Rediscovering RPGs

I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid. A lot. I still remember the excitement of opening that D&D Basic set in 1980, when I was 11. And the cake decorated with lead figures* for my 12th birthday. And when I wasn't playing RPGs, I was usually reading, writing, drawing or dreaming about them.

In the mid-80s, a big fan of Citadel miniatures, I started playing the shiny new Warhammer (first and second editions), switching to the wonderful WFRP first edition as soon as it came out. I felt straight away that WFRP was my game. I'd discovered it myself, but there was more to it than that: characters had far grittier and more realistic backgrounds, the game was set in a fascinating and coherent world based on our own, and best of all it was packed with wry humour and an unmistakeable whiff of Britishness (at a time when it felt like British gamers were second-class citizens to the Americans who wrote most published RPG material).

But by the time I left university, in 1991, I'd given up RPGs. I don't remember why - I suspect that my increasing dislike to High Fantasy and the fallacy of good vs. evil may have had something to do with it. Plus having less time in general. I joined in with 4 or 5 games of Runequest in my mid-20s (which I enjoyed very much) but essentially I've not played an RPG in around 30 years.

Fast-forward to 2020. Coronavirus. Lockdown. I got bored. So bored that I tidied my office... and stumbled on a trove of old role-playing books, zines and supplements, some of which are pictured above. The pictures, the smells, the names... Proustian stuff! That original D&D Monster Manual... I'd spent weeks, months, years, colouring it in as a kid - every single picture. And every single monster brought back memories of games past.

Gradually I hankered to play again.  I admit, I'd been a little snobbish about RPGs, but had been warming to them again for a few years, while discovering that more and more people I love and respect were RPGers.

I posted on Facebook, asking if anyone had a game I could join. I ended up playing in a 5e campaign with a bunch of people around half my age, none of whom I'd known until then. They, and the campaign, were - are - amazing. Playing a plague-refugee ranger in the continent of Hartia became my highlight of the week.

At first I was happy just to play in this campaign. I thought about running my own for about 2 seconds before going "whoah, way too much work". Within a month I had joined two three more campaigns. Another month and I'd started writing a campaign of my own. Next I had pipe-dreams about running it as a PBeM (already play-testing this with half-a-dozen people, hush hush but the name of this blog is a clue). And now I've started writing stand-alone adventures with a view to publishing them. Quite a journey in three months.

Along the way I've rediscovered my fetish for reading all sorts of RPG stuff. And I've hit a goooood deep vein of stuff. I've also discovered what things like 5e, OSR and LotFP mean (although I'm still in the dark about B/X. My biggest bugbear [5d8+5HP] about any new hobby or workplace is the overwhelming flood of acronyms**).

On this blog I'll be sharing some of my learnings along the way. And, in time, I'll be sharing some of that sweeet sweeet content that I'm writing.

* I do not recommend trying this at home. Lead's not great for your brain. Although iT NevuRH DoNe mE ANiE HaRum.

** I know they're called initialisms actually, but language evolves, grandma.