Role-playing games
From AdamWiki
We discovered it, almost as if by accident with our childhood friends, drawing labyrinths in pen and paper, conjuring it in our longrunning table-top campaigns and in the furious invention of radical freeform, we feel it when the vision is strong and shared, when the village sleeps and breathes at night, as tears flow and the undiscovered country of the future is in our collective hands. We set our souls aflame with it when trembling fingers touch and the black eyes facing us do not reflect but truly see and feel. This is inter-immersion, this is Genesis, this is the fire of communitas and it is as old as mankind itself.
— Martin Ericsson, "Play to Love,"
ISBN 952-91-6843-8 (pdf)
ISBN 952-91-6842-X (paperback)
- I keep an online notebook of RPG ideas and worlds. Let me know if you use any of my ideas, please.
- If you're curious, I maintain an inventory of the games I own, with over 200 entries.
- I maintain a list of links to game designers and game companies.
I had my first brush with modern role-playing gaming (RPGing) in the sixth grade, though I didn't know it. A couple of my classmates at a summer program for gifted students had played a bit of freeform Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) with one of the program counselors, and they were relating the stories on the trip back home. I was curious, but I had missed out on the experience.
Later that year, Mark, one of my friends mentioned the game. He had a copy of the old D&D booklets (the blue one with the dragon and treasure on it). On one or two occasions, he tried to run games for me over the phone, but they weren't too successful. I hadn't even created my own character.
The next summer, one of the counselors from the same summer program handed me the red boxed Basic D&D set (the original one with Keep on the Borderlands in it). My brother (Jason) and I read over it, and we met with my dad, the counselor (Pam) and her boyfriend (now husband) Tony. We attempted to play a game, but none of us was sufficiently familiar with the rules. Two hours later, we had rolled up characters, and everyone went home. It wasn't until much later that we realized that a typical D&D game session lasts 4-6 hours. The five of us never met again for the next session; there just wasn't interest in the adults.
I pored over the rules, though. A couple weeks later, I helped Jason and Mark create some new characters, and I ran them through some adventures in the Keep on the Borderlands and the nearby Caves of Chaos. Those early games fostered a love for role-playing games that none of us could ever shake. Throughout high school and college, I found others who shared my hobby and played D&D and other RPGs with them.
I was always the Game Master (the guy who runs the games). That role allowed me to create fictional towns, kingdoms, and worlds, invent people and cultures and religions and languages. I studied geography, religion, cosmology, history, linguistics, and mythology. I
read voraciously, collecting data to use in my invented worlds. I mapped out entire continents of places that never were, and filled them with wars, evil cults, dragons, and magical places.
That continued throughout high school, college, and my adult life till now. I didn't have a steady gaming group when I moved to Maryland, but that's changed. I have a group of ten players, and we've been playing in the same world since D&D 3rd Edition came out in 2000.
In the summer of 2002, I started working seriously to become a published game author. I keep a journal of my progress in a LiveJournal. Somewhere along the way, I realized that, while professional publication would be cool, the pursuit was making my hobby less fun for me. I continue to publish stuff myself, on the web, but I am no longer working hard at becoming a paid author.
