My Roleplaying History

I had my first experience with roleplaying games back in the winter of '85 (I was 13 at the time). One of my friends got the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Red Box) for Christmas and we were pretty hooked at once. I had only started learning English in school 1½ year before and weren't really good at it, but my friend (who was a year older) had flair for it and could do most of the reading. Naturally he took on the job of dungeon master, while I and a couple of his friends created some characters. I must admit, that I can't remember what my first character was or what he was called, but it was most likely a fighter.

Back then our games were more and more elaborate dungeons, drawn out on graph paper, with each room containing a monster, that had nothing to do with the rooms before or after it. It was there to give us something to hit and loot - and it was awesome! I don't think we actually ventured outside a dungeon until we decided we were ready to graduate to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons around 1988.

With AD&D 1st Edition we discovered a huge world outside the dungeons of whatever unnamed world we were roaming. It was a pretty huge leap in rules complexity, but an even bigger leap in graduating to role-playing instead of roll-playing. Nevertheless we barely scratched the surface (and probably only played a game or two), before 2nd edition came around and we upgraded to that in '89. The following five years were our golden age of roleplaying. We tried out every character we could think of, bought every supplement we could get our hands on and I graduated to dungeon master, alternating with our original GM at running our bi-weekly games. It was at this time I got my first taste of creating my own campaign and as I remember it, I used every moment awake drawing maps and coming up with one outlandish NPC after another. That probably wasn't the case, but for a couple of years, roleplaying was a huge part of my life and more or less the only social part of it. We also branched out into other gaming systems, including MERP, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars RPG, and a couple of others, but we always returned to AD&D.

Unfortunately these things never last and as people moved to other cities to go to college, our games became bi-monthly rather than bi-weekly. It was still a lot of fun and we had a lot of memorable sessions, but for me at least, it couldn't keep its appeal. By the late nineties, I had lost my RPG cravings and didn't really enjoy it anymore. It was still nice to get together with the old crew, but as often as not, we just ended up drinking beer and watching Star Trek.

I played my last game with the old group in '97 or '98 and after that we drifted completely apart. I have only met up with a couple of them once since, in an attempt to rekindle the old bond, but while it was fun to reminisce, it really didn't light up the old spark.

For almost 10 years I barely gave roleplaying a thought, but by 2008 I began getting the bug once again. As mentioned, my old group was long gone, but a group of friends I had gotten to know through my wife, were playing a game with homemade rules. They often talked about it when we got together and asked me about my experiences with D&D, which made me long for the old days. I began reading up on the newest rules (Dungeons & Dragons 3.5) and joined in on one of their games. After a short while, I bought a box of rulebooks (4th edition had just been released and I found a guy online who was switching to that and sold all his old 3.5 stuff dirt cheap) and set up a game as DM.

Unfortunately it never became more than the one gaming session. Other life events got in the way and took my time and while I had fun, I couldn't spare the time for D&D too. I still bought and read a few gaming supplements over the next couple of years and tried to get started again, but without any success.

Then a few months ago I came across a review of the new shining Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. I had read and hated what they did with 4e, but the way 5e was described, immediately made me think of the old days and AD&D. I downloaded the basic rules and read through them and a few minutes after having finished, I was contacting my friends asking them if they were interested in letting me break up their usual RPG schedule and DM a couple of sessions of 5th. Luckily they agreed and here we are.