The Truth about D&D 1978 Pt.1

Ok...
Back in the days of yore... in the black rocks nestled the sleeping Ancient One...

1978, finally a teenager, making new friends in High-School. Do you leave your geeky friends to hang with the cool kids? Or do you risk social destruction of your soul if the cool kids reject you?
These were important decisions at this time of life. Not in grade school anymore, you're in the big leagues now!

We didn't have all these fancy gadgets back then. We played outside till the streetlamps came on. Our parents had no idea where we were since we left the house first thing in the morning.

There was a ton of geeky cool things that happen in 78. Avalon Hill games, Chainmail, SPI games... what were these new things in the hobby shop? I pondered as I was waiting to purchase another 1/72 scale Sherman Tank model. (I loved building war models back then)

The brand new box set for GAMMAWORLD was calling to me.

Two weeks later, with my allowance, I was buying my first games from TSR.
I took it home, unboxed it... pondered the map of decimated Meriga... read some words...

I was a little confused.

This was not "Avalon Hill" 1, 1a, 1b... 2, 2a, 2b, 2c... numeral set rules that I was used to playing with my friends... this was confusing and different.
Who is side A and how do they fight side B??? Where is the teams? are there teams?
You see most games back them were Allies vs Axis war-games... 2 opponents playing Generals moving their pieces... Chess/Checkers.
REFEREE? and Players... ??

There is no Internet to look up a video on it.
There are no Home computers at this time.
There was no cell phones at this time.
Calling long distance required some effort, most of us shared lines.
Who would I call? I knew no-one who knew what this was.

So, me and my buddy who I play board-games with, get together to figure this one out... how to play this "role-playing". It wasn't easy. We failed.
It wasn't until a friend of ours (who had a friend with an older Brother) got us to find all this out with the friends-friends-older-Brother who played "role-playing" games. D&D in particular.

So, now we knew, one guy hid behind a binder and told us what we see, he asked us "what we do"?
Oh, it's story telling make-believe... but apply real physics to the imagination.
The Older-Brother's gang of friends were weird... older misfits that you would see in High-School, people that were bullied or had social idiosyncrasies.
They certainly weren't normal, but they were enjoyable to learn from.

Now, back to GAMMAWORLD.
(To be continued)