Casting Shadows

Over the years of sharing thoughts about and experiences of roleplaying games online, I have given answer to today’s #RPGaDay2022 question a few times. For me, it is phrased in its past tense: When did you start GMing? As noted in Monday’s and last Wednesday’s responses, I started in as a GM for my very second time playing a roleplaying game. This was all a part of the learning curve of my introduction to gaming, and so was not made to feel odd, difficult, or unusual to me. It was just a part of the natural order of things that roleplaying gamers took on the role of player sometimes and GM at other times.

I still feel that way.

During my first session, where I got to make and take on the role of a character for the first time and explore my first location as a roleplayer, the DM talked a bit about his preparation and where I could find it in the rules (Part 8, Dungeon Master Information, starting on page B51). At the end of the adventure, he showed me his map in comparison to the map I had made in play, and we looked at the mapping section in the rules.

It all made sense.

Preparing that first scenario for him to play in put more things in perspective but it was play of that first scenario that really had a lot to teach me. It was engaging in a way that school, films, books, and social interaction too often wasn’t, and it filled a space in my enjoyment of life that I knew was empty but had no idea how to fill. It is fair to say that if the first game hooked me, it was this second one which set the hook for life.

I have remained a player and a GM ever since, despite the expected obstacles.

FIRST TIME

It’s odd to think that I am one year short of 40 years as a roleplayer and that many of the people I met in my first year as a gamer ended up leaving the hobby for other pursuits during that same period for all the familiar reasons of computer games, sports requirements, girls, and drifting out of one social circle into another.

I wonder where those who have survived the years in between are now and how many of them have come back.

Tomorrow: Why did you become a roleplayer?