Into RPGs: My story about how I made my way to the hobby

This post may be slightly egotistical, but I feel like my experience has been different than most and worth sharing.

It began as a child. Frankly, I didn't want to stop playing pretend. My parents like to tell stories about how I would be standing amongst other kids at the playground, orchestrating them in a game of pretend. It sounds to me like I was kind of a bossy child. Perfect for a GM, right? I and my friends transitioned out of games of straight up pretend into games where we collaboratively told goofy stories together.

This was still in a time where I really had no idea what D&D was but we were doing the story games thing before it was cool except that, rather than angsty stories about loss and growing up as an alienated teenaged monster, we mostly told stores about crazy drugged up wizards, god-fish barely contained within tiny fishbowls, and tiny vibrating pigs with h-bomb-level gas. You can see how this inevitably leads towards the OSR, right? Is it weird that it seems so obvious looking back?

Games of pretend started becoming unfashionable as we grew older and the glaring problem of such games began to spoil them. On more than one occasion, the question became "Well my shield is unbreakable!" That's not a question. The question really was: "How can we play these games like actual games with rules and stuff?"

That question went unanswered for a long time.

At some point, I think I was thirteen or fifteen, somewhere in there, I got into the Yogscast. I loved watching Lewis and Simon mess around in Minecraft. Their Trouble in Terrorist Town and Grand Theft Auto videos are still funny and always a source of comfort to me. Then one day they posted this video:

I was floored. What in the world is this game they're playing? Look how much fun they're having! My experience was kind of the opposite of the "Mercer Effect." I never had the very professional Critical Roll to give me a vision of awesome voice acting and deep characters. I had these nerds, these old-lady-hypnotizing, thieving, owl-tongue-boob-tassel-wearing flipping nerds who never stayed in character, failed to cast spells to hilarious effect, and were generally pretty shit.

I loved them to death. I loved the camaraderie of the show between the players as they just had fun with each other. That is the goal I like to have for my games. I want people to have fun with each other and with the game. My games can take a step back if people are just enjoying playing with each other. I'm pretty sure they were playing some Pathfinder, albeit throwing most of the rules out the window. When I first watched it, somehow I completely overlooked the books they were using and thought that the game was just something that their game master had made up.

So began my years-long attempt to reverse engineer D&D from goofy youtube videos. I subjected my friends from church who, luckily for me, remained my friends through the process. For a long time, I had no idea what I was doing but I was having fun and my friends were begrudgingly enjoying themselves. 

I got my first taste of an actual D&D system in high school. By this point, I was watching Acquisitions Incorporated and I had figured out that there were actual rules to this thing we call RPGs. I played 4th Edition D&D. I actually had a lot of fun. I began to realize what a slog it was later, but in my first adventure I got handed a character that was a Hamadryad Witch and I successfully seduced an Elf King in the Fey Wild, outlasted him in the bedroom, and stole his stuff. I recall being disgusted and slightly aroused when my GM, a weird very naughty Wiccan girl, called for an Endurance check and awarded my successful check with ranks in Acrobatics.

I got my first taste of GMing when said Wiccan girl GM, had to go play at the other table (there were two at the RPG Club where this was taking place, held in a Science Teacher's classroom after school.) They were fighting an Avatar of Death or something. And while they entered into this combat slog, she handed me some of her notes, including some monster stat blocks and said "Your turn! You said you wanted to DM, right?" 

I did but I was still writing my first adventure and I didn't even have my notes for it on hand. I told her as much.

"You got this! I gotta go fight Death!"

So she ran off to fight the reaper while I had to face a bunch of players looking at me with expectant eyes. I had a few monsters and some ideas so I just kind of started saying words, bouncing ideas off the players to adlib an adventure together. Somehow I ended up at the conclusion that they were going to be making their way through a forest under the control of a God of Madness. I stole some ideas from Adventure Time and made some things up: like a blue tree that gave out beer and could hypnotize animals.

It was fun and I realized that as we were playing, our GM was looking at us from the other table, intrigued. I noted with much satisfaction that she left that table as soon as she could to smack down a character sheet at my table and hop in.

My very first GM experience seemed to be quite a success. I went on to run a fun campaign mostly based around a tale of treachery in a dwarven city. There was also a sky city with demons and valkyrie and a crazy shopkeep with a glass eye and a ballista that he used to defend his goods.

It was fun but I felt sure that I could make a system better than 4e where every combat was an hours-long affair. I made and polished my own system for years, mostly only showing it to my church friends who I had already broken enough to allow me to run my own systems. The other group wanted to play 5e as it was coming out or D&D Next, as it was marketed back then.

This was a really good time in my life. With my club friends, we were exploring a new and exciting game system that really seemed to resolve a lot of 4e's problems. At the same time, my church friends circle actually grew and they all really enjoyed playing my own system for a while. It was really a great time.

The church friend group started to fall apart, though. Oh we never stopped being friends but I think they just got a little burned out and never could get back to enjoying the game. Which is a shame, but I guess I have to do nonRPG related frivolities sometime. I also dropped the system. It was a deeply flawed system that mostly revolved around combat and a character creation process that was about picking two different "Aspects" and taking abilities from each. There were a lot of options and I kept the whole Daily Powers and At Will Powers thing from 4e. I think of that as being pretty embarrassing now.

My rpg stuff for a long time became mostly running 5e and a brief stint with Pathfinder. Around the time I was heading off to college, I discovered Dungeon Crawl Classics. I don't even really remember how but at the time, it looked like it did so many things that I had wanted to see in a game.  I was enamored with it and immediately bought The One Who Watches from Below, a wonderful dungeon that I tormented some level 0s within my couple weeks in college.

I discovered the Hill Cantons blog and products and fell in love with the idea of blogging. Chris Kutalik put my blog on his list of recommended and I was super honored. I discovered Patrick Stuart, next and from there started slowly digging into the OSR on G+. I think it was really Dan D of Throne of Salt that really got me into the community, letting me into some of his Danscape games.

That was when I truly think I began to enter the OSR community. I guess I had entered the gaming hobby much earlier but it has taken on so much more meaning now. I have made so many friends, explored so many worlds, and imagined so many possibilities which I had never considered before. I never felt as though I could really create something gaming related that people would see in large numbers and enjoy. The possibilities presented by the kind of people who have created such beautiful things without any kind of huge companies backing them up has really inspired me to try my hand at making something myself.

I want to thank some people who have been really helpful to me:

Chris Kutalik of the Hill Cantons blog who was the first to put my blog in his list of recommended blogs. It really meant a lot to me and was probably the thing that has kept me blogging to this day.

Patrick Stuart and Ben Milton for inspiring me to create.

Dan D for running some fine games and for being an awesome player and friend. His Danscape games were instrumental for me to get into the community. His involvement in my Weird Marches game, playing the fearsome Ayo, has been wonderful. Also, a cool guy to talk about podcasts with.

Max Cantor for his awesome imaginative games and posts. His SHIELD game and the superhero one shot were all awesome games. He is also a great encourager. He regularly comments on my posts and his comments always make my day.

Ben Laurence for his awesome zine: Through Ultan's Door, and for running a wonderful game, exploring deeper into his Dreamlands. I have had a ton of fun playing in his game.

Spwack for his great game, Die Trying, and for his discussion and advice on my own projects.

Sam for being one of my oldest players and partner in bloggery. He hasn't blogged in a while but he has a bunch of great stuff. Give him a look.

I want to thank my friend Owl for having me play games on his Twitch channel and playing in my games.

I could give endless thanks to all the people who have been wonderful in this hobby. Thank you to all my players and friends which I have not mentioned thus far. You are all treasures.

And thanks be to God for blessing me with such wonderful people in my life.


I'd love to hear other's stories. Many people like to respond to lists but I would love to see a trend of more people telling their stories.