Ol’ Standbys
I first encountered roleplaying games in late 1979, which means that, by year’s end, I’ll have been rolling polyhedral dice and pretending to be an elf for 35 years. The mind boggles when I ponder this, since it attests to the fact that, with a few notable exceptions, like breathing and eating, I’ve spent more time playing RPGs than I have almost any other activity in my earthly existence.
As I make my way through mid-life, I find myself thinking back to my early days of gaming often. One of the things that strikes me is how focused my friends and I were on a handful of games, which we played with incredible gusto. It must be remembered that, even back in those days, there were an incredible number of RPGs available – not as many as today, certainly, but more than even a group of tweens and teens as gung-ho for roleplaying games could play. That’s not to say we didn’t dip our toes into a lot of pools, so to speak; I’d venture to guess that, between 1979 and 1984, the period during which our mania was at its zenith, we tried many dozens of games (you find a fairly complete list of all the RPGs published, by year, between 1974 and the present here – there are a lot of them).
Despite that, we had our favorites, the ones to which we’d return again and again, after the shine had worn off the latest boxed set to appear on the hobby shop’s shelves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these games were all among the earliest ones to which we’d been introduced by the older kids and adults who acted as our “mentors” as we learned the ropes of this strange pastime. But what is surprising, I think – at least to me – is that, for the most part, these same RPGs are the ones that still hold my attention today. Granted, I’m not a neophile; I don’t instinctively seek out new games as soon as they’re released, as many of my fellow gamers do. Even so, I must confess to being a little shocked to discover that, if I look back on the gaming I’ve done over the last decade or so, it was almost entirely devoted to the same three games I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid.
It’s a time for looking back, as the old year ends. Now so it happens that on a Boxing Day sale I picked up a book I loved as a child; and therefore it seems fitting to write a little about it, now, glancing back down the vanished days of this and other years, and to try to again see the pleasure I once had. Will it come again, as I work through the text? If I work on the text, then no. Because this text, more than most, is not made for working. It is a thing to be played.
