Today's topic is How I got started playing Dungeons & Dragons, now called Original D&D in my case.
A little background, I grew up in a rural area on a farm in southern Ohio where my family had moved from central WV. We at one time or another had sheep, cows, hogs, chickens, guineas, horses, goats, turkeys, cats, dogs and a pony or two and a mule. We spent a lot of time outdoors and in the woods. Farm work was inter spaced with hunting and fishing. However, a big part of our lives as kids was my dads stories, he had hundreds of them, as did our grandfathers and uncles. We were also read to every night and we also heard fairy tales and other stories. When I started reading I was introduced to the library where I devoured all the fairy tales, folk stories, mythology, fantasy and science fiction I could get my hands on.
I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E Howard, One Thousand and One Nights, Beowulf, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Samuel Butler, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Jack London, George MacDonald, Peter S. Beagle, G. K. Chesterton, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Willaim Morris, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank R. Stockton, and of course J. R. R. Tolkien and too many others to count. This does not even get into the movies that I saw. The earliest I remember is seeing The Blob the summer before first grade. I loved the Sword & Sandal movies, the Pirate movies, the old horror movies that were shown on TV, Science Fiction and Westerns and a ton of others.
Fast forward to the fall of 1975. The first day or two of the fall semester I met a guy from Columbus who had gotten Dungeons & Dragons in the spring of 1974 and had played with his friends always as the referee. He told me about the game and I was immediately all in. In a few days, we had our first game with 12 players, 6 men and 6 women. Fields of study (majors) ranged from English, French, Latin, to Biology, History, Chemistry, Geology, Physics and Engineering. At least those are the ones I remember.
Our first game two elves, two dwarves, one hobbit and seven humans. That was pretty much the ratio even when the group got bigger. In the beginning both dwarves and the hobbit were fighters, but later on there would be two hobbits thieves, one dwarven and one elven thief. In the beginning both elves were magic users, we only had one guy who ever played an elven fighter/magic user. Of the seven humans we had two magic-users, one cleric and four fighters. So the initial 12 were one cleric, four magic users and seven fighters. We only had one guy who ever played a cleric, and he is now one in real life for lo these many years, well a priest that is.
I have vivid memories of the first game and going through six characters that first evening. :D When death is not permanent because you can roll up another character and be back in the game in a few minutes, how cool is that! I was the stand in the gap guy which is what I enjoyed doing. I eventually got a few characters up to 8th or 9th level. We played twice a week from 8-12 hours per game and occasionally much longer. We had one finals week where many of us were done by Tuesday and we played most of the day (16 hours or so) for three days straight.
The referee had a set of table dice that we all used to roll up on characters 3d6 in order no adjustments or re-rolls. Hit Points were 1d6 and if it was a one, well that is what you had. From the first game we ran all action as being simultaneous. A natural 20 always hit and on a natural 20 you rolled again and a second natural 20 was a kill. I varied that in a number of different ways over the years.
Within a few games we started adding players and later than year we usually had 16 players. Also within a few games, we had people hanging out and watching the games. In the later years, we ran 16-20 players every game, mid 20's maybe a dozen times, and high 20's up to 30 a couple of times. We always had an audience and I would guess at least 60-70 different people played at least once. Every game had a different cast with a core group that was always there and the rest varied from game to game.
When we had a party of 20 later on, we would have one cleric, four thieves, six magic-users and nine fighters. So we were always light on healing magic, and magic items for the cleric were a priority and he always got first dibs on the magic armor. Yeah, we wanted to keep him alive. One guy alternated between magic-users and thieves and never once played a human, except for later on when he played druids. The guy who played the elven fighter/magic-user (the other ref) also played human fighters, an Illusionist and a Bard. I was the only one who ever played a paladin or a ranger.
Out of that whole group I was the only one that got to read the rule books (and to be sure the only one that ever asked) and the only one that my friend ever offered to let ref. A month, maybe two, in I started reffing and he moved over to playing and I did most of the reffing after that as he would much rather play and had not gotten to up to that point. Once I had access to the books, I ordered my own set. No one else was ever interested in being a referee, and he preferred to play, I was the one that preferred to ref, of which I was quite happy.
The guy that introduced us to D&D never ran a dungeon, it was all city and wilderness, but after I had reffed for a little while I decided to do a dungeon. My prep for the game was selecting nine quotes. When the game started they set out across a desert for two weeks until they came to an old set of ruins (yeah, I liked Ruins from the beginning) and eventually down into the dungeon below. Somewhere in a box I might still have that list of quotes. My first dungeon ran horizontally and after travelling for a ways through a rock walled cavern they came to a large oak door that looked very old and was covered with cobwebs. Beside it on the rock wall was the first quote carved into the wall. They got the door open and the adventure began.
They eventually made it through each area, (some of which involved game weeks) and continued to the next door. I do not remember a ton about it without being able to look at the quotes, but I do remember that it was a very psychological adventure, one area being one where they had to figure out that they were being lulled to complacency from which they would never leave, one of them figured it out and then had to convince the rest of the group to continue which he almost failed to do. At the end of it they had obtained no treasure and fought no physical battles, but they talked about it all week and I got a lot of good feedback on the game.
I have always run all of my games the same way, very minimal prep and create on the fly from very minimal prompts. I do write things up and tinker with the rules all the time, but I never pre-plan an adventure. I create opportunities and then let things unfold and surprise us all. When I sat down with those quotes, behind each door I was as surprised as the players were. I can run a game on zero notice anytime and anywhere, I am always ready to run a game and create a complete new world on the fly. I enjoy creating one of a kind magic items, all types of quirky things, and one of a kind monsters. My inspirations are people like Dave Arneson and Dave Hargrave. My games are fast and furious with a lot of what is called "player agency." I loved the question, "What do you want to do?" That is the most important part of OD&D, is being willing to keep asking that question.
IMO and For Me, improvisational gaming is the maximum fun and the players kept coming back twice a week for the four years of college gaming. It still works even today with all ages. I also played it with my younger brothers during the summers.
If you made it this far the topic for tomorrow is 30 Day D&D Challenge - Favorite Playable Race.
