Topic: What are your favourite childhood memories of gaming?

[Colin-ICE]

What are some of your favourite childhood memories of gaming? Keep them succinct and we'll pick some of our favourites to form the basis of a blog on the ICE website.

[Bruce]

My first years of gaming with my friends, Walt and Pete.
It all started in Walt's basement with the Basic D&D set. We had no idea what we were doing and even used the damage dice to see if we hit...lol. Luckily Walt's neighbor knew how to play and showed him, the rest is history.
Then I discovered Rolemaster in HS (circa 1983/84), someone I played D&D with gave me the books. I was hooked!
The best RM moment was many years later when the party was resting from evading the people hunting them and camped for the night. When it came time for the Monk's watch I rolled perception behind the screen and the roll was fumbled. He noticed something that was not there. As we progressed and he awakened everyone he wanted to make another perception check, so I had him roll behind my screen where he could not see it and fumbled it again. He then leapt attack the bush and he achieved an open ended attack roll and killed the bunny that was hiding under the bush.  They had rabbit stew for breakfast...lol. Best fumble to critical attack ever!

[Nightblade42]

That's an awesome story, Bruce!

My first experience with RPGs was the summer of grade 6.  My Mom had bought my Dad the Star Trek RPG (by FASA) because he's a big Treky.  At the same time, he bought her MERP.  We had quite the time figuring out how to play.  The most fun were the ship to ship combats in Star Trek.  But I remember sitting down and going through the sample adventure in the MERP boxed set with my Mom and battling the 9th level mage in the ruined castle just north-east of Bree.  It got me hooked on MERP & RPGs in general. 

Then we moved to a new city & the kids I fell in with were all into RPGs.  Marvel Superheros, GURPS and RM.  I introduced them to MERP & after their characters got to Level 10, we converted them to RM2.  I don't think I ever looked back after that.  I started buying every RM book I could get my hands on & went on to play RM with a number of different friends - both as a player & as a GM.  The first group of friends & I started playing other games as well (Warhammer & WH40k mostly), but we alsways returned to RM2.  We had lots of fun, and I miss those nights of gaming a lot.

I don't think I've actually played an RPG in over fifteen years.  A buddy of mine had a comic book store for a while & he tried to get a group together to play Vampire The Requium.  I jumped at the chance to play again, but no one joined the group & he didn't want to GM just one player.  So my character never got to see the dark of night (so to speak).  That was the closest I've come in the last fifteen years to playing - and I really miss it.

Nightblade ->--

[Majyk]

Not to derail this thread, but Nightblade - get on Fantasy Grounds, download the free software, and look in the Looking for a Player forum.

Within a week you’ll be talking PCs and within another or less, you’ll be playing with a bunch of folks old and young!

———

I always love a good failed perception story!

For my own part, I was a jock and sci-fi lover throughout childhood.  I had friends on both extreme sides of the fence but wasn’t a typical gamer.

I fell in love with the Uncanny X-men comic series in Grade 7, and soon started working for a local comic shop to help keep me in comics glory.

I’d always pass the section we kept of MERP books and would gaze at the Angus McBride covers covetously.

I’d hear stories of my Manager “killing” people but the stories always ended epicly with battles against mythological beasts vs being IRL, thankfully, and asked to watch one day.
Man, was it kewl!
The GM, now close friend, would take plotter printer sized sheets of paper and actually draw dungeons to D&D mini scale!  He’d colour it in a bit, dungeon dressing it up a bit and slid a thin plexiglass sheet over top, that could be drawn upon with wet/dry erase markers to map out spell radii and other features during combat.

I immediately bought my first ever non-d6s that next day. 
Still have ‘em = one black and one green clear d10 and they roll 90+s still! 

Later that year, ICE had its hooks into me as I had saved enough for the Red Box Set(RM2), its companions up to III, and was eyeballing Shadow World’s 1st Ed. boxed set for a setting.

As with Nightblade, I made sure to collect every book during those 90s heydays of RM2.

It wasn’t long before I enlisted my best friend, girlfriend, and Couz to play.
First battle in the first adventure I wrote for 1st lvl PCs had the girlfriend try to rescue the buddy from being surrounded by a pack of Wolves.

She made it to him, proceeded to fumble her Rapier and rolled a high 90+ ‘E’ Punc. which resulted in her ally dying of a brain hemorrhage! 

We ended the game session with close to a TPK and I made sure to read up on how to game balance encounters.
 

30+ yrs of GMing later and I wouldn’t change my insta love affair with RPGs and RM!

[Implementor]

A few:

- "Monster-Zoos"
- 2 Demogorgons in the Last Room
- Weekend gaming all-nighters age 10ish in my friend's 'fort'
- All-nighters in general. Especially the time we played all night, slept over and while eating and waking-up just fell into playing the whole day and evening again. (Late teens) Woo-hoo!

- Seeing a Rolemaster critical chart for the first time. Bleeds, broken bones, nerve damage, stuns....mmmm mmm. That was the end of AD&D.
- Going to the game store and seeing a new Rolemaster companion or Shadow World product. Oh man nothing like something new for something you love.
- Buying and devouring games/systems just to read the lore and figure the system out (and hopefully try 'em out) through the 80's 90's

** My friend Darren, who primarily liked the combat and roll-playing, who one night in our Rolemaster game rolled open-ended for an attack...then another, then another, then another. We were all cheering and shouting and by then he was so excited he was crying uncontrollably. I think he rolled 450 or so before mods hah.
- Darren was also responsible for the largest negative roll, -200 -300 ish for perception in a city. Some npc shouted 'look out below!" and instead of moving away he looked down and got clocked by a large falling object.

[Nightblade42]

Thanks for the tip, Majyk.  I do know about Fantasy Grounds, just never made time for it.  Instead, I just use RM2/SM2 (bastardized with some RMSS/SM:P stuff) for my creative writing.  But if I do find some time for gaming, I'll be sure to check out Fanatsy Grounds.

Nightblade ->--

[Ǣlfwine]

I ran an every-other-weekend Middle Earth campaign from 1982 to 1992. One of the players, a particularly curious, sticky-handed and charismatic rogue, picked up a cursed bastard sword--a quite pretentious blue-steel blade from which he could not part nor be parted. He literally could not move more than 10' from the thing. And if he dropped it, the weapon became the irresistible force and the character went right along behind it should the height from which it was dropped be sufficient. Yes, the player attempted to drop it over the side of a boat, and was dragged to the bottom of a river right off. Quite a few of the party's adventures either started, stopped, or changed directions due to a fumble at inopportune times. And the character's professional and personal life were both affected through the awkwardness of having a large blade always by his side. Both player and character finally resigned to their fate and the weapon was carried for 9 of the 10 years of the campaign.

[JakeM.]

Mostly MERP.

High magic and artifact laden hack'n slash adventures.

One time we decended in to Dol Guldur ( Jackson obviously did not check the ICE layout...) and were conforted by Nazgul.
The one with Bola, used to be an Easterling. He threw the bola at my character and hit his arm. Woo hoo. I gained the weapon!

Remember vividly going to sleep and thinking about if the Nazgul was mad at me

[Spectre771]

My "childhood" memories of when I started gaming are actually my college days.  I had never played an RPG until freshman year in college and I've been hooked ever since.  My first exposure was to RM2, the first books I bought were that weekend on my way home and they were the box set for RM2, RMC I, and RMC II.

I sat in on a session of RM one night and everyone was having a blast.  Everyone was laughing and rolling on the floor.  Literally.  People were sitting on the floor because the dorm room was small and people were on the floor, the bed, the window ledge, but we were laughing so hard.  THIS was what gaming was?  It wasn't nerds in the basement afraid to see the light of day?  I knew these people!  They were gaming and having a blast.  One player in particular was Chris Elliot, one of the creators of HOL!  We play-tested and helped make HOL in that dorm room!  I was in on the creation of HOL with easily the best GM and most fantastic artists I have ever met.

We would game in a classroom sometimes and if he wasn't the GM for the night, he would grab whatever bits of chalk he could find and he would draw life-size portraits of our PCs on the chalkboard.  He would doodle characters or scenes from the night's session.  I visited his room once and I was floored by the artwork he had around the room.

My favorite childhood memories are Freshman year in college, getting to meet incredible gamers who became amazing friends, (one is the god father for my daughter), and having the fun and privilege of being invited to sit in one night.