crude bundle of house rules ever. Nevertheless, I have to admit that this was the best time concerning gaming that I ever head. It was just magic! My friends really started to love and identify with their characters and they were so excited from any little adventure I would design.

Some years later I could lay my hand on used copies of the AD&D Handbooks (I got them for only 20 Deutsche Mark, which was really cool - maybe about 12 dollars back then), and we were proud to be now real AD&D players. When 3E came in stores, I was a little foolish, attracted by all the fancy colors and so on.... oh my. We played 3E for several years until I came to a point where I said, listen folks I am really fed up with this Edition, it drives me crazy, I hate it and I am not willing to write any adventure for this system any more, just remember the old days where we just had so much fun with creating our own games. This is the more recent past. I was looking for an rpg that fits to my demand for a rules light system and I absolutely found it in OD&D. I could get a copy of the OCE and holding the brown books in my hands inspires me more than anything else. Magic Items they are!

EDIT: I recently took "Pool of Radiance" off my shelf and loaded it in my C64. OMG, how shocking! You have to disk swap and wait while loading so much. I find it nearly unplayable. Just amazing... how did we manage not to become crazy back in the days?

[ffilz]

I was born in 1963. I started gaming with Tactics II somewhere around 1971 or so. I grew up in Lexington and Concord Massachusetts.

I initially poo-pooed the idea of D&D, chosing at one point to buy Tractics instead of D&D (I looked at both boxed sets in a hobby store, and chose Tractics instead).

It all changed in the fall of 1977 when my best friend got a copy of the (original) Basic D&D for his birthday. Still, I poo-pooed the game (who would want to play with pen and pencil and not with miniatures and such). But I watched them play (his older brother had been playing D&D at school somewhat before this). I started to read the book. I saw that at least there was a visual component (the dungeon map). After the game ended and we went off to bed, I took the game box (with it's thin rule book, stack of geomorphs, and the Monster and Treasure Assortment) and started digesting it. I didn't sleep at all that night. In the morning, I declared myself ready to run the game. I was already bucking with the limited rules and proposed that there should be some differentiation between weapons, which I suggested be based on cost (at which one player quipped he wanted to buy a galley and use that...:-). It should be noted that I had already started games hacking as a kid, having tried my hand at a new board for Tactics II, creating a Revolutionary War game covering the events of April 19, 1775 (I drew squares - well rectangels - on a wooden plank for the board... literaly a _board_ game...). Trying out Little Wars. Before I got Tractics, I had started to read Donald Featherstone's books, and was proposing things like increased armor for sloping armor.

I forget what we actually did, but the players rolled up characters, and started to trek into the dungeons (the geomorphs, not even cut apart, so each level was divided into three sections by a big coridor I think, or perhaps I just ignored the space between the geomorphs), populated from the Monster and Treasure Assortment.

The big activity of the birthday weekend was a visit to Battleship Cove in Massachusetts. We all piled into his family station wagon, with several of us in the cargo area in the back (pre-seat belt laws!). I forget how much we played, but I do know that we retired at least one set of PCs because they became 4th level and fell off the end of the book.

I forget what I did for the next year or so. I do know I got heavily into Chivalry and Sorcery that my friend got for Christmas that year (I now own that copy of C&S, which had fallen apart from my flattening it out to photocopy the pages, I probably spent more on photocopies than the cost of the book...). I did eventually get the boxed set and supplements, though I must not have made much use of them because the books are still in pristine shape (the box is somewhat crushed, and is from the "collectors" era). I do remember perusing the Monster Manual in the spring of 1978 while at my friends family vacation home in ski country (at the time, I think we were playing Metamorphosis Alpha). I got the AD&D Players Handbook for Christmas in 1978 and soon purchased the Monster Manual and started an AD&D campaign (probably using the DMG charts from the Dragon as soon as they were published).

From there, I did pretty much head off into AD&D land. I did buy and peruse the BECM series. At one point in college, I did revert my AD&D campaign to Monsters & Treasure + Greyhawk magic items (plus selected ones from AD&D).

These days, I'm planning on getting back into old school D&D. I'm considering something of a mishmash between OD&D and AD&D, though the idea of playing just OD&D does have some appeal (but I might look to some other sources for a few ideas, I did like AD&D multi-classing better than OD&D [especially the very confusing elf multi-class which was the only one available in Men and Magic], and I like the idea of attributes being a little more important than per OD&D). Perhaps the way to go is an OD&D base, plus pull in bits from house rules, AD&D, BECM, the Dragon, and perhaps a few other places as usefull.

Frank

[calithena]

(Frank - you might enjoy the OD&D house rules down in my game.)

Name's Sean, gaming since 1977 (wee age of 8 years), my first adventure actually used the first edition of Holmes with the geomorphs. I made my own dungeon and DMed for my father ("Boromir", a fighter), mother ("Galadriel", an elf) and sister ("Goldberry", either another elf or a magic-user). They went into a dungeon, my dad charged in and got killed by goblins while mom and sis hung back. Then my dad made "Boromir Jr.", same thing happened with a ghoul, though at least on that one they all made friends with a blink dog. Then my dad made "Gimli", a dwarf, and the same thing happened with maybe some orcs. Then my family wouldn't play with me any more and I had to go find some friends to play with instead. Fortunately, I did.

Before my dad decided to bag it he bought us an OCE because we were curious about what to do after level 3. I played original heavily with my friends and kids at the public library until the AD&D PHB came out - we updated the classes but kept playing with the OD&D framework, and then just treated the DMG as a grab bag sort of like the Arduin Grimiores (except for the hit/save charts, which I believe we adopted). This was standard praxis for a long time afterwards, this OD&D/AD&D hybrid.

I play other games from time to time because I'm interested in what people are doing with this big weird hobby of ours but the One True Game keeps pulling me back in. I was almost going to just bite the bullet and start playing 3.5 with a vengeance (reason: large pool of available players), but this board saved me just in time. I think I'm going to stick with OD&D instead.

[serendipity]

In the midst of all you old timers (as measured by gaming years, I mean!), I am a relative newby. I’m my gaming group’s chronicler, and my earliest transcript is dated February 9, 1994, so that’s when I generally date the advent of my gaming. In actuality, I played a year or two before that. Most of my gaming experience comes from that one gaming group; though members have come and gone, the core group has remained constant and steadfast.

I buy lots of gaming stuff but own little, as it nearly always gets given unread to my DM as a hopeful nudge in the direction I’d like our group to go. Other than core books of the various role playing games we play, I have a collection of Knights of the Dinner Table that is complete through about two years ago and all of the Order of the Stick books. Reading KoDT and Order of the Stick definitely helped me through lean gaming times.

As a player, I appreciate having challenging character flaws to work with and am not much of a power gamer. I think the most powerful character I’ve ever had was only ninth level. I’m a large percentage Narrativist, with some Simulationist thrown in for good measure. I also have a sense of fairness which has often made others want to bash me over the head with a semi-hard object. Oh, and I usually deserve it.

Other than BMing Bunnies & Burrows for my niece and nephew, I’ve only been a player, not a DM. I’ve gamed OD&D (with innumerable forms, variations, themes, and house rules), 7th Sea, Sorcerer, Amber Diceless, T&T, and Call of Cthulhu, and I playtested C&C. I think I like C&C so much because it reminds me of the OD&D white box rules. System simplicity and an overload of imagination are definitely the way to go.

--Sere

[Lord Gwydion]

Hey there. I'm Dennis. Also from Illinois (West-Central) originally, although I've been living in Japan for near a decade teaching English.

I originally started D&D with Mentzer Basic in 1984, and played primarily BECM for D&D until college when I started to get into AD&D a bit just before Magic: the Gathering sucked me in. When I got back into games after college, it was with 1E/2E hybrid stuff, then here in Japan it was mostly 3E until recently when 3E started to really bother me.

So I'm back with Mentzer for the most part, but I've been curious to see how the Grand Daddy of them all plays, so I joined Calithena's game here.

[meepo]

Hello all!

My real name is Jim and I've lived in the great city of Fort Collins, Colorado all my life. I was born in 1973, too late to witness OD&D the first time around, but still became a wide eyed gamer upon getting the greatest gift ever for my 8th birthday, the Moldvay Basic D&D set purchased from Montgomery Wards. My parents had no idea what it was they were getting me, only that it was very popular with the kids at the time, and somehow related to those silly Endless Quest books I was stockpiling. The following year I received the Expert set and my mind was further blown.

Not really "getting" the relationship between D&D and AD&D, I ended up sticking with D&D until college, where a friend finally explained the differences. Even after playing my first REAL AD&D game, I still didn't get why it was preferred to regular D&D, playing slower and far more detailed. Perhaps it was a matter first exposure, I dunno, but fast, loose, and abstract as always been my play-style.

I never did see the OD&D rules until earlier last year (2006). My only exposure to anything even close was the 1977 'Holmes' rulebook that came in my TSR 25th anniversary boxed set. Quite frankly, I didn't get it at the time (stats do NOTHING mechanical?!?), still clutching to my Moldvay set with gleeful ignorance.

Like many, I bought into the 3rd edition D&D hype and finally put my Moldvay book away for a year or two. When the realities of that system began to sink in, I began to daydream about the joy that ol' Red & Blue set brought me, and thanks tot eh the early day of Dragonsfoot, discovered I was far from alone.

In late 2005, I began reading of the exploits and information of one 'oldschooler', now known as themattjohn, and his Dragonsfoot Q&A thread, and something within me began to grow. While Moldvay has provided me with a basic system, it had also forced me into a certain path of thinking, where some standards of a D&D game HAD TO BE PLAYED IN ONE WAY when this simply wasn't true. I was fascinated, and my thirst for understanding what OD&D's gaming philosophy was unquenchable. Finally, after reading about it for months, thanks mostly to one T. Foster and his highly informative postings on the Knights & Knaves Alehouse, as well as the infectious enthusiasm of diaglo on ENWorld, I was able to justify my purchase of the OCE white boxed set and the first two supplements. The final three came afterwards and Chainmail is still on my radar.

I loved it. The basics were there, with more room for customization that I could imagine. Reading through the old texts fired up my imagination in a way that I hadn't felt in almost 25 years and I knew right away that I'd found the system I was meant to play. Unshackled, I refereed my first game, which was an undeniable success. My friends, who I'd played with for 13 years, recognized the changes OD&D had made with me and welcomed the enthusiasm themselves. There was just one problem...

After my first game, I noticed my books had become noticeably tarnished in play. My $180 "investment" had been damaged somewhat and I realized right then and there while OD&D was a system I was meant to play, my brain had trouble justifying the amount of money I'd spent vs. the play. My first thought was to type up the rules and use printouts when playing, but as I set down that path, the I could feel the creative power of the system draining from me. Then, one night as I was about to fall asleep, something popped in my head: Holmes' Basic set! I hopped out of bed and dug out the rulebook and read it from cover to cover that night. It finally made sense, and with a few changes, was the same OD&D game I was running, minus levels 4+. Gathering my OD&D stuff together the next day, I set forth to expand Holmes, not down the recommended AD&D path that was in its texts, but down OD&D's.

Which brings me to today. While my main rules source is Holmes, the spirit and expansion is OD&D all the way (though the recent availability of the OD&D books in PDF form may change that!). Sadly, my game group suffered a tragedy earlier this summer (no deaths or illnesses, but rather something more embarrassing to my lead player and best friend...) and it looks like my dice bag might not be touched for awhile. But when that day comes, there won't be the usual "what flavor of D&D should I play? Moldvay? Rules Cyclopedia? C&C? 3rd edition?!?" mind boggle that usually occurs for me while I break out the books: it'll be OD&D all the way. And someday, when my now 3 & 4 year olds (who I've been priming since birth with exposure to dice, dragons, and knights!) hopefully become interested, I'll be proud and happy to teach them from the One True Game.

[murquhart72]

Hi, My name is Matt. Born and raised along the southern coast of Maine (but without a taste for seafood). I started gaming at the tender age of 10 with Moldvay's D&D Basic Set. I've owned, played or at least heard of pretty much every RPG from the start to the mid-nineties.
Over the past few years, I've been more of a collector than a player, but still obsess about my all-time favorite game: original Dungeons & Dragons!

[meepo]

Glad ya made it over, mattjon! It wouldn't be a proper OD&D site without ya

[Deleted]

Hi there everyone,

I had not only never played wargames but I had never heard of them before my sophmore year of college. I had played Cowboys & Indians and other such games growing up and I had my toy soldiers that we made up our own games with but nothing organized or connected with anything outside myself and my playmates.

Then in 1975 I was introduced to D&D. I had never had as much fun before as that first game. My friend Kevin who brought the game to us, would not let anyone look at the books, so we played for two months without ever seeing anything in the rulebooks. Then after the two months, I was the first one to get to read them and to take a turn refereeing. I soon ordered my own set and played every chance I had for the next few years of college. I remember a few marathon games that ran from 5pm Friday evening until nearly 8am Sunday morning. (Now I would fall asleep at the table, but back then I could burn that candle at both ends). I also reffed for my two younger brothers on the weekends that I went home and during the summer.

Then college ended and out to the real world I went and didn't play D&D again for over 25 years. I got rid of all my D&D stuff at about year 8 figuring I would never play again. After I was on the internet and stumbled across some D&D pages it started to rekindle my interest and I browsed different sites from time to time and then eventually went to ebay and got my OD&D 5th print and Chainmail, Supplements and Outdoor Survival. I first heard of Arduin in these later years and got the first 3 books and after looking at them realized that my friend had had them and used things from them but kept it secret from all of us.

Since I got back into it, I have reffed a few games for my one brother, his son and a couple of his friends. But that is all. I haven't had any opportunity to play OD&D with anyone else that played it back in the old days. I moved back to OH a few years ago from Indiana and now live in the Columbus area.

I am excited about this site and look forward to keeping up with the posting here. Hopefully I will have something to contribute now and then.

[grodog]

Hola folks---

I started gaming in 1977 in South Jersey at the tender age of 7 and like Cali we played a hash of the rules (though in my case it was Holmes/AD&D rather than Holmes/OD&D, since I didnt' order an OCE from TSR until the early '80s). I played D&D through college, quit upon the advent of 2e, and returned to the game through my love for Greyhawk with 3.0. I have since returned to my roots systems-wise while keeping the same setting.

I've never actually played an OD&D game, just AD&D for me, and I would certainly welcome the opportunity to do so, sometime.

[allensh]

I'm 46 years old and live in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. I started gaming in the summer/fall of 1979 with AD&D1, but have always been fascinated by the original game; my wife bought me an OCR set for my birthday and I got all the supplements on PDF and printed them out, but so far have not convinced anyone to give the original game a try.

Allen

[rogatny]

I'm from Macomb, Illinois. Been gaming since 1981. I tend to DM, mainly due to lack of others to do the DMing. I like DMing a lot, but would rather mix it up.

[coffee]

Hi, everybody.

I've been here for a few days now, so I thought I'd introduce myself.

I got started in gaming in about 1979 or so, with Steve Jackson's Ogre. That was a great game! I got into roleplaying with his Melee and Wizard (from The Fantasy Trip, my first RPG).

Then I got Top Secret, and later the Moldvay Basic and Cook Expert sets.

My first group was heavily into AD&D, so that's what I played for years. That was the base game of the group, but we'd play everything (even OD&D, once). I learned a lot from that group; unfortunately, one of the things I learned was how to be a rules lawyer. (I'm in the process of getting over it now -- you could say I'm a recovering rules lawyer.)

I've been playing 3.0/3.5 for several years now, but it just isn't fun anymore. So I'm hanging it up and going back to the old school gaming I should never have left.

Adventure, not arguments,
Imagination, not indignation,
Fun, not fumbling for a rulebook,
Rulings, not rules,
Making it up, not making do with what they give you,
Getting on with the Game, not getting bogged down it BS

That's what Old School means to me!

[foster1941]

Grew up in Evansville, Indiana, which unbeknownst to me at the time was something of a hotbed of rpging back in the 70s & 80s. Made a new friend in 3rd grade whose older brother played D&D, heard from him (the friend, not the brother) about how cool it was (imagine!) so I asked for and got a D&D Basic Set (Frank Mentzer-edit) from my grandma (!) as a present for Easter (!!) in 1984. Played with that, a Cook/Marsh Expert rulebook (my friend had the exact opposite - a Moldvay Basic rulebook and Mentzer Expert Set), and a Companion Set when it was released that summer for about 6 months, "graduated" to AD&D that fall. Attended my first con (ConTact, which was actually a SF con, but had some gaming also) in fall of '86, with my dad; played in a game of TSR's "Top Secret" with Frank Mentzer's then-wife (who was also head of the RPGA at the time, IIRC) as GM. Attended Glathricon (Evansville's other local con) that next spring with my arm in a cast, played in my first AD&D tournament (Dwarven Quest for the Rod of Seven Parts, Part II), and got my cast signed by con GOH Gary Gygax.

Around that time came across a weird blue-covered D&D Basic rulebook at a local toy-store, bought it, and became fascinated by the early history of the game (TSR also re-released the first Best of (The) Dragon volume around this time, which was an even bigger eye-opener). Also around this time joined the RPGA, got a copy of the TSR Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog with my orientation kit, and became fascinated by the fact that they had copies of the original D&D supplements from the 70s for sale (but, alas, not the actual rules). Saved up my money and ordered these (they were all very late printings with paper instead of cardstock covers) and used them, the Holmes book, and BoTDv1 to 'reverse-engineer' my own set of the original rules, 'cause I figured I'd never be able to get a real copy.

Went to Glathricon '88 and was lucky enough to play AD&D with Gary Gygax (a playtest of his "Necropolis" module, which was at the time supposed to have been released as part of the generic/AD&D-compatible "Fantasy Master" line, before that compnay (New Infinities) folded and the module was later re-worked for the Dangerous Journeys: Mythus system). I've told this story often enough at other sites that there's no need to repeat it here, except to say that I got EGG to autograph my paper-covered copy of Supplement I.

Somehow, later that summer I convinced my mom to drive me up to Milwaukee so I could go to GenCon (we had relatives there that she used to visit, plus it was right before the school-year started so she liked to use the free-time to plan all her classes). By some miracle of fate (in retrospect it might have been all the "pros" deliberately taking it easy on a kid (age 13) who was clearly excited for something that wasn't in collectible condition anyway) I managed to snag a battered copy of the OD&D white box (5th printing) at the GenCon Auction for a cool $8. There's a really cute picture taken by my mom of me standing outside MECCA holding up this set with a huge grin on my face. Kept making that trip every year through 1997, and managed to meet and/or play with most of the "rpg industry luminaries" at one point or another.

After that, there's not much more story to tell. OD&D remained my favorite version of the game, but we still played AD&D because that's what everyone else knew and I was the only one with an OD&D set (which is still true pretty much to this day). Shortly after 2E AD&D was released we all wrote off TSR and D&D and played other games (WFRP, RuneQuest, Mythus, non-fantasy games) through the 90s. When I graduated college and moved out to CA full-time in 1997 (I'd been in school here since '93 but spent breaks/summers in IN with the old crew) I stopped gaming altogether (and thus managed to completely miss out on 3E D&D -- though I do remember paging through the PH when it was first released and thinking "this doesn't look much like the game I used to play"). Stumbled across ENWorld c. 2002 (when a bunch of, umm, "3E fans" started showing up at the Traveller fan-sites upon the announcement of d20 Traveller and I wanted to find out what the hell they were talking about) and through the Gygax threads there found dragonsfoot later that year and for whatever reason found myself talking about not only rpgs, but specifically 1E AD&D again. Went through a phase of a couple years of being very hardcore doctrinaire 1E AD&D fan that seems very odd in retrospect (easily influenced by others?) but gradually found myself drifing back to my OD&D-love. By the time Jerry Mapes opened the first Knights & Knaves Alehouse (January 2005?) after the collapse of the Grognard's Tavern and the demise of various Gene Weigel's Dungeons I was definitely fully back in OD&D mode, and have been there ever since. Am currently playing in a 1E AD&D campaign (with a bunch of guys I met mostly at dragonsfoot back in 2004) but I feel about it more-or-less the same way as all those people who complain that they're stuck playing 3E when they really want to be playing 1E or 2E or C&C or RC D&D (only in my case, of course, it's OD&D) -- the game is too fiddly and complex and slow, and having all those rules for something that' supposed to be fun and simple seems silly.

Non-gaming intro? Why should you care? White, male, single, straight, no pets, graduated college with a valuable degree in English literature, have lived in Hollywood for the last 10 years, currently working in an office doing (more or less) paralegal work related to music licensing. Other interests/hobbies include movies (old and/or arty 'auteur' stuff) and music (classical and indie/alternative mostly, but with a healthy sprinkling of other stuff - it is my job, after all). Except for rpgs I have pretty much zero interest (or patience) for any sort of 'geek culture' - I don't know jack about computers (I've got an iMac that suits me fine), the last video-game console I owned was an Atari2600, it's been at least 10 years since I last bought or read a comic book, I can't understand what an adult would want with plastic action-figures, I didn't even bother to see the 2nd and 3rd "Lord of the Rings" movies because I thought the first one sucked, etc. This creates frequent awkward moments at the gaming table.

[Deleted]

Hello all....

I'm from Connecticut. Been playing D&D since 1984. Started with the basic "red box" set. Then moved to AD&D. By the time 2nd ED came out, I didn't have much opportunity to play, but still bought lots of books because I hoped that I would be able to play. Plus, I just liked reading some of the stuff. I still think 2nd ED had some of the best supplements. Started playing 3rd ED in 2002.

[Deleted]

Well met fellow travelers! I'm 29, and have been playing D&D for around 16 years or so. I started with the "Black Box" set & the Rules Cyclopedia in 1991, moved on to AD&D 2nd edition shortly thereafter, and stuck with that version for most of my gaming career. I briefly flirted with 3rd edition (not my cup of tea), and then late last year, I broke out my Rules Cyclopedia and am currently developing a campaign for my fiancee and a couple of our friends. I feel unfortunate that I have never had the opportunity to play OD&D, but over the past year of "going back to my roots" so to speak, I've gleaned a lot of the game info via online sources. I am happy to be part of the community, and am already implementing certain aspects of OD&D into my Rules Cyclopedia campaign. Thanks everyone, & I look forward to sharing ideas & chatter with y'all! ;D

[Thulean]

Hi.My name is Terry...been playing since 84ish with a mentzer basic then moving to AD&D then AD&D2nd.Bought up the 3.5 core books but have never used them*shrug*.Actually i dont play anymore...not out of choice but because i dont know anyone who plays and i currently live in a smallish town in texas.MY wife has interest but i have never DMed and i dont know about a one player game.
Anyways, hello.

[Deleted]

hi everybody, my name's steve. i live in coastal north carolina. i've been playing rpg's since the early 90's, but have recently discovered odd. i usually dm (though i haven't gamed in a while now...) but i am looking forward to running a new game some time after the christmas season.

[philotomy]

I started playing in 1979. I had heard about this cool game at school, mentioned it at the dinner table, and watched in astonished glee as my dad (with a surprised expression) went to his briefcase and produced a copy of the Holmes basic rules. Apparently some guys at work (he was an officer in the Army) had introduced him to the game. After dinner I rolled up a handful of PCs ("fire any missile at +1 -- what does that mean?" as visions of Pershing missles went through my head) and entered the dungeon of the mad wizard, Kraylor (my dad's first -- and only -- dungeon). Despite having a PC die from the bite of a giant spider, I was hooked. D&D never really caught on with my father, so I took over the basic set (which was the version with the chits and B1).

After that, I started playing D&D with friends (even at school -- we had our books confiscated by teachers serveral times), was introduced to lead figures, et cetera. Some guys had the first couple AD&D books (although I don't think the DMG was out, at the time), so our games were kind of a jumble of Holmes and AD&D. The joyful confusion increased with the arrival of the Moldvay Basic Set (the "red book"). Gradually, however, my D&D game developed into (mostly) by-the-book AD&D. During this period I also started playing Tactics II, Blitzkrieg, and similar games. Eventually, my role-playing hobby expanded to other games, too: Call of Cthulhu, Rolemaster, C&S, etc.

When 2E hit, I checked it out, but didn't like it, much. Most people didn't seem to share my distate for it, though, because I had problems finding anyone willing to play 1E. I played a lot of Rolemaster during this time, and when I started up a new D&D campaign, I proposed Basic D&D, which met with general acceptance (the Mentzer sets were available). That BECM campaign turned out to be one of the best and longest-running campaigns I'd ever run. And I ran it until 3E arrived...

Then I tried switching it to 3E. At first, I liked 3E. It reminded me of Rolemaster, but a little simpler and more streamlined. It "fixed" things I perceived as flaws in BECM (and AD&D). Eventually, though, my long-running campaign fell apart and puttered to its end. I experimented with 3E some more, but it never really worked for me for very long, so I did a post-mortem on my oh-so-successful BECM campaign to figure out what worked so well, there. That's when I really started thinking about system and rules design, and what worked best in my games. One thing 3E had emphasized was "rules mastery" and "behind the curtain" understanding; I took that and applied it to BECM. I realized that the very things I had been considering flaws or gaps were often strengths!

I started experimenting with various "rules light" systems, and ended up starting some campaigns with Castles & Crusades, haunting Dragonsfoot and KnK, and generally rediscovering a love of old-school D&D. Having never *really* played Holmes or OD&D, I thought I'd give them a try, too, and judge them from my new perspective. What I found is that OD&D suits me exceptionally well, and that brings me here.

[tgamemaster1975]

I played tons of games as I grew up and che- err houseruled all of them. I don't think there is any game of any kind that I have ever played that has not been houseruled.

I started playing OD&D in 1975 and have been playing ever since. I have played none of the classic versions but have played both 1e and 2e in the AD&D realm. I didn't care for 2e and went back to 1e. I played OD&D all along with AD&D on the side. At this time I am exclusively playing OD&D.

It is always interesting to see others talk about their families and how they viewed D&D. Being an adult when I started, my families view was never revelant. I never talked about it to my parents, since they never read any of the science fiction or fantasy books I had all through my childhood. They never restricted my reading or anything, I never had a curfew. Never had a conversation with my parents about when to be home or anything. They just trusted me to be sensible I suppose. I bought my own car when I was 16 and worked during the school year and during the summers.

The group I currently play with is small but has both men and women in it and a few kids, boys and girls. About 10 players total right now.

[thorswulf]

Hi, my real name is Dwight, and I live in Olympia, Washingtonwith my wife and daughter. I was introduced to D&D during a session of a TAG program (Talented and Gifted) that involved animation and multi media stuff. I saw this guy making this armature, and sculpting a dragon onto it. Very cool I thought! I asked him what he was doing and he showed me this funny hardback book with lots of pictures of monsters. Wow! This is just like all the stuff I saw in the movies, and read in the comic books! Needless to say, I was hooked . The guy with the Mosnter Manual was Robert Macguuire. Years later at community college I would take Algebra from his dad, and Philosophy from his mom! Well the world is a very small place sometimes!

That Christmas I got the Holmes edition and some dice in my stocking. I guess my mom figured it kept me out of trouble, and besides she liked science fiction and fantasy novels too! it was really miniatures that cemented my love for D&D. I remember the first trip to the big hobby store in Eugene, Oregon. High Elf with bow by Ral partha was my first miniature.

Over the last 28 years, I gamed a lot of different games, purchased several thousand miniatures, and played lots of miniature wargames too. When I moved to Olympia to attend college at Evergreen State College I met John McEwan. For those of you who don't know him, John is the owner, sculptor, and creator of Starguard: The game that would not die! Starguard is as old as D&D, and John still sells figures for the game to this very day. John turned me on to historical wargaming and I regularly play with some very interesting old schoolers, and John at his home.

I have a nice collection of older and newer figures that I have painted up over the years. To me the spectacle of the miniatures has been the heart of good gaming experiences. I have several cigar boxes filled with what I call dungeon decor. I find that most players who play like this for the first time have a great time too.

Dwight Grosso aka Thorswulf

[crimhthanthegreat]

allensh said:

I'm 46 years old and live in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. I started gaming in the summer/fall of 1979 with AD&D1, but have always been fascinated by the original game; my wife bought me an OCR set for my birthday and I got all the supplements on PDF and printed them out, but so far have not convinced anyone to give the original game a try.

Allen

Hi Allen and welcome!

Welcome to all!

[grodog]

Has anyone pinged diaglo @ ENWorld to join yet? It seems sort of odd not to have him on the board, since he's (in my mind) the posterboy for OD&D in a 3.x world.

[Finarvyn]

grodog said:

Has anyone pinged diaglo @ ENWorld to join yet? It seems sort of odd not to have him on the board, since he's (in my mind) the posterboy for OD&D in a 3.x world.

Sent one today.

EDIT: Hmmm. It bounced back and for some reason I can't send a PM on ENWorld, so I sent him a PM on Dragonsfoot. Hope he checks there!

[Deleted]

My name is Tom, I read, but until very recently, rarely post at Dragonsfoot under the name "vstring".

I started playing D&D in 1982 when my brother bought the Moldvay box set and used me as a guinea pig to try his hand at DMing (I was only allowed to explore the Keep on the Borderlands and I managed to bring some villainous ruffians to justice - it was like crack). The day after my first game, I recruited a few guys from the neighborhood to roll up characters and play, as my brother refused to take me through the Caves of Chaos without a sufficient party to accompany me (he suckered me into finding him a group to DM for). For me and my friends, '82 became the Summer of Love ...as in, love to kill Goblins, Orcs and Kobolds.

I dropped the game in '86 to pursue girls (looking back, I was better at clearing out dungeons with my friends and should have stuck with that). I didn't pick up the game again until 2003 after playing Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil and pondering what was missing from the experience - the computer couldn't replicate the fun of cooperating in game with my friends nor did it allow me the freedom to do whatever I wanted/needed to do to overcome a monster or puzzle. I recruited some friends and co-workers who also had D&D in their past to try the pen and paper version again; we ruled out playing 3.5 after reading, but not recognizing the game as presented in the new Player's Handbook; eventually, we settled with Moldvay (I did try 3.5 a couple of times since and, for me at least, the experience passed for D&D, I just didn't like it).

I'm here, because I've begun to ponder the possibility of switching to the original box set rules or Holmes basic after reading Philotomy Jurament's enthusiastic posts at Dragonsfoot and Meepo's Holmes Companion. Very effective evangelism.

[Deleted]

Hello.

I've been playing D&D since 1983. My interest in OD&D comes from a PDF I found on the internet a few years ago. This pdf was of the original D&D rules. I was intrigued.

I bought the 3rd edition rules in 2000. But, hey, I like the old school stuff better.

My oldest D&D book is the Supplement I - Blackmoor. I only have a PDF printout of the original rules.

Since finding this website, I'm reading those old rules. I especially like Book 3 - The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. I'm thinking of starting a dungeon that is at least a dozen levels deep plus offshoot levels and levels under construction. But I'll start by designing 3 levels at a time.

[tgamemaster1975]

abramelech, let us know how that dungeon is going. And Welcome!