My first
experience with roleplaying came during the summer of 1985. That summer, a
kid that was in a summer program with me introduced me to the system.We played
the pre generated characters that were in the basic Red Box set before we
went to the class. At that time we just rolled dice and arbitrarily decided
on what happened. (I attribute that to being ten.) That week or so was all
about what our imaginations could create.
The next summer a new kid moved into the neighborhood, and he had a better grasp of the rules. That summer we learned the rules, but we still were popping off dragons like they were nothing. We played a module or home brewed adventure three to four times a week. It was the type of gaming that one can only enjoy at a young age. My exuberance for the game concerned my parents, and that earned me a ban from playing. (Bad press and all that.) I would still play, but in 1988 we moved to CT and then to CO which halted my gaming career.
During the next few years my gaming disappeared, but I really got into fine scale modeling and eventually miniatures. I found I had a real penchant for painting 25mm figures, and this was something my parents encouraged. Eventually my parents stopped bugging me about the whole gamming thing, and the group of friends I fell in with during my High School years started playing.
Once we started gaming we discovered that our friend had a Dad who had played since the good old Chainmail days. He undid many years of bad gaming and taught us how to play. We played every weekend for the majority of our High School careers in the Greyhawk campaign setting. These games taught us how to play and be dead creative with spells and tactics. There were eight of us that played, not including the DM.
During this time we branched out into other game settings Like Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. and Robotech. We had complex storylines, and creative games that kept us coming back. During this time I also discovered the evil that is table top wargamming and got into just about every game Games Workshop had at the time. (I still play and collect. I'm coming close to having 2000 minis.Uggggghhhhh!) I moved from CO to CA for awhile and just painted during that time. From there I moved to TX in 1997.
When I came to TX I just played table top games. It was around this time when I met Gordon.When 3rd edition was released I was invited to join a group of our game store regulars in the new edition. A few months later Gordon told me about his desire to form a group to play, and I quickly fell in love with his campaign and the character I play. (In fact there are people in Austin who know more about my character than me.)
Gordon's campaign inspired me to write the campaign I always wanted to run as a DM since I started playing. This campaign is called Mythic Earth and is based on a alternate earth 1350. This has been a fun campaign for me and the first successful campaign I have run. This has now inspired me to run a 7th Sea campaign which we will see in the next few months.