At long last I have coerced my friend Bob into playing D&D. More specifically, the original D&D as published in 1974. Well that’s not quite true either, we’re going to play Swords & Wizardry, a—pardon me—retro-clone. Man do I hate lingo like that, but that’s what the kids are calling it these days. Since I am a card carrying absurdist and a contrarian of the highest order, I have decided to refer to the game—both my game specifically and all other versions, be they the original or an homage version—henceforth as “Old Style.”
It all began when Bob and I started spending the occasional Saturday night—after the wives and kids go to bed—getting together to play games and drink beer. Usually they’re games of strategy: Chess, Stratego, Risk, Axis & Allies; crap like that. And usually Bob beats me pretty handily. I tend to take either a ridiculously conservative approach and lose in a long, tedious war of attrition or else I take humongous, ill-conceived gambles that, though they sometimes make the game interesting, have yet to result in victory for the good guys.
Anyway, we both played a lot of (A)D&D back in the day (80s) but haven’t really played it or kept up with the hobby since. A few years back I invented this thing called the internet and, at first purely for nostalgic reasons, started loitering in RPG boards, seeing what people had to say. I found some interesting facts. Apparently TSR kept publishing more gaming material after 1986; I had no idea. Also, there was some magic card game in the 90s that was so popular that it ate D&D like a giant frog swallowing a halfling. Stranger still, the company that bought TSR was located in a shitty suburban office park within walking distance of where I was working in the late 90s. I was that close to Lake Geneva West and had not a clue.
So anyway, Bob and I had often reminisced about our D&D days though neither bothered to broach the notion of playing such a game. Then about a year ago, after losing my 237th consecutive strategy board game, I finally had had enough. “Let’s try D&D, man,” I said.
I had secretly been working on some Byzantine house rules for AD&D in my basement laboratory and when I presented them to Bob for possible playtesting, he scoffed. I won’t go into details, but he had every right to do so. I had cobbled together an ink and paper golem from vintage 80s rule books that I’d been slowly acquiring over the last 5 or 6 years. Besides D&D I have DragonQuest, MERPS, GURPS, Fudge, Heroes, Call of Cthulhu, Champions… you get the picture. Though in my opinion I had created a Frankenstein’s monster akin to the Mary Shelley version—strong, fast, sinister, yet eloquent and introspective—Bob felt that it more resembled the Mel Brooks rendition: clubfooted and a bit Abby Normal in the head.
Hey Timrod - welcome to the OSR. I've put you on my blogroll so I'll be keeping an eye on your postings - in the nicest possible way. You may well get more traffic as well.
ReplyDeleteGood recruiting tactics with Bob - so that's how you get someone into D&D - sleep depravation and alcohol!
I’ve gotten more than “milligram of amusement” from some of your more recent posts, so thought I would start at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteWow, I haven't been back here in ages. I hope this stuff still holds up... if it ever did. If you find another mg of amusement or two lying around, help yourself.
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