Ok, so there I was in early high school. The ultra nerd/dweeb/geek. The overweight kid who had to wear corduroy pants, played AD&D, and was reasonably good with computers. Yeah, a real chick magnet - Not! Anyway, a small group of gamers congealed at good ol' A.B. Mucus S.S. D&D gave way to MERP or Middle Earth Role Playing, which was a slightly simplified version of the Rolemaster system adapted to Tolkien's world. That was great fun. I still fondly recall my hobbit cuisinart shredding a surprised, seated orc with twin short swords and taking about 10 rounds to do it while the orc sat there stunned, and my elf warrior leaping on the back of a pissed off dragon and riding it while it tried to smash him against the ceiling.
During H.S., I also played games called Battletech, and it's RPG offspring Mechwarrior, about giant robots shooting each other up. I also messed around with the odd other game, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Blinky the Mole was one of my characters, long before the video game character!), and Car Wars.
One year, about grade 11 I think, all the sillyness about D&D being satanic broke out in the U.S. We actually had a crew from the local TV station come out to do a story on our group! I don't think the story ever ran. I guess when they didn't see any ritual sacrifices of virgins (which would have been just about any member of the group!), they must have figured it wasn't sensational enough.
After high school, it was off to university. In first year I really didn't have time for any serious gaming. But in 1989 or so some folks I knew invited me into their group to play some AD&D and Battletech. That worked for about a year or two, but then the demands of school and other aspects of a social life took over. After graduation while uselessly unemployed, a new group of friends started playing. There was a little D&D, but then we switched over to something new called Shadowrun. Awesome game! Combine D&D fantasy elements with cyberpunk sci-fi. Great fun! My best character was a cyborg killing machine with a very dry sense of humour. After being caught in the middle of a spell that converted an urban area into a natural one he became a vegetarian and was ever after known as the 'cybered-up-vegomatic'. We all found Terminator 2 hilarious, because basically that was the character I had been playing. When Arnold pulls out the minigun from the underground cache and the young John Conner say 'It's definitely you.', I laughed my ass of, because that was my guy! Oh yeah, the character was ironically nicknamed Twitchy.
After finding gainful employment and moving away, my gaming career came to an end... for a while.
More to come in the exiting 3rd episode. Be sure to tune in!
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