Shades of the past...

[GT]

The other day at work, my friend Alan showed up to visit. Alan played Yokon, the Elven Fighter/M-U who ran with Woodstock, Therain and Kato in my earliest campaign. He had moved to Tennessee back in the 90's to set up his own chemical research facility --working with chemo-luminescense, memory metal and more arcane things. Turns out that he still uses his character's name as an online name! Heh!!

[geneweigel]

Well, thats cool!

I can never imagine someone from the old crew popping in to see me...

You know something? I should be well armed in case that does happen at some point...

Just kidding!

[Rhuvein]

Wow . . yes, shades of the past, of games and modules never played and missed opportunities of D&D for me.

And your post, GT sent me on a journey back in time ~ 30 years.

I bought the BD&D Boxed set in Nov/Dec '78 and gathered a short lived group to play in Jan/Feb/March of '79.

Dagnabit party animals and girlfriends (I'm guilty too) derailed our attempts to get regular and uninterrupted sessions going. But I don't dwell on it too much, we were just the wrong age to be gaming. We'd sit down to game and a party would break out . . Ludes, Maui Wowie and ice cold beer happened. And then the music would crank and girls showed up . . . end of game!

Anywho, I miss the old gang:

Bob - dead of OD in California some years ago
Mark - drugs destroyed his life, he's still alive but never married or had a good life
Mindy - lost contact 20+ years ago
Ron - saw briefly 15 yrs ago at reunion
Allan - same
Randy - same

It'd be interesting to see some of them and tell 'em how I made a comeback to D&D and have made up for so much lost time.

Mebbe, the next reunion.

[GT]

It was Alan's brother -in-law (Kent) who first introduced us to D&D in 1978, then we both went to Purdue in '79 and played in Jim Simon's world (one of three regular campaigns played at the Stewart Center on weekends, as well as myriad players of Risk, chess, AH & SPI games, etc.) The infamous Jeff Grubb was in one of those groups, as well as Bart(on), who I believe Jim Ward knew (he did at least one MA article for the Dragon)... Anyhow; I shortly decided to start my own group, and by October '79 I was up and running with Woodstock, Yokon, Therain (originally Tom Karrman's M-U, but I eventually took over and he became an NPC. Tom and his brothers, from Manitowac, WI, are the famous originators of Wisconsin's Hammerfest, which for sure was still going on in the 90's, but I've since lost track if the event still occurs!) and Kato (my NPC halfling fighter/thief, originally added to balance out the party a bit. We also could've used a Cleric, but Tony was playing one in Jim's world, and I didn't want to keep track of another NPC at the time!). Great times! We did B1 first, and some wilderness adventures, and then B2, S2, G-D-Q, and then started S1--though we may not have gotten all the way through it; I don't remember! I think we may have done S3 before S1 also, but that was nearly 30 years ago, so give me a break! ^__^

[GT]

Oh, yeah--my first Gen Con was 1981, and Mr. Schick was the first TSR guy I talked to. Dave Sutherland came up while we were talking and I have to say that the two of them were completely cool! I wish that "gaming" came ahead of "ego" today, as it did then... they were perfectly willing to spend all of the time in the world answering my questions. I met Gary at a forum later at the Con and I was totally in awe, yet he had the room reduced to feeling like they were chatting with an old friend before it was over--many jokes were exchanged (some of which I didn't get at the time, admittedly...) ^__^

[geneweigel]

Gary was just awesome to be around. You can say it again and again and it just rings true every time. I believe that in most cases, he brought out the best in game designers sometimes even tangentially.