30 Years of Adventure

Earlier in the week it occurred to me that this year will see the 30th anniversary of my first RPG - the 30th anniversary of first picking up the d20. Which has kind of crept up on me - I didn't really mark 20 years, or even 25. But given that opportunities to game are now fewer and further between, and therefore more precious, I think I'll have to mark this one somehow.

I'm not certain of the exact date of my first game - it was a Thursday either right at the end of August or near the start of September, which makes it either the 25th, 1st, or 8th. Of these, I think the 1st of September is the most likely, so I'm going to take that as the date.

Additionally, my first game was one of very few sessions of AD&D 1st Edition I ever played. My character was a nameless Thief, who I believe was level 12. Pretty much all I remember from that first session was picking the pocket of a passing noble and scoring some hefty loot, and I was hooked.

I do recall that it took place in the English department of Chryston High School, where Mr Stewart ran the RPG group. And those first few sessions were run by an older kid called Eric, who disappeared a few weeks later. I didn't realise at the time, but he'd gone off to university. That almost certainly wouldn't be allowed now - it was a different time. After Eric left, various people tried to run games, mostly using the D&D Basic Rules. Almost without exception these games thoroughly sucked, leading to a long-term preference to run the game myself. Though looking back at the games I ran in those days, they weren't that great either - perhaps a 3/10 compared with the 2/10 games I'd been playing in.

Of course, it's not possible to go back to recapture that time again - you're only 12 once. Therefore, rather than put together a 1st level BD&D game and run a linear dungeon against uninspired foes, I figured I would instead run a 5e game in an old-school-ish manner - do something new that also hearkens back to the old days, and applies everything I've learned since. Ideally, it will feel like one of the better Conan or Lankhmar stories.

That's assuming, of course, that I can run such a game at all. Though with six months of lead time, it's probably possible.