I Was A Teenage Half-Orc

National Review ^ | 10/15/04 | John J. Miller

[Question_Assumptions]

Heck, I'm playing in one game on running another, despite being in my late 30s. It's like a bowling league. Put time aside for it and you can do it.

[Buggman]

A walk down memory lane bump for you guys

[RogueIsland]

Maybe we ought to start a Freeper RPG section.

That would be nice.

[Will_Zurmacht]

Greyhawk?

There was also Blackmoor I think

[Jonah Hex]

It's actually pretty fun! Playing solo does get old after a while because the missions tend to group into three basic categories, plus racking up the necessary points to rise to the next rank takes a while playing solo.

However, playing with a team is a blast! I played with a pick-up team of 7 last night for three hours clearing this one building of baddies. The adrenalin level definitely went up, I got almost all the points needed to rise to the next level, and had a great time trading wise cracks.

The only downside is some missions require more time to complete than you may have available, plus you can get killed real quick and rack up some debt. Sounds almost like Life...

:-)

[discostu]

the linkage to LoTR is the world. Basically when Gary and company set about creating a world for this new idea of theirs they went with the LoTR world, D&D elves are LoTR elves, D&D orcs are LoTR orcs, D&D haflings (because they've never paid the license) are LoTR Hobbits. The dragons, the concepts of the magic, the order of the universe all comes out of how they read and understood LoTR, they couldn't use the names but the ideas are all there and it's pretty simple, even in today's 3rd edition, to make Middle Earth in D&D. And because of that LoTR became mandatory reading for D&D players, in my group the very idea of playing D&D for more than a year and not at least starting to read LoTR was absurd and would be corrected quickly with lent books.

[lilylangtree]

My son got involved in that. In fact I remember he dressed up for his part. He even got me involved in reading "Elfquest" series. I played "magic cards" with him and was impressed at the scenarios that could be imagined.

[Question_Assumptions]

sigh...what a drag it is, getting old.

If you can put aside a night a week to bowl, play Bridge, watch a baseball game, or watch three hours of "Must See TV", you can put aside a night a week to role-play.

[AzSteven]

BTW, we are going to start up a Morrow Project campaign in late 2004/2005 and most likely my NPC representing me will have "Stacey" and "Boom-Boom" again, hopefully my buddy will want to have "The Pig" again. B-)

My group, all guys about 40 or so, plays about every other week, and has done so for about 20 years. We switch between games every year or so. Our next one, which I am running, will be Morrow Project, using the D20 rules. Nice to see there are still some Morrow Project fans out there.

We have done LOTS of D&D, LOTS of Traveller, some 2300AD, some Twilight 2000. In a way, its as much an excuse to get togehter with friends (the wives usually come and hang out, or go out for 'ladies night'). Major GEEK here, but not particularly ashamed of it.

[BADROTOFINGER]

Lankmahr and Greyhawk, perhaps?...JFK

[Bella_Bru]

PIng

[Nowhere Man]

Bump for Braak, another RPGer. B-)

[Shryke]

Wow - I LOVED D&D. Heck, I loved Gamma World as well. I began playing when the absolute original books were published. Heck, I even remember the name Gary Gygax.

[TigerTale]

Hey. Over here.

[bolobaby]

Funny, funny D&D comic

[The KG9 Kid]

"... I still have a box, stashed away in the recesses of my basement, that holds a Player's Handbook, a Monster Manual, and, of course, the DMG with that big red monster on the cover"

That big red monster is an 'Efreeti'.

Okay, I guess that I'll have to admit it -- I have my collection of first-generation AD&D books in a box, along with Gygax's rarely-seen precursor 'Grayhawk' booklets, and boxed 'Basic' D&D. They're not for sale, and I've seen how much these go for on eBay.

I've got some other arcana from the scene: The original bloody and violent Arduin Grimore set, dozens of 1976-1977 vintage Ral Partha figurines -- some painted, some not -- and every original TSR module G1-G3, D1-D3, and the stand-alones like 'Tomb of Horror', etc.

I used to have a stack of Dragon magazines three feet high, but those are mostly lost now.

[Heyworth]

There's a card-based game called "Munchkin" that's essentially a parody of D&D and is pretty much entirely based on backstabbing your partners. Good beer and pretzels game and it doesn't take six years.

Personally, I was a board wargamer who watched helplessly as first D&D and then computers sucked away the opponent base.

[Thrusher]

Hi, my name is Thrusher, and I am a geek.

Even my screen name is stolen from a series of fantasy books that I read in high school and converted into a D&D world for my group.

Little did I know that later I myself would become a legendary monster, one of the most feared bloodsuckers of all time: an attorney.

[K1avg]

I see a lot of folks here for D&D, but what about Magic: The Gathering?

I used to play all the time with other kids at school, and I got pretty good, even winning my local Arena League once.

Just wondering...

[75thOVI]

Bump for later wander down memory lane.