Wez here.
I have been reading and buying Dungeon randomly since its inception and have recently decided to go crazy and collect EVERY SINGLE ONE and put them all in a big box, each precious magazine safely encapsulated within the sanctuary of a special plastic sleeve...
Im getting quite a few.
I’ve been in the game since 88 and it all began when I was 8 I met a Kid called Ben, who introduced me to a game called Tunnels and Trolls.
Tunnels and Trolls is a role-playing game that was first released in 1975. It was designed by Ken St. Andre.
Published by Flying Buffalo, it was developed to be an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons, aimed particularly at solitaire and play-by-mail gameplay.Tunnels and Trolls is a simple game that is rich in detail, easy to play and with a sense of humour. It was one of the very earliest roleplaying games from the late 1970s and was greatly influential on later systems. The game introduced the idea of playing a variety of humans as player characters, using a core character generation system, such that non humans were given greater strength or lower intelligence but still operated as any human in systematic terms. The game also published one of the earliest spell point systems, where magic is powered by mana points rather than memory slots derived from level, as in Dungeons and Dragons. The only polyhedral dice you need to play Tunnels and Trolls are six-sided dice, however you can need quite a lot of them. The phrase "buckets of dice" has often been used to describe how many a high-level campaign requires.
His father - who we called Pip was a professor at the University of Christchurch ( New Zealand ) and he played this game and had taught his son.
Ben and I played this game a lot over that summer and I even played in his fathers game with my characters Rambo I , II and III.
My foolish and reckless play style got me killed often but undaunted I made my own dungeon and killed other peoples characters.
I remember Pips Dungeon had a stone Donut in it that could teleport you or something and there was a group of orcs or something that would shriek PRESS GANG !! And fling gas grenades down the corridor.
This was represented by Pip throwing pens or dice at you and if you diddnt catch them then you CHARACTER diddnt catch the bombs and you were Knocked out - with the resultant and attendant disappearance of all your hard plundered stuff.
It was in that summer of 85 that the Gaming Juggernaut named THE WEZ was born.
If someone had told me that I would spend countless hours over the next 20 years scribbling into notebooks , rolling dice, making funny voices and would go with out food , sleep and even destroy perfectly good relationships with perfectly proportioned women all for the thrill of helping others follow me through a glowing green portal into an imaginary world populated with fairies, elves and gremlins I would have grabbed them by the arm and said...
“THERE’S A” PORTAL????!!!!!”
I once added up all the time I have spent hunched over books and peering from behind screens and the number of consecutive days that I had spent gaming totaled almost four years...
I rechecked the numbers THAT CANT BE RIGHT Wez said to Wez.
That’s preposterous , astounding and hideous !!!
It just wont do !
Its not enough!
Efforts must be redoubled!
Somehow and meanwhile I have managed to travel to 12 countries, become a professional in 6 fields, suffered through dizzying highs, shattering lows and of course creamy middles, written a book about it all ( It is called Memories of A Post Grunge Drifter) and only now am going bald at 28.
I have made many great adventures and have often thought of submitting them to Dungeon but for their length and general weirdness.
I will Email you my best one if you will read it and if you like it - play it.
Im at agentfestaskull@hotmail.com
Well Just thought I would enter the room and say hello.
Best
Wez