Every gamer out there has a story of how they got involved in gaming. This....is mine. (cue dramatic music)
When I was in high school, I ended up attending a High School Christian fellowship group at a mainstream Congregational church in Boston. While I was in this group, I found two things: Jesus and gaming. Considering how many churches were against D&D way back in the day, the irony was delightful. Here's how it went down.
During my high school years, I developed a fascination for World War 2. I loved reading about it, particularly the naval battles. Now, in this High School church group, there was this volunteer staff guy named Bob. When Bob learned of my WW2 fascination, he invited me over to play this board game he had, called "Midway".
For those of you in the know, that's a wargame put out by the old Avalon Hill gaming company.
Well, I was hooked. I loved it. I started searching for other Avalon Hill titles and buying them. Midway! Jutland! Battle of the Bulge! Third Reich! Luftwaffe! Diplomacy! Richtofen's War! I couldn't get enough! More games! More games I say! Kingmaker! 1776! Wooden Ships/Iron Men! D-Day!
Naturally, I subscribed to Avalon Hill's wargame magazine, The General. And one day, in 1976, I read an ad in that magazine, an ad that changed my life.
It was an ad for something called Origins II, to be held in Baltimore, Maryland.
I was stunned. People....got together and played wargames all weekend?
Whoooooooooooooooaaaa....
So there I was, 17 years old, hopping on an Amtrak train to Baltimore, to the con site, which was Johns Hopkins University, of all places.
Which is why when people talk about colleges and bring up Johns Hopkins, I can give them a superior look and say "Ah yes...I went there."
The con was amazing, but three things caught my attention. First, there was this entry in the program for an event called "Dungeons and Dragons", saying something about how an expedition would be departing at noon. What the heck was THAT about? Secondly, as I was wandering through the JH Rathskellar, I noticed that someone had left unattended a copy of a book called "Deities and Demigods", a small book filled with Greek and Egyptian gods. Did I happen to mention I love Egyptian and Greek myths? I thumbed through it, fascinated, but wondered what the heck they meant by "levels". Finally, I heard a story from another wargamer, someone who groused about a disruption at a wargame tourney in one of the classrooms. Apparently some kid dressed in a robe, like some magician or something, came barging in, looking for this thing called Dungeons and Dragons. He left the room hastily, but his robe dragged on some of the wargame boards, moving pieces and such. "Damned roleplayers!" my friend muttered.
That's when I learned that, hey, forget Coke vs Pepsi, forget Cattle ranchers vs Sheep ranchers, forget Arab vs Israeli, or Tom Cruise vs sanity....the REAL bad blood was between Wargamers (who were intelligent, well-educated, history buffs with analytical minds), and Role-players (out of control loonies with their heads in the clouds, and wearing stupid costumes).
I stayed loyal to wargames, eventually going to Origins III (Wagner College, Staten Island), and Origins IV (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor).
I also eventually left the high school group at church and "graduated" into Seekers, the College-age Christian Fellowship.
And that's where I'd meet the man who I call my mentor: Bill. Bill was my mentor because he introduced me to some really amazing concepts, such as: CS Lewis, Tolkein, Doctor Who, and....this weird game that his brother and he played.
It was, yes, Dungeons and Dragons. His brother Paul was the Dungeon Master, and Bill and I had to create 3 characters each. We used playing pieces cannibalized from a copy of the "Sorry!" board game, and Paul had these weird dice.
I LOVED it. Absolutely LOVED it. I ran out and got the boxed game, the one with this wizard and this fighter on the cover, advancing at this HUGE red dragon that glowered menacingly from atop a heap of treasure. WOW! And it even came with an adventure, B1, Into the Unknown! WOW again!!!
But I didn't want to PLAY Dungeons and Dragons. No, I wanted to be Paul. I wanted to create a story and have others play through it. I had FINALLY found the outlet for my imagination that would suit me best!
Well, ok, I actually wanted to play too. But I wanted the chance to be the Dungeon Master sometimes too!
So yeah, if not for my attending a very conservative, evangelical, just-about-Fundamentalist congregational church, I'd have not been exposed to wargaming and, by extension, D&D. Or at least that introduction could've been delayed by years.
Of course, there's more to tell....my first campaign (me as the DM and four players, all of them female), my first protracted run as a player (wherein I dealt with a true Monty Hall DM), my first very huge AD&D campaign, and much more. But those are stories for another time,
