So with fundamentals learned by fellow (friends-older brother) Guru, we charged along with GAMMAWORLD with interesting results.
Being newbs, it was a learning experience with all these new dice. We were entranced with these cool shapes, we only knew of 6-sided dice from out Avalon Hill games, this was so different.
The older-brother Guru who helped us out, was a guy who actually traveled to Vancouver to a game convention. He learned how to play via the experts of the time, made his own notes on what he observed and brought his knowledge home with him.
GAMMAWORLD was, for us, a clusterfuck failure. The Characters fanned out on their own accord and the GM (myself) death-spiraled with the loss of control.
We were all new to this, and had no idea how to create "bonding-experiences" to make the players into a group that stayed together... GAMMAWORLD wasn't geared for that. D&D held the Class system which was the glue for group-think (healer, tank, puzzler, glass-cannon that we know of today).
As suggested by the older-brother Guru, the box set was our next purchase. The Guru's room had the profound 1st edition hardcovers that he allowed us to page through, but the costs were out of our reach.
So with new ideas in brain, and the module Keep on the Borderlands, I managed a group of friends into the hobby. I was a terrible DM. 15 years old now, and it was 1980. However now the brand of D&D was getting more popular and games were being held in the classrooms at lunch-time.
More groups that I attended as a player, I learned new tricks from fellow DM's, learning what worked and what didn't work.
In the meanwhile there were more and more pocket-games to ponder at the hobby stores, I also had ingenious friends that used the school copier machines (these were new to us) and made their own paper-games. One really cool one was a WW2 fighter pilot game, our friend made 2"x 2" counters with top-views of WW2 aircraft, he made a set of rules and skills, character sheets, and we added bits of role-playing into it as well. IT WAS FUN. This friend was also great at being a D&D DM, he had all the 1st Edition Hardcover books (and I started buying them as well), Interesting enough as well, his parents were devout Jehovah's Witnesses... and that was a problem for them.
The Satanic panic was currently a thing.
Despite their objection (our friend suggested we attend his studies with him with his parents to help him.. thus his parents allowed us to game with him) we managed to keep our friend in the gaming loop. We didn't mind attending his studies, we nodded and smiled, and his parents were now "ok" with us being his friends... We gamed out nights with a vengeance!
D&D was exploding on the market, the Satanic panic was giving the game TV face-time, so it kind-of backfired on the Religious front. At least in Western Canada.
I thank you for reading this blogpost, I know a lot of new players today have no idea what it was like back in the early days of D&D, but I hope this give people who wonder, a little insight on what I remember of those days.
I hope other older gamers 55+ can also post their experiences so they never get lost as we die off slowly in this world.
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