Ah, the Golden Age!

[pyat]

An online conversation about gaming habits with relee just now prompted me to calculate the amount of table-top RPG gaming I did during the "peak years" of high school. The summer between grades 10 and 11, when none of my friends had part-time jobs or girlfriends, probably reflects the period of greatest time investment. In a "good week", we'd be gaming on six or seven days, for anywhere between 50 and 60 hours. This does not count time spent drawing maps, writing campaign notes, or reading RPG books - probably an additional 10 hours or so each week.

A typical week would see a rotation between 3rd edition Champions, D6 Star Wars, and DC Heroes, with occasional forays into Justice Inc. , Paranoia, or Space: 1889. I still have about a dozen DC Heroes characters stowed away somewhere. Earlier, in grades 8 and 9, we were all about Doctor Who, Robotech and Marvel Super Heroes. Later in high school, our tastes shifted to things like Mage: The Ascension, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Call of Cthulhu, various GURPS settings, and the Middle-Earth Roleplaying System.

We never played Dungeons and Dragons, in deference to the wishes of my parents. I actually didn’t read the rules until I was in my 20s.

It was very involving. And girls were scary.

Comments

Re: Funny

[pyat.livejournal.com]

We were playing Robotech when we were 13 and 14, though. And, granted, our idea of "command chain roleplaying" involved a lot of shouting at NPCs and looking at maps of barracks.