Ste suggested we talk about ‘our first game’ That’s tricky. First played, first rpg, first time GMing?

 

As a kid, I remember two gaming moments distinctly. One was my sister deciding the way to win at Monopoly was to be the banker. The other was the summer I decided to ‘solve’ the Choose Your Own Adventure book I’d been given, by going full on decision tree. Two months and lots of computer paper later, I discovered there wasn’t actually a path from start to win. Several endings where you died or failed or some such. But the win didn’t track from the start. Moral: plan your games. I still don’t entirely, but i generally have a shape to how I expect things to pan out.

Fast forward to Uni, and I joined the RPG society. Sucked in by the ‘Have a Go’ LRP (technically LRP was a sport since you needed insurance) I turned up to a roomful of fellow nerds – some of which were even girls! No longer the Only Nerd In the Village!

My first proper rpg was Whoops King Arthur there goes the Round Table! I played Sir Bruce Sans Pitie, pretending to be Lancelot, and later pretending to be several other knights. The line I remember was the closing one. Most of the PCs crashed through the ceiling from Guinevere’s room into the Great Hall, where Mordred was looking forlornly at a lone cupcake. Arthur extracted himself from the pile and said “Happy birthday, son, we got you a sex-scandal-o-gram!”

The following week we had Whoops Sauron there goes the One True Ring. Totally sensible starting point. Moral: have fun. Now I work in gaming, some things I play are not necessarily what I would choose to. But there’s a joy in sharing time with my mates, in taking turns to play different people’s ‘most fun’  If I didn’t enjoy making game for other people, I’m in the wrong career!

Then I settled down to a Discworld campaign – playing an Ex-Sacrificial Virgin, and a Shadowrun campaign, playing something magical I think, but that didn’t last all that long, because we ran into a problem. Mike wouldn’t play in Alvar’s game, Alvar wouldn’t play in Mike’s game, Ian didn’t want to run two games in a week. So the group suggested I could GM. Mike had a load of the adventure modules, and I stumbled through most of them over the next couple of years – including one summer where we played five times a week. Oh the halcyon days of youth. Moral: try to maintain a work /game balance

Since then I’ve played several Vampire games; a long running Werewolf campaign set in Canada, full of epic poetry and snow; and a lot of DnD 4th. I’ve dipped my toe into most of the big systems, and had more indie and oneshots than would be feasible to namedrop. – last Nationals it was easier to tell them the categories I couldn’t run for! Long campaigns I’ve run include a lot of WOD – often crossover. All of those are firmly in the “action and antihero with horror elements” category – I don’t do well with true horror.  Moral: find what you like, and explore that. Until it gets old, then find something else.

After a long time of playing the local linear LRP,  a bunch of us went to try this new fest called Maelstrom. I had five characters over a decade of play, and loved each one. The perfidy of betrayal, real tears at loss, the joy as schemes came to fruition, the anger at invasion of our lands, and finally being on ‘the winning (surviving) side, leading a procession of converts into the sunset Moral : throw yourself at games hard, and they will reward you with experiences. I still play the next game from the same company , Empire. After six years,Sofia i Del’Toro i Riqueza has quite some depth, but I haven’t finished her story yet. The clan is growing, and we’re starting to be a political powerhouse.

I’m currently in a 13th age campaign, although this year I’ve dipped in and out of other short games as work and health dictate. I’ve been doing a lot more boardgaming, and recently dug out the cardboard crack which is MTG – and discovered that some of my cards are valuable, but most of my decks can’t play in anything other than casual. Moral: variety is the spice of gaming

So there you go. A whistle stop down Memory Lane. Why not share your weirdest gamer story with us? If we get enough, we might even publish some of them!

 

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