Evolution of a Roleplaying hobby: Part Two - I'm hooked.

Whilst I had bought Dungeons & Dragons in 1984 (as previously outlined in this blog), it wasn’t until 1987 that I really caught the Roleplaying bug.

In the September of that year, I moved from primary school to high school.  For a kid like me, this was a major upheaval, made all the more so (I now realise) through the fact that I have Aspergers Syndrome (of course, I wouldn’t know this until 2012, some 25 years later).  I have always had a difficulty making friends, and bullying was a normal occurrence to me.

Because of this, I would hide away in the library, ploughing my way through the seemingly endless supply of Asterix and Tintin comic books (there was also a series by Goscinny & Underzo that dealt with a Native American, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called – answers on a comment please!), Biggles and Billy Bunter novels and various books on myths and legends.

It was during this time I met the group of guys who would come to be the constant in my life.  I already knew John as he lived over the road from me and Derek from a summer play scheme I had attended the year before, but the others, Paul, James and David were new to me. Over the course of the next few years, I got to know each of them, until finally, in 1989, Dave suggested we play a game he had...

That game was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. 

Having already played a bit of DnD I thought this was great news! But Dave was quite scathing in the fact that ADnD was more complex, DEEPER than DnD. He was right to an extent - in ADnD you could play a race as well as a class - Elven Wizards, Dwarven Thieves - all possible in the more detailed rules of ADnD.

I loved it. I remember seemingly moving into Derek's parents kitchen to play long games, made even longer by their holiday absences, which allowed us to play though the night (a memorable 36 hour game resulted in a concussion for Paul, Derek having to use a calculator to add 5+3 and me scrubbing lipstick out of a sheepskin rug - don't ask). The game took us on adventures our small town childhoods could only dream of.

ADnD is still possibly my favourite system, with its closest competitor being Call of Cthulhu( of which I will explain more in the next article...).

The 2^nd edtion of AD&D (which is more commonly referred to as 2e) captivated me.  Here there were two hardback books – the Players Handbook (PHB) and Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) – hundreds of pages in blue edged script, interspersed with full colour plates from the likes of Jeff Easley (he of the dragon artwork on the Basic Set), Clyde Caldwell and Larry Elmore, showing adventurers fighting monsters, gazing a huge jewels, wizards casting mighty spells and priests praying to their deities.

And then there were the Monstrous Compendia…  Gone was the list of monsters I knew so well, replaced by whole ring binders full of monsters, all weird and wonderful in their descriptions!  Each page gave a new wonder (or horror) for adventurers to face, but more than that the MC gave them ‘ecologies’ – reasons to exist.  The various volumes concentrated on the different settings in which you could set your 2e games – from the classic feel of Greyhawk, to the oriental adventures of Kara-Tur, to outer space in Spelljammer and hammer horror in Ravenloft – all had their own monsters, each with its own ‘taste’.

With these three ‘books’ (in reality two books and a ringbinder or two) you could play to your hearts content, only restricted by your imagination.

I however, found that I was trapped – I needed more. More setting ideas, more adventure hooks, more everything!  And so it was I set down the road of buying a setting box…  FR1: The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, which I shall explore more in the next instalment.