I remember the first time I realized what RPGs were all about. It was upon reading/browsing (let's be honest here... I was a browser, not a reader) an issue of Dragon Magazine and I have no idea which one. It was during those months when I first became acquainted with D&D at school. The DM of that little game traded me some materials, such as the B/X Expert book and some Dragon issues, for some comics. There was some kind of adventure in the magazine and it was, I think, about an ogre or featured ogres. I do remember that the covers to the issues I had were the fucking awesome chess pics by Denis Beauvais (whose website makes my eyes hurt it's so MySpace-ish).
I had no idea what I was reading. I grokked pretty quickly that it was some kind of setup for adventure. But at this time I hadn't yet got my dirty mitts on the red box, nor even the Expert rulebook alluded to above. I only had Dragon.
First thing I did when I got this shit home was get out a spiral bound notebook and write my first ever adventure. I only wish had that notebook now so I could cringe. It was a house with a few rooms and an ape creature in the attic. It had a floor that would collapse with you. It was on the edge of a ravine in the snow. It was a call to adventure!
At school I recruited a couple of guys and they rolled up characters. One of them was just dead-set on getting high scores. It really bothered him that his character's stats were less than 18. I'll never forget that. It was my first time as DM and I basically caved to his needy mcneeds and he ended up with some ridiculous fighter whose worst ability score was like 16. I have no idea what the other guy played nor do I really remember who he was. Vague, these memories are.
But the point is that I had that moment where you understand, at least broadly speaking, just what an RPG is. It's not a story you read, nor is it a story you tell (although that's how many/most RPG texts kind of framed it). No, an RPG was all about what could be. It was this salad bar of delicious goodies that a DM could cook up and then see what the players decide to put on their plates.
It was lightning in a bottle! Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Everywhere and anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment