So it’s been a year since I started this blog and I’m pleased with how it’s turned out so far.
Once I started I realised how much I missed writing for pleasure; most of my penmanship has been dull technical stuff that while serviceable isn’t something that I can point to and say “I did this”. Which is very unlike this blog my main outlet for my creative urges although my muse seems to be driven by my sickness, something that I find very amusing.
I thought it was also time to expand upon my origin story that I first mentioned here, while searching through a box of books it turns out that I had accidentally deceived you all and my first purchased RPG turns out to be the basic edition Marvel Superheroes RPG. I purchased in 1986 while on holiday after being driven to find it by the amazing adverts in the back of the Marvel comics I was reading.
I think I forgot about buying it as I never seemed to know what to do with it or how to get other people interested. Bear in mind this was before the days of the internet and gaming magazines in the UK were had to get hold of from the local newsagent.
What really grabbed my interest in gaming was a programme I saw on LWT back in the early 80s called “South of Watford” and presented by Ben Elton. I remember watching him go to the Games Workshop store in Hammersmith and talk to the store manager before later on playing some D&D. Five years later I would be in that very store and buying my first games.
Games Workshop then was a different store, one that sold other peoples material and long before the advent of the Games Workshop hobby which is what they’re best known for these days. In those days you could pick up a licensed copy of Runequest, Traveller or even Call of Cthulhu.
Moving behind the screen.
After being a player for a short period of time I decided to try being a gamesmaster and looking back on those days I think it was my sheer enthusiasm that kept me going. I was at one point gaming five nights a week running a different game each night with a different system. It was during this time that I started to understand what I liked to run; science fiction piqued my interest more than fantasy did and I loved the four colour superhero genre. Much Traveller and Marvel Superheroes was played along with a side dish of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The Critical Miss years.
It all started simply enough with an open call for players at a local comic shop; the owner knew me and the people organising the event and I decided to turn up and try to play with a different group of people. Let me tell you those first few weeks were a great time, we all brought games down to play and since we never really that organised you could never count on the same group of players for each game. I took my chances and dusted out Paranoia second edition and over the course of several weeks I ran through the published adventures I had bought. The players had fun trying to kill each other and deal with the game forms a friend had photocopied.
Slowly the group started to crystallise from the raw elements we threw at it, after a few months we lost a player and the venue; we found a new home in a building owned by the father of another player and we played in that cold cramped warehouse amongst the boxes of paper. Summer came around and then we started to lose players until by the following October we were d0wn to a handful and we moved once again to my place.
I found myself running more games and with a stable group we could try to play campaigns together. I was now playing twice a week with two different groups and this became once a week when the two groups melded together. We lost more players as well; one went off to university, one moved away and one left for personal reasons I won’t go into here.
It was during this period I broke out Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and embarked upon the Enemy Within Campaign.
The present.
I’ve been playing with another group of friends online using Roll20 and that’s what caused the genesis of this blog back with this first post .
