I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid. A lot. I still remember the excitement of opening that D&D Basic set in 1980, when I was 11. And the cake decorated with lead figures* for my 12th birthday. And when I wasn’t playing RPGs, I was usually reading, writing, drawing or dreaming about them.
In the mid-80s, a big fan of Citadel miniatures, I started playing the shiny new Warhammer (first and second editions), switching to the wonderful WFRP first edition as soon as it came out. I felt straight away that WFRP was my game. I’d discovered it myself, but there was more to it than that: characters had far grittier and more realistic backgrounds, the game was set in a fascinating and coherent world based on our own, and best of all it was packed with wry humour and an unmistakeable whiff of Britishness (at a time when it felt like British gamers were second-class citizens to the Americans who wrote most published RPG material).
I posted on Facebook, asking if anyone had a game I could join. I ended up playing in a 5e campaign with a bunch of people around half my age, none of whom I’d known until then. They, and the campaign, were – are – amazing. Playing a plague-refugee ranger in the continent of Hartia became my highlight of the week.
At first I was happy just to play in this campaign. I thought about running my own for about 2 seconds before going “whoah, way too much work”. Within a month I had joined two three more campaigns. Another month and I’d started writing a campaign of my own. Next I had pipe-dreams about running it as a PBeM (already play-testing this with half-a-dozen people, hush hush but the name of this blog is a clue). And now I’ve started writing stand-alone adventures with a view to publishing them. Quite a journey in three months.
Along the way I’ve rediscovered my fetish for reading all sorts of RPG stuff. And I’ve hit a goooood deep vein of stuff. I’ve also discovered what things like 5e, OSR and LotFP mean (although I’m still in the dark about B/X. My biggest bugbear [5d8+5HP] about any new hobby or workplace is the overwhelming flood of acronyms**).
On this blog I’ll be sharing some of my learnings along the way. And, in time, I’ll be sharing some of that sweeet sweeet content that I’m writing.
* I do not recommend trying this at home. Lead’s not great for your brain. Although iT NevuRH DoNe mE ANiE HaRum.
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