Yes, folks, Dungeons and Dragons had its 30th Birthday yesterday.
I remember as a kid hearing all the weird news reports about how D&D was this horrible mind-altering thing, with kids dying and stuff. Yet my brothers played the game every week (or more often), and, well, they were nerds. They just sat around talking, rolling dice, and reading out of books to argue about combat minutiae.
I played my first game of D&D when I was eight years old. I remember it well. I was a magic-user. My brother Brian was… OK, so maybe I don’t remember it very well. My oldest brother, Jay, was the Dungeon Master.
And I died in the third room to a Green Slime. I cried, and never wanted to play D&D again. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve played that particular game since then, though I’ve played a whole bunch of variants (I particularly remember many sessions of Champions), and enjoy the crap out of Neverwinter Nights, a video game that uses the D&D rules.
OK, maybe I have played it since then. Just not in the pristine pencil-and-paper format.
What about you? Was D&D your first introduction to role-playing games? Were you really into it, or hardly involved?
wanna see something fun?
My friend Arthur is in a role playing group right now based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.. the basic concept is that a slayer has arisen in DC. He and his friends play the role playing thing to the nth degree.. turning it into a performance art thing, really delving into the characters and it becomes almost performance.
I draw concept art for them from time to time.
You can check it out at
http://www.buffydc.com
(Click the extras.. you’ll see some original art.)
The New D&D = Fantasy Football
I joined a fantasy football league for the first time. After 2 months of drafting, trading and managing players, I realized that fantasy football is the new D&D for adults.
It’s insane. It takes up all your time. You’re sending emails all day to managers of other fantasy teams seeking out big trades. You check stats. You visit web sites. You buy magazines that specialize in helping you manage better.
The new D&D.