psimonsays
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 18
Preferred Game Systems: Just About Anything
Currently Running: Savage Rifts
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Post by psimonsays on Jul 19, 2017 7:28:09 GMT -8
Oh wow, My first character was in 1979 and I was 10. I was a cleric running in the Keep on the Borderlands from the Basic Set. Died to the Minotaur.
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Post by weaselcreature on Jul 19, 2017 8:32:41 GMT -8
I don't recall what characters were used in my first game. My brother put me through some combats with some pieces of paper (kobolds) to introduce me to the game.
Not long after he, his friends and a friend of mine formed our 1st group. It was 1980, I think. I made a thief named Ali Baba. He lasted awhile until falling in a pit trap and dieing. We had another thief in the party who I never forget and want to recycle his name sometime: Squiggledorf.
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Post by Kainguru on Jul 20, 2017 4:32:03 GMT -8
1980 - ADnD : he was a cleric, that's all I remember. Yep, I got into RPG's because a group needed a cleric.
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Post by chronovore on Jul 20, 2017 5:26:42 GMT -8
1980 - ADnD : he was cleric, that's all I remember. Yep, I got into RPG's because a group needed a cleric. Why /do/ people claim to hate playing clerics?
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Post by Kainguru on Jul 20, 2017 6:22:02 GMT -8
1980 - ADnD : he was cleric, that's all I remember. Yep, I got into RPG's because a group needed a cleric. Why /do/ people claim to hate playing clerics? I thinks it's because, at the time, when you were first level you were a one heal wonder (unless you had a good wisdom, so basically the MU problem), you couldn't use a sword (and nearly any interesting magic weapon was usually a sword vis-a-vis intelligent weapons), you could wear any armour but usually couldn't afford any decent armour and the softest teacher at school was the Chaplin . . . hardly inspiring. Add to that the observation that, despite the odds, nearly every starting group seemed to be able to generate at least one Paladin .... "Oh look I can lay on hands, and use a sword, and detect evil and I don't get sick and ... " In fact the reason people didn't like playing Clerics is probably very closely tied to the reason people disliked people who liked playing Paladins (and always seemed to be able to play a Paladin). Unearthed Arcana with it's 'Speciality Priests' went a long way to fixing the problem - 2nd Ed's major and minor sphere access and unique granted powers truly set the Priest/Cleric apart and made them a proper choice for a Player. I always felt that 3.x nerfed the Cleric a bit with it's over simplification of the spheres of access as domains. Aaron
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Post by ilina on Jul 30, 2017 0:21:32 GMT -8
a BECMI D&D Basic Game in a club after school during kindergarten with stuff converted from D&D 1e and D&D 2e. essentially we had more races and we also had kits. but converting the races into 36 level racial classes was no easy task. my character was a Nyxad Thief/Mage with the Assassin (Ninja) and Illusionist Subclasses and Spellcloak kit. needing 6,000 XP to reach level 2 and getting a 10% Experience bonus on all her classes.
she was a little girl that wore darker hued victorian garb, porcelain doll type stuff, today called gothic lolita, and she had a weapon skill that let her use intellect to hit and charisma to damage with any weapon. and she broke the scale on both. so her shitty strength was useless and she had amsazing thac0 due to being a grandmaster of the dagger and 9 other weapons. she gained most of her experience by spending her share on cheap commodities from one region and selling them for a huge profit in another. and ganking merchants is easy for her. she leveled quickly due to trading intelligently, allowing her to commission most of her niche magic items.
she was a pale nymph-like youthful fey of the night. being one of few characters that can see in fog or pitch darkness and ignore concealment, but also gained concealment around darkness. she also had lots of social skills and made the best noble, merchant, lawyer and apothecary. and she eventually bought permanent stat boosting potions to overcome her stat deficits, maxing everything at 20 for a +4 bonus, and maxing her HP.
she eventually learned how to bypass her opposition schools and outright cast any spell she pleased at any time. and was eventually trained in every skill at ten days per skill. instead of 30 days per skill.
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Post by Kainguru on Jul 30, 2017 3:06:25 GMT -8
a BECMI D&D Basic Game in a club after school during kindergarten I think we might define kindergarten differently this side of the big wet? In NZ and Oz kindergarten is where you go before you are old enough to start school (or your first year of school in NSW), it is also known as creche, nursery or playgroup in the UK. Aaron
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Jul 30, 2017 4:17:11 GMT -8
a BECMI D&D Basic Game in a club after school during kindergarten I think we might define kindergarten differently this side of the big wet? In NZ and Oz kindergarten is where you go before you are old enough to start school (or your first year of school in NSW), it is also known as creche, nursery or playgroup in the UK. Aaron In the US too, it's a year's preschool taken age five or six. ilina continues to creep me out with her fantasy life.
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Post by Kainguru on Jul 30, 2017 8:53:38 GMT -8
I think we might define kindergarten differently this side of the big wet? In NZ and Oz kindergarten is where you go before you are old enough to start school (or your first year of school in NSW), it is also known as creche, nursery or playgroup in the UK. Aaron In the US too, it's a year's preschool taken age five or six. ilina continues to creep me out with His fantasy life. I corrected that for you Aaron
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Post by ilina on Jul 30, 2017 9:59:15 GMT -8
a BECMI D&D Basic Game in a club after school during kindergarten I think we might define kindergarten differently this side of the big wet? In NZ and Oz kindergarten is where you go before you are old enough to start school (or your first year of school in NSW), it is also known as creche, nursery or playgroup in the UK. Aaron i was in kindergarten in 1994. i was five years old, i was playing basic D&D at five, and it is right before you enter the first grade. essentially, been playing RPGs since 1994. i was really young when i started, and the group adopted a lot of 21st century millenial practices. we had a teacher that ran RPGs for his students after school and we rarely had more than 30 students in the room at a time. the guy ran for students as young as five or as old as twelve. they called it something else. something along the lines of collaborative theoretical problem solving or teamwork excercises or something like that. a lot of the students who did plays were also involved.
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Post by Kainguru on Jul 30, 2017 12:25:41 GMT -8
I think we might define kindergarten differently this side of the big wet? In NZ and Oz kindergarten is where you go before you are old enough to start school (or your first year of school in NSW), it is also known as creche, nursery or playgroup in the UK. Aaron i was in kindergarten in 1994. i was five years old, i was playing basic D&D at five, and it is right before you enter the first grade. essentially, been playing RPGs since 1994. i was really young when i started, and the group adopted a lot of 21st century millenial practices. we had a teacher that ran RPGs for his students after school and we rarely had more than 30 students in the room at a time. the guy ran for students as young as five or as old as twelve. they called it something else. something along the lines of collaborative theoretical problem solving or teamwork excercises or something like that. a lot of the students who did plays were also involved. Let's just break this down a bit - It's 1994 and you are adopting "21st Century practices"? very progressive, if inconsistent with the current theory of linear time ie: adopting a future practice before it exists is exceedingly progressive. Was the teacher a bit of an odd ball? I mean did he live in blue box and have a fondness for kidnapping students and bringing them back significantly older than they should have been given the period of their absence?. 'Rarely had more than 30 students': that's a LOT, far in excess of the acceptable class size's I remember from the early 90's - but then I suppose that's one of those 21st Century practices they adopted early. 'Allowing students involved in plays to participate', by that I would guess you are referencing secondary school students doing drama electives/extra-curricular?. I can't speak for the UK at the time but in Oz primary school students were strictly forbidden from interacting with the primer-graders (grade 1 and 2): they had a separate area of the school. This was a deliberate policy to prevent possible litigation because of the risk of intimidation by older (but still immature) students. Secondary Schools were separate entities entirely. Thing must be very different in US after all, though I thought it was even more protective of it's 'younglings'. 'They called it something else': yes I agree they probably did as they didn't call it DnD, because it probably wasn't. Sounds like it was exactly what you later called it 'teamwork exercises' ie: playgroup vis-a-vis imaginative play or 'creative storytelling'. I remember playing Top Secret at primary school with my mates, not that it had been printed at the time (but being progressive has never been limited to 'after 1990' we were pretty progressive in 70's too - student teachers teaching us Bob Dylan songs, etc). We'd just seen 'The Man with The Golden Gun' and one of us was 'James Bond' and another was 'Scaramanga' and the youngest of us usually played 'Nick Nack'. It was very collaborative, a bit like PBtA games, with very abstract rules for combat which mirror many modern day LARP's (more the boffer sort). You'd scream 'I shot you' and then, collaboratively, the other guy would decide whether to take the hit or not . . . however we lacked the guidance of a time travelling lunatic in a blue box so these rule adjudications usually devolved into 'did to' vs 'did not' until the bell rang - and we'd all fuck off home I do know that if a 5 year presented themselves at school in the UK today with a detailed knowledge of ninja's, a preoccupation with goth lolita's and a tendency to problem solve 'by ganking merchants' (including an evident absence of remorse or empathy for said merchants so 'ganked') then Social Services would pretty quickly involved. Not a criticism, just my observations . . . I'm sure schooling is very different over there Aaron
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2017 15:41:18 GMT -8
Gork was an elf, in red-box Basic D&D. Later I remade him in AD&D as an elf fighter/magic-user/thief (because, why not have *all* the fun?). You. I say, good sir, are you accepting for new hirelings? I wasn't born like Gork, but I am a little (now Big) Gork-isch! #DadJokes #LastNamesWithExtraLetters
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2017 15:46:08 GMT -8
I don't really remember my first character that was on free-roam. I got the Red Box AND Crossbows and Catapaults the same Christmas, I think, as gifts from my mom's high school friends who were scifi nerds.
#BargleKilledMyFirstGirlfriend #NeverForget
The first character I played in a large group (I think there were 12 of us?) I was about 12-13, everyone else was about 16-28. Tail end of 1e AD&D. Human ranger named Kheva. I was just thinking about him the other day and his entourage and the weirdness of the game. Long story short, he impregnated and married an elf ranger PC so they BOTH had their large entourages they get as high level rangers. ... maddening. Pretty weird when I think back on it (the female elf's player at least was a cute 16 year old drama geek so... bonus)
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Post by ilina on Jul 30, 2017 18:09:08 GMT -8
i'm a fifth generation geek from a family of hardcore geeks who was exposed to the family tradition extremely early. i mean, not all of my prior generations played D&D and stuff, but most of them were heavily involved in all sorts of niche mediums as far as five generations before me. my ancestors would be the kind of people that read and wrote fiction novels in the 1800's. i might not have known the term for gothic lolita, but i was heavily exposed to artwork in that particular style, as part of being from a family of proud geeks. most of my relatives are just as creepy as i am, if not worse.
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Post by Kainguru on Jul 30, 2017 22:26:23 GMT -8
i'm a fifth generation geek from a family of hardcore geeks who was exposed to the family tradition extremely early. i mean, not all of my prior generations played D&D and stuff, but most of them were heavily involved in all sorts of niche mediums as far as five generations before me. my ancestors would be the kind of people that read and wrote fiction novels in the 1800's. i might not have known the term for gothic lolita, but i was heavily exposed to artwork in that particular style, as part of being from a family of proud geeks. most of my relatives are just as creepy as i am, if not worse. But your relatives aren't YOUR TEACHER - so that sort of doesn't get a pass on the time travelling progressiveness of your reported school institution. As for relatives- my great grandfather graduated from Oxford University UK, my great great great great grandfather was the eponymous author of 'Crockfords Guide to the Clergy' - guess what? It has absolutely nothing to do with it and absolutely gets me no free passes in being creepy. Good strawman though - question your claimed education get a history lesson on your family. Still struggling to see the connection though .... oh, yeah, there isn't one because, you know, strawman. Aaron
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