In 1981 I stumbled
upon some older boys playing some kind of game, the likes of which I had never
seen before. I was mesmerized! They immediately stopped playing when my
entourage entered the room, but it was too late. For I had already caught a
glimpse of a hand-made dungeon map etched meticulously on 8.5x11-inch graph
paper. I inquired about what they were doing but I was brushed off and ushered
out of the room and out of the house by my elders. For the next few years, I
tried desperately to play a game that I had never seen played; a game whose
rule book I didn’t even know existed; a game my young inexperienced mind couldn’t
even fathom; a game whose name I did not know. I didn’t even have access to
graph paper, but I drew maps on any kind of paper I could find. I used action
figures. I used whatever else I could find to re-create those short few seconds
of exposure that I had to a game that was eluding me.
It wasn’t until
1986, when I was introduced to the infallible and august Red Box, that I discovered
that this glorious, and at the time exclusive, game that I had been chasing in
my mind’s eye for the last 5 years was called Dungeon & Dragons! The Red Box,
that started it all for me, was a distant friend’s, so I immersed myself in whatever
else I could find or afford that was fantasy orientated. Which wasn’t much, a half
torn and ripped adventure module with no cover or title (I don’t even think it
was a d&d product), a weapons & armour catalog from a renaissance faire,
and some character sheets from the Red Box that I had begged my parents to
photocopy for me.
But this all
changed in 1989 when Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition was released
and became readily available at my local bookstore. My life was irrevocably
changed forever! I learned of an almost secret society of my friends’ older
brothers who wore death metal t-shirts and spat on the status quo. I wanted nothing more than to finally join
this allusive and mysterious club of miscreants, unwanted, unpopular, misunderstood,
intelligent, creative, unique, and free-thinking individuals that took up the
mantle of d&d player characters, not to mention the all-wise and powerful dungeon masters in a league beyond the likes of which I could still not imagine. I had
already been trying to join this club for the past 8 years of my life and for
half of that time without even knowing that this game was anything other
than the machinations of two 12 year-old boys. There was no looking back, I was
hooked forever.
Well… no
looking back until 1997, when the unthinkable happened! A card game company
bought TSR, Tactical Studies Rules, the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons. A
card game company! With circles and arrows and glossy pictures! A company that
wouldn’t exist without D&D, Wizards of the Coast in their hubris, attempted
to turn Dungeons & Dragons, a role-playing game, into a card game. D&D 3rd
edition was born! Enter bright glossy cartoon images and juvenile musings. At
the time, I thought the worse of it was the death of “real art” in the genre. The
loss of the Elmores, the Caldwells, the Easleys, the Parkinsons of the world, the
face of D&D! It changed the game for me more than any rule in any book. WotC
started a downward spiral that escalated until I puked out every orifice of my
body with the release of D&D 4th edition. I was disgusted, betrayed, embarrassed.
D&D sales plummeted, which I like to think had nothing to do with video
games, but with the bad choices of a bad company.
Finally WotC
tried to redeem themselves with the advent of D&D 5th edition. I rejoiced! It
seemed playable, even though it still left a bad taste in my mouth, mostly due
to the glossy paper and cartoon-like art. But there was something else wrong
about it. I just couldn’t place my finger on it. Was it the overly assessable
rules, the universal game mechanics that just can’t work for every situation? Was
it the ridiculous amount of class abilities that really didn’t add anything but
headache and bother? Was it the fact
that fighters aren’t any better at hitting things than wizards? WTF! Was it
that nothing could ever live up to the nostalgia of my childhood experiences
with Dungeons & Dragons and the 80’s in general for that matter? You know I don’t really know and I don’t really
care, because I discovered the OSR!
