5-year Re-Anniversary

About 10 gamers circled me on Google Plus (find me --> G+ Link) today, and it kind of inspired me to return to this sorely neglected blog. I'm going to give this another shot and see if I can get it up off the ground again. I was in the process of writing most of this as an introduction to new folks in my gaming circle on G+, but it felt a bit personal and long winded, so I'm morphing it into a blog post instead.

I did a little research and some number crunching and I realized that this past Saturday was my 5-year Anniversary of getting back into gaming! Pretty exciting, right? Extra cool, because, by coincidence, I spent the entire day playing RPGs at GASP Game Day -- a Call of Cthulhu one-shot, first game of a Pathfinder campaign, and the continuation of the Darves Hill Labyrinth Lord Campaign.

Anyway, here's a little extra background info if anyone is interested.

I got into D&D via the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and playing the Dungeon board game with the   neighbor across the street. He was a bit older and ran us through live action dungeons in his backyard. We used cardboard tubes for swords. Nothing like a yard full of 8-year-olds playing a boffer larp without even knowing it, right? Unfortunately, that awesome neighbor moved away before he got around to playing real D&D with us. Eventually, I got the Mentzer box set on my own. We tried to play, but without that older brother or neighbor to teach us, we never really got very far. Another friend had some of the AD&D books, but his older sister went whack-o Christian and made his parents throw away his books (and accused us 12-year old burgeoning headbangers & punk rockers of being Satanists, which we thought was pretty cool at the time). We also tried to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Palladium Fantasy RPG, and I remember rolling up Rifts characters, but I don't think we ever actually understood how that was supposed to work. Unfortunately, we could never manage to get a long-term campaign off the ground.

Fast forward almost 20 years (of wishing I could play some D&D) and we finally put a group together to play 3.5 D&D. I also started following some blogs and discovered the OSR. I was really relieved that the game I spent so much time reading (and not enough time playing) as a child still had a strong following. I enjoyed 3.5 for what it was, but there was something about that old school style that really drew me in. I drank the Kool Aid and started buying 4e books, which lead to me running a 4e game for almost two years. During that time, I got more into the OSR stuff, and purchased copies of the Swords & Wizardry White Box, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and other OSR products. Back in October 2010, I started attending the local gaming club, GASP, just to get the opportunity to actually play Labyrinth Lord with some like-minded folks. I turned my home group on to the OSR stuff and we dropped 4e like the ton of bricks it became. Right now we're just starting out a new LL campaign and it's going great. I'm still playing in a 3.5 Ravenloft Campaign and just started in a Pathfinder campaign at GASP, too.

Over the past 5 years I've managed to play 3.5 D&D (player & DM), 4e D&D (player & DM), Call of Cthulhu (player), Lamentations of the Flame Princess (player), Hackmaster Basic (player), Aces & Eights (player), Hollow Earth Expedition (GM), Swords & Wizardry White Box (DM), Labyrinth Lord (player & DM), Mutant Future (DM), WOTC Gamma World (player), Stars Without Number (player), Deadlands Reloaded (player), Savage Worlds Fallout (player), Spellcraft & Swordplay (player), Pathfinder (player), Spirit of the Season (player), Castles & Crusades (player), and Dark Heresy (player & GM). I possibly missed something in that list, but that covers most of them...

Most importantly, I've met a lot of totally awesome people, and had some amazing adventures. Sincere thanks to the following:

• First, to Brad F, wherever you are, for putting us through all those crazy "dungeons" in your back yard. 
• Mark R, for being willing to DM that D&D 5 years ago and Curt G, for posting about D&D enough "on the board", to convince Mark to run 
• All of the "Friends of Milo", we should do a reunion game someday. I wonder what Tordak is up to these days... 
• Dave 8C for almost always "being there" and always being open to trying something new 
• Allen for almost always "being there" and finally giving me the opportunity to play Call of Cthulhu 
• Tim and John at GASP, for being so damn friendly with the new guy and allowing me to join in your games 
• Geoff at Phantom for listening to my weirdo stories and selling me awesome product 
• All the other friendly folks I've had the opportunity to game with over the past 5 years!

Okay, this is feeling a bit sappy, and probably a bit long, so I'm going to wrap it up there. Hopefully you'll see some more posts out of me in the near future.