by Jimmy Mcgregor

Created on: January 08, 2009

Being 12 years old in 1983 was great. I was a normal boy, as far as I was concerned. I played with Star Wars action figure, adventure people, legos and army men. Then on a trip to the ocean, my cousin introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. It started with a couple of Xerox copies, some dice, a large piece of paper, a character sheet and a pencil. This event changed my life forever.

Most modern gamers don't know that back in the day dice were scarce. For the most part the only dice gamers had came with the game that they purchased. They were small, somewhat fragile, and crayon had to be used to color in the numbers. For the most part these proto-dice worked and there isn't a gamer that did not supplement their dice by raiding the family board games. I am sure that many parents are still curious how all of the dice disappeared from the RISK and Monopoly games in their homes.

In the day the game was simple. Most players started with the Basic Dungeons and Dragons game and continued to the Expert set. The first adventure game most players cut their teeth on, B2 the Keep on the Borderlands, just happened to be included with the Basic boxed set. I still remember the day I visited Cranes book store, in our local mall and purchased The Monster Manual and The Dungeon Master Guide for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, considered the first addition of Dungeons and Dragons.

The Advanced Dungeons Masters Guide was a treasure trove of information. Everything that you ever needed was contained in this book, provided you could find it. This could be the most organized/disorganized game book ever printed. If a player was well versed in the Dungeon Master Guide could find a rule for anything that they wanted. They could pull up some off the wall rule that was buried in the back of the book and make a difference in the game. To this day, I can still find something new.

To be honest, I was going to leave this paragraph out, because it sounds more like griping than reminiscing. The biggest pain with the golden days of role playing had to be calculation experience points. The original advanced books did not have the easy monster experience calculator at the bottom of the monster description. In the back of the Dungeon Masters Guide there is a table. Your DM had to find the creature on that table, take the base experience points and make adjustments according to hit points. Or you could use the Experience Points Value of Monsters chart on page 85. Calculate experience value by using the hit dice. Then add in hit points, special ability or exceptional ability X.P.'s that the monster may have. What a pain; however, I miss those days.

Today we are spoiled. Most book store carry all of our Role Playing needs. We can read Dragon and Dungeon magazine online, we don't have to wait for the store to open. Five to six new books are published every month. I was there when the Second Edition of Gamma World, First Edition of Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Robotech, Twilight 2000. I have waited months for new role playing materials to be published. The experience of visiting the local book store and seeing a first edition of a game that provoked the imagination of millions of people worldwide is hard to express. It brings a smile to my face when I am working in my small cubical at work dreaming of the golden days of role-playing.

Learn more about this author, Jimmy Mcgregor.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.