That must have been during the mass-hysteria of D&D being connected with devil worship. My parents never let me play D&D for that reason back in the day.
Oh yes, I recall that. So my (hazy) recollection is something like: (I was born in 1982) 7 or 8 years old: Dungeons & Dragons 9 or 10 years old: AD&D, devil worship scares. I played at summer camp with friends; I recall one friend talking about how his parents wouldn't let him play when he is at home because they heard about some kid committing suicide when his character died... which is a story I heard about various video games too, once those came around (especially MMOs). 12, maybe 13, through 14/15: AD&D 2nd ed Break from ~15 to 18 or 19, when I got to college I started playing RPGs again (whitewolf, other systems). I may have very briefly played a bit of 3rd ed, not sure. Then another break from 22 or so until maybe 28? Around 28 I played for a good number of years with the same gaming group, stopped when I ramped up the Muay Thai within the past year or so.
Very nice. I started D&D with the old red Basic set and Blue Expert set (with the elf, dwarf, and halfling as 'classes'!) I really enjoyed the setup and we slowly morphed into Advanced D&D (1e) by adding the hardcover books as they came out, until we were finally playing the AD&D rules. We still stole liberally from Dragon magazines and added house rules. We played a few modules but mostly made our own stuff (including lots of hack-and-slash ones and a few Monty Haul ones!). I played all through High School and played a bit in the military (seems like 2nd edition was coming out at the time... not a huge change). I also played a few other systems... I recall I.C.E. and Star Frontiers were fun. I got out of it, mostly due to a lack of people to play with and got into it a few years back. At first we were going to go right into 5th ed, but since we have all the old 1e books, we decided to go that route instead.
I played a system called GURPS, back in the 90's, when I was about 13-14. I dabbled a bit with Leviathan back then too. I played some 2nd and 3rd Edition when I was in my early 20's. We used to meet every Friday night. Some guys brought their girlfriends or wives to play. It was almost like playing cards or Trivial Pursuit or something. Instead, our game was D&D. I wanted to play a bit more later in life, but I've never really been able to fit in with typical gamer groups. I don't really have an interest anymore. I played Vampire: The Masquerade for a while as well. I thought the story and gameplay was super interesting. Again, though, I could never relate to the typical people who played it. When I decided a few years ago that I wanted to get into gaming again, I went out and bought a bunch of Pathfinder material. I was ready to get my nerd on, and my group actually blew me off! I should thank them, though. I started my Martial Arts training the following week.
V:TM I played in college as well, including LARPing (though we used rock/paper/scissors as our mechanism, no actual physical effort of any sort).
That's what we did too. I was always at a disadvantage because I'm terrible at rock-paper-scissors. "Good old rock. Nothing beats rock."
I started playing D&D when I was about 8/9 years old (1989), which then went onto Warhammer 40k, I didn't pursue that much after 13/14. Was good fun, but hard to find many others playing it near me, I don't remember the devil worship stories in this part of the UK. In fact all the people I did know who played it went to the same Catholic church as me
My other major passion is HMB/Bohurt which is technically a sport so I guess that counts and I still get to hit people with heavy lumps of steel and wood. Apart from that I have a massive love of books especially old military fiction ie. Simon Scarrow, Angus Donald, Ben Kane, Gym and weights and gaming in the evenings when I have time.
[QUOTE="David Harrison, post Wow, that sounds very ambitious for a first novel![/QUOTE] Yes it has been a nightmare but 3 years later i have the story making sense lol
Fair play to you. I'm not much of a writer. But I have been trying my hand lately. (having self conversations as differing personalities are weird) There s a thing called Nation Novel Writing Month. Where you spend November month to write a 10k worded story. I think I got up to 2k and mostly gibberish.
I've been writing for a long time but this was my first successful crack at a full novel - and it's a real marathon. It's actually physically exhausting. It when you "crack" the story and the characters, for want of a less hacky expression, it starts to come together of its own accord. Stick with it! I think to write a novel you need to have a story that you really want to tell - trying to make it up as you go won't get you far. Even if it's just picking one thing you want to say about something, then reverse engineering the buildup to it and following on with the implications.
Awesome. Yeah, during Uni and college, we had a few scripts to be written. And the flow was so tough to do. I've had an story in my head for the longest time but trying to make sense of it was tough. A friend who does a lot writing actually sat me down and we went through "20 Questions" on each character to find their personality etc. The other advise I was given was..."Just write everything, edit after" which makes sense, since as a former camera guy we would film as much as possible and edit down. Rather cut what you dont need is better than wishing you had more.
Just getting it written is the best bet - doesn't matter how horrible your 1st draft is, it makes it a million times easier to sort your story out when you actually have something tangible to work on. Stephen King calls the first draft "writing with the door closed" - just get a story down without any fear or pressure of anyone ever reading it. Then the second draft is writing with the "door open" - where you think about what people would like to read/see. It's a good way to work
Henry Miller was once asked - who do you write for? He replied, I allays write form myself, that way at least I am guaranteed to please one person.
Back in the dim distances of time I was the UK national student dungeons and dragons champion. I also held the Guinness world record for endurance Dungeons and Dragons.
Re - writing and story Different highly successful writers can have extremely different ideas about story. and plot P.G wood house (arguably the greatest writer in the English language since Shakespeare) mapped his plots out from the start, While Stephen king would put pen to paper and see where the story took him. Sometimes the last approach works really well sometimes it doesn't (which explains the dark tower series, twin peaks and lost).