by Aldus Marius on Fri Sep 10, 2004 1:36 am
Salvete amici...
I was introduced to Role-playing Games in November of 1983, at the tender age of 21. I had always, as a child, liked Let's-Pretend games the best; so my barracks-mate thought I'd be a natural at Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), in what would only later become known as the First Edition.
I was extraordinarily blessed in my first gaming group: There were four of us regulars, another two or three who came in sometimes, and of the four "steadies", three of them were Dungeonmasters. Each one ran a distinct, original world and adventures (no Modules over here!!)--one Celtic; one Dark-Ages Teutonic; and one (my favorite!) Greco-Roman. I played with these folk every Sunday of every year I lived in San Antonio, TX. This was even before I had stumbled onto my Heritage. How much more I could have made of Michael's world if I had known what 'Roman' meant!
Succeding years introduced me to more groups, and more games: the White Wolf system (Mage: Ascension, Werewolf: Apocalypse, and others); Cyberpunk, by R. Talsorian Games; Chaosium's Pendragon setting; Champions and the Hero System; and the last group I was with was Gamemastered by a fellow who had a campaign all thought out, but couldn't make up his mind what rules system he wanted to use!, leading to lots of one-night stands with everything from Dragonraid (a "Christian Adventure Learning Game") to Castle Falkenstein ("High Adventure in the Age of Steam").
In all this, I had never much felt the urge to DungeonMaster or Gamemaster my own world. That changed at about the 9-year mark (1992), when my friend Jon, who had been DMing everything for everybody, successfully got me to referee for a change, patiently waiting while I created a world that would be as much fun for me to run as it would be for him to play in! This was my AD&D Second Edition Roman historical-fantasy campaign of Roma Subterranea, or "Rome Under-the-Earth", called affectionately "Sub-Roma" for short. We gamed in this world for five years, and at its height I was running a game for a half-dozen college students as well.
I played for 15 years, have been on hiatus for six, but still hope to get a group together again. I DMed for six years, almost all of it in Sub-Roma. In short, I've been at it (RPing) for almost my entire adult life, and I have no intention of putting the dice down now. Most of my best story-ideas have come to me within game contexts. I suspect almost all of my tales have that "feel" to them. Gaming may well have saved my life when I was homeless, giving me a ready-made network of friends with whom I could find shelter and a warm meal most nights. And almost all my "RL" friends are roleplayers.
(I had this in a much more compact format on my poor Page; but that's gone now. I don't plan to let it stay that way for very long!)
In amicitia et fide,
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.