My Love of RPGs
When did I start to love Role Playing Games? I guess it started when I was a child growing up in the 1960’s. Now before everyone starts saying things like, “But RPGs were not created until the seventies, ” and other such nonsense, we used to play make believe without rules and without paper or pen. Make believe was were you played “Cowboys and Indians”, “Cops and Robbers” or “World War Two”. You used sticks for guns and every boy could make the sound of a rocket or gunfire. When Star Trek started on tv all of a sudden it was making sounds of laser beams and playing “Space Explorer”.
Role playing games have been around as long as children have been allowed to play. The definition of a Role Playing game is this from Wikipedia: “A role-playing game (RPG; often roleplaying game) is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game.” In short “Make Believe.”
The cover to the 3rd Edition of Chainmail
The first tabletop RPG I ever played was “Chainmail”. I remember receiving a copy of it from a friend while I was stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base in 1977. This led me to Dungeons and Dragons later that year and when I worked at the Alameda Book Center to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition and the creation of the East Bay RPG Guild when the store opened Fantasy Aisle in 1979.
While working and manageing Fantasy Aisle, I learned about other RPGs. There was “The Call of Cthulhu”, “Runequest”, “Boot Hill”, “Gamma World” and my favorite “The Arduin Grimoire”. These games not only gave me an outlet for my creativity but also expanded my love of reading and drawing.
Then came the day that the owner of the store said, “I need you to go to the Hyatt by the airport and run our table at DunDraCon. I asked her what was DunDraCon and was told it was a gaming convention. I would have to work during the day and was free at night. My entrance to the convention would be paid by the store and I could hire a couple of my game club members to help out for the weekend. This was great, I got a couple of the more reliable guys to help out and we had a great time at the convention. There I playtested a new RPG that was about to be published, it was called “Champions” and was a super-hero/comic book RPG. Not the first but was the best.
As time went on, more games came out and dissapeared just as fast. Fantasy Aisle closed due to mismanagement by the owner and the East Bay RPG Guild move from place to place. I miss those days and hope to start playing again. Now that I”m married and have a wife game time is limited. New obligations and family needs have to come first. But maybe, through these writings and the Internet, I might be able to get back some of the spark I had before.
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Welcome to The East Bay RPG Guild
I would like to welcome you to the East bay RPG Guild. Feel free to bookmark this site and visit as often as you like, or better yet join the website and help participate in this small but growing community. The community is for everything from your reviews of games to how your last gaming session went. There will be interviews and guest posts from people in the industry and reviews of conventions that members attend.
Signing up is free and all you nneed is an e-mail address and the nerve to write and post about your love of RPG’s. It doesn’t matter if you play an old fashioned Pen and paper RPG, a LARP, a computer RPG or an MMORPG, all are welcome to post on this board.
The only rules about posting is no flaming, no spam and it needs to be family friendly.
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