Dungeons & Dragons, anyone????

I was talking to one of the ladies in our doll group last week about her new husband is a gamer.  Everyone has been talking about either what games they've played, still play, want to play and it got me thinking about when we (FireHoth and I) and several of our work buddies would get together every Wednesday for about a year or more and play old style D&D at the dining room table. It was actually really fun.  I had been introduced to D&D way back in the early 80's when the original red box set with 60 page Players Manual and 60 page Dungeon Manual, one six sided dice, and a small led pencil was around. When I was a nanny for a family here, sometimes I would watch the kids across the street.  One little boy who was about 10 years of age had this box set and he would try and show me how to play it. For me at the time, it just still had way too much math involved in it, and I couldn't keep straight what the "dexterity", "charisma", and "strength" rolls were.  He said I was pretty useless, but I could borrow the manuals if I wanted.  Well I did, and I was hooked from the get go.  

The manual were fantastic and still are, probably the reason why we have about 100 of them in the house and those are just mine. The manuals were full of everything fantasy: wizards, dragons, princes, priests, vampires, everything, and every type of beast imaginable, especially Unicorns at the time. These were all pretty one paragraph and easy to read.  The actual "game play", I could care less about.  So when I was able to I found myself up at Black and Red and bought my own little D&D game set.  I carried this thing around with me everywhere and took notes, jotted down ideas, highlighted it and basically just abused the manuals.  But they were so much fun to read and re-read.  

Throughout the years I wound up with a pretty good collection of these books, from various companies, White Wolf, Ars Magica, Gurps and the original D&D2 systems. The books I bought though were all Bards, Halflings, World building, Witches, and the best and I still collect them when they come out the Faeries.  These books still hold a fascination for me and are a great source of inspiration.  I have written my own world and devised my own little universe and all with the help of these books.  A lot of the gaming now is done online, but having the hardcopy of the actual manual is worth gold to me.

Our little Wednesday group is long gone, but actually learning how to play the game was very rewarding.  And a little costly.  The original book set that I bought way back in 1985 was maybe about $15.00.  You can't find a manual now for under $20.00, and you have to know what you are looking for.  The hours that could be wasted away playing the game is unimaginable also, but if you are up for it, you can slay the dragon, kill the horde of orc's in the town, save the princess, get the golden rope back and be back at the tavern for a pint all before sunrise.

My Box-O-Dice and my little figures.  The bag holds precious gems and rare stones to bribe the local merchants with.  

Highlighter, because I was always forgetting something

Pencil with eraser, need to keep track of your stats

Chapstick, well, because it's Chapstick.

I even keep a "20 sider" in my purse, you never know when you need to make a random roll throughout the day.