One of the first gags I wrote for Fun ‘n’ Fantasy way back when was a riff on ring announcer Michael Buffer’s trademark intro, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” I liked saying it out loud so much that I use it for real when my friends and I get together to role play. Anyway, that’s where this week’s blog title comes from.
I’ve been playing role-playing games since I was…13? Wait let me do the math. Secondary II (Grade 8) was in 1987 (feeling older)…yeah 13. My friend John had received the Dungeons and Dragons starter box for his birthday and lent it to me. Shortly thereafter we played our first game with Fab as our Dungeon Master (DM) (Fab started even younger than we did). Just about every Friday night (as well as Saturdays and sometimes even Sundays) were dedicated to role-playing.
Fab went on to introduce us to Marvel Superheroes (we killed Captain America) and Call of Cthulhu (we went insane during the first encounter), but we would always fall back to D&D.
Fab left a game master void when he graduated that just about everybody in our group tried filling.
The first game I ran used a Starfleet Battles box set my friend Martin gave me. The rulebook had been lost some time earlier so I devised my own simple system. You rolled a die. Even, you succeeded, Odd you failed. Rather than running straight Star Trek, it was a parody where no idea was too crazy. Magical Raisin Bran cereal that would transform you into a California Raisin if you ate it, a hand weapon that killed a person by sucking out all the mucus out of a person’s body, a starship weapon that bombarded enemy spacecraft with chickens…those are just some of the ideas I came up with. A lot of them were crass and juvenile (I was only 14). Surprisingly, we played that one for several months. It lasted until my players got tired of the increasingly mean things I kept doing to their characters. I was petty that way.
And yet they let me GM again! This time, it was West End Games’ Star Wars system. I bought into the game in January 1989 and we played well into 1995 when we all started going our separate ways after University. If you’d asked me a year ago about the adventures I ran, I’d have told you they were that special kind of lame that only a teenager can find cool. But then I saw some very similar ideas show up in Bioware’s The Old Republic MMO. Maybe they weren’t that so special a kind of lame.
Star Wars has been the setting I’m most accustomed to running. I skipped Wizards of the Coast’s first Star Wars rulebook, but got the next two. We played those sporadically throughout the naughts. I’m pretty much Star Warsed out now. I’ve told most of the stories I wanted to tell. I want to try my hand at other settings.
Next week I’ll talk about my attempts at creating my own role-playing game systems.
What role-playing games have YOU played? I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, but here are some of the games I’ve played/owned/read:
(Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons (almost every edition)
– Spelljammer
– Dark Sun
Call of Cthulhu
Marvel Superheroes
James Bond
Star Wars (d6 and d20)
Star Trek
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Big Eyes, Small Mouth (Tri-stat and d20)
Paranoia
Shadowrun
Werewolf
Changeling
Pathfinder
Legend of the Five Rings
Sailor Moon
Hollow Earth Expedition
The Slayers
Munchkin d20
Mutants and Masterminds
Serenity (Firefly)
Mouse Guard
Robin Hood Rolemaster
Battletech
Heavy Gear
Space Toaster (I can’t remember the real name, just that I bought it because it had a space toaster on the cover and it was only $10)
Starfleet Battles (home brew system)
Spaceballs (friend’s home brew system)
Duck Tales (different friend’s home brew system)
James’ Gang (from the creator of the Duck Tales home brew system)
Peanuts (home brew system)