I didn’t get into gaming until I moved to Manchester at age 18. The people I was hanging out with were into Magic: the Gathering and they got me into it too, serving as my gateway drug for gaming. I bought my first deck but a lot of my cards at the time were given to me by my then-boyfriend Stuart, who gave me a shoebox full from his collection; it slowly grew bigger and stayed with me even after the relationship ended.

At that time I would spend most of my day, after looking for work, at Fanboy 3 playing Magic and watching all kinds of games – not just MtG but RPG’s too.

It wasn’t until a couple years later that I played in my first RPG, a Buffy game which was fun but didn’t go too well. We were playing the pre-made characters from the book, which I think was the first thing that was wrong for me, as I like to make a character with a story and explore the world and the stories in that world through their eyes. I started out playing one kind of witch and switched to one that had more story, that was still from the book (because I had joined the group late and the GM liked players to use premade characters) by the beginning of the next scene. I did have some fun with it, and I played to the end of the story… I think. I don’t remember anything about the other people or their characters – I was playing with people I didn’t know which may have been one of the reason it didn’t work for me

I started playing RPGs with a regular group soon after that – with my best friend and Dan, my new boyfriend of the time, we met once a week for a game. We played modern d20 which was my first meeting with the d20 system – I was playing a techie who was a mutant dolphin person, I had metal armour before the rest of the party, which was needed because my dexterity was terrible [turns out, Dolphins are not agile on land], because I made it myself.

That campaign and Character taught me few things, like it was more fun to make my own character and how much fun it was to be something i’m not – having created my own character let me feel very proud of her achievements.

Having found both a new job and a new hobby, I gave the magic cards to Dan, put Spycraft and other card games to one side, and focused on the roleplaying which I enjoyed more.

I played in the same group for a few years and we played a few different systems and settings like Werewolf the Apocalypse, and BESM [Big Eyes, Small Mouth], though not all went as well as my first game with that group, such as our In Nomine campaign which never fully got off the ground.

With Werewolf I liked the world and story but hated the system – especially trying to get honour to level up which you mostly got from killing things; I was playing a smart schoolgirl who didn’t get much chance to kill. This lead to people leveling up at different times even though we had all contributed – something I’ve tried to avoid in games since.

I game for same reason I write, or read, to get away from me and the real world. To be someone else for a bit, to be able to do the things I can’t do like be able to move like a gymnast or a monk or a cat, or to able to play with tech in ways I can never understand, and make magic.

I like to make a character with a story and explore the world and the stories in that world through their eyes – so when the mechanics get in the way I tend to either ignore them or as for help in working around them.

The BESM game was the first time I GMed – it was ok for my first campaign, though a bit clunky, as I didn’t own the book and hadn’t read the whole thing – and I hadn’t played in a game with that system which is how I generally run games now since my dyslexia makes it hard to fully read a rulebook, I learn by playing and have Ste help with the more mechanical parts of running.

Sadly I had to leave the group not long after I met Ste but the Magic cards came with, not just my shoebox but pretty much the whole collection as my ex, Dan, passed them on to Ste [Ste Note: I’ve now declared that these cards don’t belong to me, they belong to whoever Amy is with – but hopefully the difference will remain irrelevant :-)].

Once we left, we started up own game with him running and I’m able to make better character now, making them a bit more well rounded.

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