Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Anger management (or Everything I Know That's Worth Knowing, I Learned From D&D)
Although my first pen-and-paper roleplaying game group (the term computer roleplaying game was probably around at that time but not all that well-known) was that foursome that rolled up characters and mashed skeletons in my parents' garage, it barely counts, considering we maybe played two or three times during that first summer.
In 1987, I bought the D&D Red Box. Technically, it was called the D&D Basic Set, but the Red Box is the name gamers everywhere gave it, and it's a name that stuck. Why? 'Cause it was frickin' red with a big-ass red dragon on the front (although I've seen other Red Boxes that had a mage on the cover, I believe). Seeing as how my first dungeon master had moved away, there was nobody left who was familiar enough with the rules to run the game. While Sean (my bro, not Smith) and Tim were still keen on playing, the dungeon master's mantle fell on my shoulders -- probably because I was the one foolish enough to buy the box in the first place and because I was the keenest to play.
I started using my little bit of allowance money to buy adventures, supplements, dice, graph paper, hex paper, maps and eventually other roleplaying games that were not Dungeons & Dragons. My early years of dungeon mastering mainly revolved around using the often complicated (for an eleven-year-old) modules published by TSR at the time. Most of the adventures took place in either the Greyhawk or Blackmoor settings, but I interpersed things as I saw fit and never really bothered to consider the continuity of the tales we told.
At times, when Tim wasn't available, my brother and I tried recruiting our elders for a game session. I remember my mother's fighter character named George, and I remember trying to explain the game to my grandmother on a rather lengthy road trip to Orlando. You just haven't played in rough situations until you've tried to roll a d20 in a car that's riding on pothole-ridden roads.
For a few years, my gaming group would meet after school up to four or five nights a week. We'd start from the time we got home and finish when our parents started calling for dinner. The core group remained Tim (usually playing a fighter), Sean (almost always a mage) and me (generally the dungeon master/game master), but other players came and went before we hit high school. Brian Patterson, a guy I haven't seen in years, and Rawlio joined here and there to play D&D or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, which was the second full game I purchased after the Red Box.
As I started high school, we took on another core member of the group. Steve stuck with the group for a very long time. Tim dropped out around the middle of high school, but Steve only left the group a couple of years ago.
During high school, the gaming group got big for awhile. Although my groups usually consisted of no more than four or five players at any one time, the biggest group I ever ran for was nine players. And that's where I learned to control my explosive temper. Being a game master while nine different players, each with his own strong personality quirks, were yelling constantly for attention, each voice getting louder and louder to be heard over the increasing volume, is enough to make anyone flip out a couple of times. Patience in such situations is very difficult to learn, but you either learn it or your group becomes accustomed to violent outbursts. For years, it was the latter case.
In 1987, I bought the D&D Red Box. Technically, it was called the D&D Basic Set, but the Red Box is the name gamers everywhere gave it, and it's a name that stuck. Why? 'Cause it was frickin' red with a big-ass red dragon on the front (although I've seen other Red Boxes that had a mage on the cover, I believe). Seeing as how my first dungeon master had moved away, there was nobody left who was familiar enough with the rules to run the game. While Sean (my bro, not Smith) and Tim were still keen on playing, the dungeon master's mantle fell on my shoulders -- probably because I was the one foolish enough to buy the box in the first place and because I was the keenest to play.
I started using my little bit of allowance money to buy adventures, supplements, dice, graph paper, hex paper, maps and eventually other roleplaying games that were not Dungeons & Dragons. My early years of dungeon mastering mainly revolved around using the often complicated (for an eleven-year-old) modules published by TSR at the time. Most of the adventures took place in either the Greyhawk or Blackmoor settings, but I interpersed things as I saw fit and never really bothered to consider the continuity of the tales we told.
At times, when Tim wasn't available, my brother and I tried recruiting our elders for a game session. I remember my mother's fighter character named George, and I remember trying to explain the game to my grandmother on a rather lengthy road trip to Orlando. You just haven't played in rough situations until you've tried to roll a d20 in a car that's riding on pothole-ridden roads.
For a few years, my gaming group would meet after school up to four or five nights a week. We'd start from the time we got home and finish when our parents started calling for dinner. The core group remained Tim (usually playing a fighter), Sean (almost always a mage) and me (generally the dungeon master/game master), but other players came and went before we hit high school. Brian Patterson, a guy I haven't seen in years, and Rawlio joined here and there to play D&D or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, which was the second full game I purchased after the Red Box.
As I started high school, we took on another core member of the group. Steve stuck with the group for a very long time. Tim dropped out around the middle of high school, but Steve only left the group a couple of years ago.
During high school, the gaming group got big for awhile. Although my groups usually consisted of no more than four or five players at any one time, the biggest group I ever ran for was nine players. And that's where I learned to control my explosive temper. Being a game master while nine different players, each with his own strong personality quirks, were yelling constantly for attention, each voice getting louder and louder to be heard over the increasing volume, is enough to make anyone flip out a couple of times. Patience in such situations is very difficult to learn, but you either learn it or your group becomes accustomed to violent outbursts. For years, it was the latter case.
// posted by Chris @ 3:06 PM 
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