I grew up playing role playing games back when all you needed were a couple of books, some paper and pencils, a bag full of lucky dice, and a bit of imagination. Like a lot of folks who played these games, I got my start on good old Dungeons and Dragons. The “advanced” version was out by the time I started playing and I spent countless hours with friends making up characters and crawling through imaginary dungeons in search of glory and loot. When I wasn’t a player in someone else’s campaign I was cutting my teeth as a Dungeon Master. As time went on we branched out into other games like Palladium, Champions, and Cyberpunk 2020. My first name, along with those of the people I gamed with, shows up in a “special thanks” mention in the front of one RIFTS suppliment in which our GM had designed the character sheet for. Such was the level of our geekiness with regards to playing just about any RPG we could lay our hands on. We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning arguing rules and eating pizza and just generally having a great time doing nothing productive to society other than staying off of the streets and out of any serious trouble.

I miss those days. Recent discussions about those days at work with a couple of my old gaming buddies have left me feeling nostalgic. We all grew up, of course, and while many of us are still avid video gamers, our days of pen and paper RPGing are behind us. We all have jobs, families, and responisibilities that seem to get in the way of meeting regularly to play. Some of our group live in other states now which puts a damper on getting together at all. Our best hope of having the old gang get together to play an RPG now involves hoping we all manage to log into Dark Age of Camelot at the same time. Not all of us play that game much anymore and it’s not really the same either. Never Winter Nights is probably the next best bet, but past experiences with trying to get everyone together to play the same game online at the same time leave me doubting it will work out much better.

So I’m thinking of dusting off my old rule books and seeing if I can interest Anne and Courtney and perhaps Veron from next door into playing a small campaign to show them what it used to be like. Maybe a little old-school Advance Dungeons and Dragons or a little 4th Edition Champions super-hero action. Mentioned it at work today and got a response from one of my old gaming buddies that he might consider making a character. I’m not counting on it as we’ve tried to get something going at various times in the past only to get caught up in day-to-day life and forget all about it. I’m not even holding my breath that I can get the three people I’m thinking of to play. Still, doesn’t hurt to ask. I’ve got a couple of ideas for interesting super villians kicking around in my brain. Now where did I put my bag of lucky dice?