Early days...

[pyat]

I wrote a bit about my first Shadowrun character yesterday, which got me to thinking about my first RPG character, who I created almost exactly 21 years ago today.

The first RPG I owned was FASA’s Doctor Who which I received for my 13th birthday in 1987. The first character I made was a Time Lord named Arkylayarkyluarkylundar or “Doctor Arky”. He appeared to be in his 60s, wore thick glasses, smoked a pipe and dressed in 19th century fashions, with the exception of his shoes – which, curiously, were “trainers” of the sort worn by David Tennant’s incarnation of The Doctor. He went around the universe in an ancient Model 16 TARDIS that had only one enormous room, filled with clocks. He TARDIS usually looked like a PortaPotty. Doctor Arky generally served as an exposition NPC. He’d show up when the players got confused, or needed to be rescued. This wasn’t often, since for a long time all my adventures were just a matter of “The Daleks have put you in a maze filled with traps and monsters, and you have to escape…”

The first RPG I played in, rather than GMed, was a one-off all-night D&D session at a sleepover in 7th grade. I made a Cavalier for AD&D named “Sir Nabisco of Tuppenscheilmer.” There was no attempt at seriousness in this game. We tried to sneak into an evil wizard’s castle by pretending to be pizza deliverymen, and Sir Nabisco’s AC was augmented by the fact that he was constantly wearing a sousaphone. He ended up selling the sousaphone and his plate armor in order to bail the other characters out of prison. It was all very silly – sort of a lame combination of Monty Python and Korgoth of Barbaria, except Korgoth was the DM’s pet NPC and we were the cannon fodder supporting cast of semi-competent comic relief.

In the 8th grade, I moved back to Hamilton and discovered that my old friends had also discovered RPGs, and I started playing in about a dozen different games over the course of that year. Listing them all would be rather tedious, but we played…

Top Secret SI
Gamma World
DC Heroes
Marvel Superheroes
Justice Inc.
Star Wars

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I have a great fondness for Gamma World. It's the game that taught me how to make flow charts and more than a little of what I about System Analysis.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Which edition did you play? We used the oddball one with the big color chart on the back. :)

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I'd have to look, but I think if my rule book were in better shape, I might be able pay for a class by selling it. I might have the first edition, first printing. My copy is black and white and has a hex grid on the back cover. It's filled pretty much exclusively with Erol Otus artwork. I think the Bunny Raiders sold me on the book. Any game that has a race of giant, bipedal bunny rabbits whose touch turns metal to rubber is cool in my book.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

That's first edition, all right.

I wanted to play a Hoop. :(