RPGs and Me – Part 1 of 3: The Distant Past

No I’m not going to be talking about Rocket Propelled Grenades, I’m not some Wargammer. I’m talking about Role Playing Games, specifically Fantasy Role Playing Games. I have always been into Fantasy no matter what form it took whether it be a movie, book, TV show, or video game. But a RPG is a fantasy story that you get to interact in, you get to play the Hero, and your friends can be heroes too. Yet another friend can play the villains and set up obstacles for your heroes to overcome, it’s the ultimate way to enjoy a fantasy story.

My first exposure to the concept of interactive fantasy was, like most people, Dungeons and Dragons. Unlike most people though I was not introduced to it by a group of friends, I found it on my own, in this book;

The Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I did not have any of the other rule books to learn how to play the game, and I was too young to figure it out anyway, but I remember leafing through the book and looking at all the monsters and understanding that they all had their own statistics and information that would be used in playing against your character. Even at that young age I was fascinated with the concept, actually playing a fantasy story where you face off against such strange and fearsome creatures.

I never actually got to play D&D until a few years later when I got the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules set.

Even though I could not get any friends together to play there was a “solo adventure” that played a lot like a choose your own adventure game. Remember the old Choose you own Adventure games?

Choose Your Own Adventure was about reading a story and making decisions that would effect what happened next in the story. The “solo adventure” in the D&D Basic Rules was aimed at giving you a “taste” of what playing a role playing game was like but was more complex then Choose Your Own Adventure in that you had statistics and skills for you character and you actually rolled dice for combating a monster and things like that. I really liked the Idea of a more complex Choose Your Own Adventure and I thought it would be so much fun if someone came out with a series of books like that. I especially liked the idea since I could not find anyone to play D&D with. That’s when I found the Lone Wolf series of books.

I loved these books and bought everyone I could get my hands on. You played the character of Lone Wolf the last of the Kai Lords, who must save his country from invasion by the Darklords of Helgedad who massacred all his kinsmen. When you successfully completed the first book you could then take your character’s powers and magic items into the second book and learn new skills and watch your character grow just like in D&D. There were 32 Lone Wolf books written, but only 24 were published here in the US and the last 8 were abridged and edited in such a way as to make some of the books unplayable if you made certain choices in the book. Also these books are now out of print. Gladly a few years back I stumbled upon this website called Project Aon. They are working, with the original Author’s blessing, to republish the full and corrected versions of these books on the web. I have even helped them out by transcribing some of my copies of the books. Lone Wolf was fun to play but it’s still not like playing a real RPG like D&D.

Eventually I did get to play D&D with some friends from school and it was fun but it felt like it was missing something. I never knew what until I discovered Pool of Radiance.

Pool of Radiance was the first in a series of Dungeons & Dragons games that you could play on your computer, I had the IBM version and I played it on my smoking fast 12 Mhz 286. There might have been RPG games on the computer before this but none were an actually D&D adventure like this. You could create up to 6 characters for your party and go questing in a very large computer generated world complete with overland, dungeon, and city maps that were presented to you in a simulated 3-D view window. You could also encounter monsters and other friendly characters and converse with them.

You could even get into combat and gain magic items and weaponry from your defeated foes. You would also gain experience points for all these deeds that would allow you to level up your characters and make them more powerful. When the whole adventure was done and you had defeated the big bad guy you could then take your powered up characters and transfer them into the next game in the series, “Curse of the Azure Bonds”. This was cutting edge at the time and really made you feel like you were playing D&D. There were 9 of these so called “Gold Box” games released and I bought them all as fast as SSI could make them. The thing that these games added that I felt was missing from the “pen and paper” D&D sessions I had played with my friends was the visual way of presenting the combat.

SSI or Strategic Simulations Incorporated, who made the games, started out as a software company with the goal of bringing strategic wargames to the PC. Since most of the wargames they were emulating were played with miniatures on a table with opponents taking turns moving and attacking with their pieces the combat in SSI’s games was very tactical and kinda felt like a boardgame, and their D&D games were no different. I personally loved this way of combat in D&D. To actually be able to visualize your characters position relative to obstructions like walls and doors and trees and other characters not only helped you but the other people you were playing with. I can’t tell you how many times I would play “pen & paper” D&D with a group of people where someone decides to cast a huge area of effect spell like a Fireball and ends up not only hurting the enemy but his comrades as well because he had “no idea they were that close”. Of coarse the DM wouldn’t be any help because he would not properly describe the area you were fighting in, and certainly not keep track in anyway where everyone was. This was because most of the people I played with thought of D&D as an interactive storytelling session, whereas I always wanted it to be a boardgame with hard and fast rules with and interactive story throw in.

After playing the SSI computer D&D games, “pen & paper” D&D was forever ruined for me. I would refuse to play with anyone unless we had some visual element to keep track of characters and monsters positions in combat, but back then miniatures were hard to find and expensive. I also insisted that the DM pay attention to the ranges and areas of effect for spells and weapons, none of them wanted to do that. I still wanted to find something that would allow for an RPG experience with my friends and me sitting around the table together. The SSI games were fun but I was playing them alone. I resolved myself to start looking for something that was more like a boardgame but had D&D like elements thrown in. I will talk about that in the next part of “RPG’s and Me”