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Over the years we've drifted apart, geographically at least, but I've met new friends in Denver to play with, as well as getting into the world of PBeM (Play By E-Mail) gaming, which has spread. Frankly, I'd say the majority of the people I've called friends since I reached college (not to mention my wife, both my Best Men, and my daughter's godmother) were met playing RPGs. Which is not to say that's all that our relationships have consisted of ... but RPGs were the start. Pretty weird, eh? Though D&D was the first big commercial success in this area, I only played the game, per se, a few times until recently. My freshman year in college, a hall-mate, Bob Barton, had some of the original D&D rule books, small pamphlets only a step removed from miniatures rules, complete with stats (but no real descriptions, let alone pictures) for various monsters -- our interpretation of what an "ear seeker" looked like and did was rather unique. We played a couple of two-person games, and that was it. I bought a basic D&D set in my freshman year, and held some "open invitation" games using those rules. But I quickly found that others were "rolling their own" as far as rules went, and that seemed a good idea to me. So I started writing my own rule sets, spell books, etc. It helped that, as a college student, I had no other serious time commitments, ahem, and so could stay up until 2 in the morning totally revising my rules on a weekly basis. Eventually, post-college, I started working with "real" rules systems, including Chaosium's Superworld, Mayfair Games' defunct DC Heroes system, and Steve Jackson's GURPS rules. I've also dabbled a bit in the White Wolf World of Darkness system. Currently, one of my pet favorites is Phage Press' Amber Diceless Role-Playing Game (ADRPG). It's set in the universe of Roger Zelazny's Amber series of novels (which, even if you have no interest in gaming, I would heartily recommend as a series of good reads), and is unique in that it emphasizes good story-telling by the GM, rather than die rolls, to determine the outcome of events. While the system itself is sometimes a bit weird, the setting is marvelous, and the basic concept of story-telling (vs. die-rolling) as the key to the game is a solid one. In most recent years, I have also played in games using the Big Eyes, Small Mouth anime system, and, most recently, in the D&D 3rd Edition (D20) rules. Ultimately, of course, the system matters less than the GM and the players. I've been blessed with a vast majority of good ones in both categories. |
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