Just Throwing It Out There

Never thought I'd be blogging, but here it is.  My first blog post.  Why am I doing this I keep asking myself?  A little background; I started with the Holmes Blue Book in '78. I was 10.  It blew my fucking head away.  Later I moved on to 1st ed AD&D and never went beyond 2e. Between 6th grade and the last year of college, I managed to play and/or DM a plethora of of RPGs of the golden age such as Gamma World, Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, and Twilight 2000 just to name a few.

After graduating from college, I put it all behind me and joined the rat race.  I got a job, got married, bought a house with a mortgage, and then a kid popped into our lives of domestic bliss. Flash forward 20+ years, my daughter discovers an old cardboard box with some old game stuff hidden away down in the basement.  She starts asking questions and memories are coming back as I tell her stories about campaigns and fellowship.  She wanted to play.  I found myself obliging.

Now I gave my books away to my old friends game nights past.  All I got are yellowing character sheets written up on ruled paper, some resource papers and a ton of old Dragon magazines.  I didn't have the money to buy all new books and I was especially leery of 4th ed.  It was crunchy.  This was before I even knew what 'crunchy' even meant.  Plus, I didn't want to be out of mucho dinero if my daughter decided she didn't like it.  Online I found Labyrinth Lord.  The downloadable core rules PDF was free! Hot damn, I downloaded the system and I winged a old adventure I had written up in high school after a brief overview of the game mechanics and character generation.  Her eyes didn't glaze over.

Well, she did like it.  She liked it a lot.  I was really rusty as DM but it's like riding a bicycle. She wanted to play again.  So did I.

I bought Pathfinder with the Starter Box.  Cool graphics.  A slick package.  But the rules.  Crunchy
(I still hadn't learned the term and its meaning just yet).  Then WotC came forth with its much heralded 5e.  Again, I got the starter box set.  I appreciated the work and thinking that went into the rules.  I was excited that D&D was finally getting things 'right.'  I bought the Players Guide, the Monsters Manual and the DM's Guide.

Face Palm...

I was going in the wrong direction.  I tried to get my daughter to play 5e.  She's gifted, smarter than me.  Her eyes glazed over.  She looked uncomfortable.  She wasn't having fun looking at the rules all the time.  The same for me.  Later I found C&C.  It was better, a lot better.  Then I discovered Swords & Wizardry and with their Whitebox, Core and Complete, I discovered a happy medium. I'm happy, my daughter's happy.  She's starting up her own group with friends at school and S&W is the 'go-to' system of choice. I'm not saying its the best out there, but it works for me.

After countless nights reading other RPG blogs, I sort of wanted to get my own voice out there.  I feel a need to contribute to the 'old school genre' of table top RPGs with 'lite' systems, to keep the it viable and alive in spite of overly slick RPG games that mimic their PC or console games.  The fans of retro-clones and similar games are small and I'd like to help out in my own way of getting the word out there, to increase our numbers and to really just have fun.

There, my first blog.  Insufferably long-winded but out there.

Hope to follow up soon if I've got anything to say.

Keep rolling...