My D&D

My introduction to D&D came a bit too late for me to be a true grognard. Hopefully no one will blame me for being born well after the first edition books came out. But my brother got Heroquest for Christmas one year, and we played the junk out of that game. Wore the skulls off the dice, in fact. We even had the original Elf and Barbarian quest packs, which were far too difficult for us to actually complete, even with all the treasures from the basic game.

I think it was in October of the next year that I got the black box. It was definitely for my birthday, and the box came out in 1991, so I either got it that year or the next. I even remember exchanging it at Toys R Us because I though it was defective and missing the adventure or something.


That black box was good for me. It was board-gamey enough that it worked like Hero Quest and I could understand it. I'm sure I started buying AD&D stuff shortly after getting that box. I had the Player's Handbook. My friend Zack had the Dungeon Master's Guide. We pooled our books for lots of awesomeness even if we never had a campaign last more than five sessions.

We played a few other games too. The DragonStrike game by TSR was also good (plus it came with that cheesy video), though it clearly wasn't as awesome as D&D. Just quicker. It was a nice source of plastic figures, at the very least. BattleMasters was also great fun, though I never really went full-on into wargames, I appreciate the tactical combat that 4e does so well.

Nothing quite hit the spot like a little epic adventure with wizards, dragons and magic. Until my junior year in highschool, that is, when my friend bought a copy of Changeling: the Dreaming. We moved to the white wolf games like Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Wild West as well. Same premise though, really. I did a lot of larping too, though never of the foam weapon variety. Wouldn't mind getting back into that again.

Right now though, I'm mostly looking forward to heading back to the US in a few months where I might be able to wrangle up some players and play something.