Most of the people that I have met
started role-playing in high school; so, I guess I got a late start. It was 1997, and I was living in the Burke
East Dorm at the University of Alabama when I was first introduced to role-playing
and Vampire the Masquerade. I hadn’t
made very many friends in college yet. However,
each night when I came back to the dorm, I saw a group of people playing Magic
the Gathering, and eventually they and I started to talk. I had played Rage and Blood War and a few
other trading card games in high school, but I had never really done much more
than buy a starter deck and a few packs.
So, I understood Magic, but I had never played it.
Eric,
Jim, Justin Rich, Matt, and the others were into role playing and even went to
LARPs, and as we became friends, I was invited to play in their one shot
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition games. Initially, I didn’t accept their invitations,
but I did sit in and watch one game.
Those of you familiar with AD&D 2E will understand when I say that
it was a very, very confusing game to watch, especially for someone who had
only played a few board games like Risk and Monopoly prior to that. THAC0 still gives me a headache.
I
guess it was a few weeks later when Matt invited me to play in a Vampire: The Dark Ages game. Matt was a big fan of White Wolf games, and
he had several of the core books for Second Edition. He sat down with me and explained the rules
and helped me build a character. I’d been
a writer, and in high school I wrote a LOT of terrible poems and stories in my
notebooks. So when Matt explained the
storytelling system to me and the idea of creating a persona, I understood that
immediately. Together we built my first
character, a female Toreador duelist looking for repentance. Obviously, that character was somewhere
between Wareador and drama queen. The perfect character for a guy who wrote bad poetry right?
During
the course of the adventure, however, my character got into an argument with
another character and my character stomped off angrily.
It was first time playing and I really didn’t understand the underlying
rules of role playing, such as don’t split the party and play well with others.
Split from the group, my character stumbled into a village just before dawn. Seeking shelter, my character hid in one of
the houses, but unfortunately, the village was not populated with mortals but
with werewolves. Those werewolves ripped my character
apart.
Even
though my character died, I had a great time.
I was pretty pissed off about my character dying, but nevertheless, I had fun. A few weeks later, I went and bought a copy
of West End Games Star Wars Revised & Expanded Edition because I was a huge
Star Wars fan back then. I ran my first game shortly afterwards and I’m still role-playing. So, thanks to Matt, Justin, Eric, Justin, Jim
and all the others for bringing me into role-playing.
So many RPG origin stories (of players, not characters) are crash and burn type affairs. It's a wonder that there's a hobby left to enjoy! Haha.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of that has to do with how players are brought into the hobby. Many times, players aren't given information they need about how to play the game, not just the rules but the game's assumptions about how players should act. Maybe I should right an article on that.
Delete