Fantasy Role-Playing

One of my adolescent hobbies was fantasy role-playing.  From the age of 12 to 18 I played Tunnles and Trolls and then later Runequest II with friends at school and at home.  Then I went to university, re-invented myself and stopped playing FRP.  I don't know why I re-invented myself in that way and to be honest I regret now that I did.  Still, regret is rather a waste of time so enough of that.

Despite giving up no FRP I think I had my Runequest gear with me all those years and still have it now.  A little while back I even discovered I still had my Tunnels and Trolls rulebook.

I tried to teach my sons how to play Tunnels and Trolls with limited success.  They understood the basics but rolling and adding up tons of combat dice took longer than I had the patience for.  In fact it reminded me in part of why I stopped playing T&T.

Then somebody gave us a Dungeons and Dragons box set thinking that the boys would like to play.  I had a little look at it but not terribly seriously.  I was obviously still enough of a T&T player to have a irrational dislike of D&D, despite knowing virtually nothing about it.  So the Red Box sat on a shelf for a couple of months.

Then my wife brought home a different D&D box set that she had picked up in a charity shop for £2.  This one had little card figures and a map to move the figures round on.  Somebody seemed to be telling me that I really should give D&D a try.  And as the somebody was my wife and son I could hardly say no. 

So I read through the rules and got ready to DM my first D&D adventure.  At the weekend my son had two of his friends round and we played part of the introductory adventure form the black box.  To start with they were a bit silly, but then they are 10, but they soon got into the spirit of the adventure and quickly learned how to do basic combat. 

My 6 year old daughter was hanging around at the time and wanted to join in but the boys weren't keen so she just watched.  Later on I was browsing on the internet and discovering that there is a thriving OD&D community with loads of stuff available to download for free, even more so than T&T.  As I was flicking through some adventures I found one that somebody had written to get his 6 year old daughter started.  So obviously I helped Uncruliar Junior 3 to roll up a character and we got stuck in.  Later she told her mum that she had enjoyed it 'but it was bit spooky' - result.  Looks like I might be playing D&D for a while.