OldGamer2000's page

That was a very cool story.

Anyhoo. I began playing as a middle school kid in and around 1978 in Wheaton, Illinois; the home of Billy Graham and the "city of Churches".

My poor Mom was totally snowballed by the church into thinking that D&D was somehow "Satanic". As if Satan himself was going to waltz right off of the pages and lead me to hell.

Well. At the time I was too young to win any sort of debate with her. She gathered up all the books I'd purchased with my lawn mowing money and threw them into the trash. An hour later they were out of the trash and safely stowed in a waterproof backpack hidden in a recess under my bedroom window where some thick bushes kept those books out of view and out of the worst of the rain and weather.

A few years later when I was a little older and wiser I sat down with my Mom and we had a long discussion about how she, as a college graduate, a chemist no less, who believed in evolution and SCIENCE could think that a game book could "Magically" transform her son into Satan's spawn by rolling dice to battle Orcs and Goblins.

She grudgingly agreed that she'd allowed herself to act irrationally and after that point I no longer had to hide my D&D hobby from her.

It still boggles my mind to see so very many people in the USA thinking like people from the 16th century and believing that the boogeyman hides around every corner. Sometimes I think it is a miracle that we don't still have witch trails in this country.

All this crazyness in the nation that put men on the moon.

Wierd.

Ed

Chris Manos wrote:

I'm tempted to throw away arcane and divine magic and run a homebrew world with psionics and incarnum.

Wooooo! Mo' power to ya! :)

(But seriously, this is a really good idea!)

WaterdhavianFlapjack

My own homebrew d20 Dungeons and Dragons setting is built around Psionics as the first and natural supernatural power available in the setting. Magic and Arcane / Priestly magic comes in later in the history books and is often considered "unnatural" or "evil".

In my campaign psionics is not described as "psionics" so much as persons perception of what psionics might be. In one culture a psionic character might be a gifted priest, blessed by the saints with the ability to perform miracles while in another culture it might be viewed as a form of witchcraft...people in my setting get burned at the stake for "witchcraft" wielding the same psionics that the uneducated followers of the "holy orders" believe are the blessings of the saints.

Hi all,

I hate to say this but I think the answer rests in the ongoing effort by some folks to reprint the old game modules and the old rules.

I began play when I was barely in middle school back in 1978 and I have to admit that plenty of the hard core rules were lost on me. The basic rules of you roll x dice for combat and you gain experience for killing monsters was clear enough for us back then though and got us rolling.

I am afraid that even a scaled down 3.5 version would be hard to learn. As a kid I really liked the "I'm a fighter" "I'm a wizard." simplicity of things. I do agree that whatever you work with should take the kids at least to 10th level.

Adventuring to 10th level the old school way can take years honestly, even given entire summer vacations spent on the D&D campaign trail. It took our little group at least three years to work our characters up from first level to level eight.

By the time the kids top at tenth level they should (hopefully) be old enough to start up with the main books.

Old Gamer,

I am actually from Topeka, KS (no longer a resident though). You need to look up the GateKeeper. It is a great gaming store, one of the best that I have seen in my travels. Go there and ask around, and you will find someone.

Salcor

OldGamer2000 wrote:

Hi there. I am a long time GM / DM with roots that go all the way back to the first little white box edition of D&D and the Chainmail rules.

I am moving to Topeka, Kansas and I am looking for players for a d20 Dungeons and Dragons campaign and a Hero system, science fiction campaign.

Hopeful to find gamers in Topeka, Kansas,

OldGamer2000

Thanks. It is a very nice store to be sure. I will see what I can do about meeting some players there. =)

My first, ever D&D character was created using the rules out of the little white box edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Back when the rules were in little pocket book editions...shortly after Chainmail was in the game store.

The year was 1978 or 1979 I believe.

Arthnek (later Arthnek the Boar as he contracted lycanthrope)

Human, Fighter who I played the hard way up through the ranks to level eight..nearly level nine if I remember correctly.

A really wonderful campaign run by some high school friends. We were thrilled when the first blue box set, the first ever large boxed edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out and played through that first adventure so many times we (all of the players) had every passage and secret door memorized.

I played Arthnek through a number of campaigns and different incarnations until he ultimately retired around 1984 as high school came to an end.

Fun days, very fun days.

Hi there. I am a long time GM / DM with roots that go all the way back to the first little white box edition of D&D and the Chainmail rules.

I am moving to Topeka, Kansas and I am looking for players for a d20 Dungeons and Dragons campaign and a Hero system, science fiction campaign.

Hopeful to find gamers in Topeka, Kansas,

OldGamer2000