Tragic Blogs or
I cast magic missle at the darkness...
Ran across an article on the BBC - it would seem that this year is the 30th birthday of Dungeons & Dragons. Happy b-day D&D!
I first started playing D&D at the tail end of the 80's. Picked up the boxed beginner's set from the local hobby shop and quickly pulled everyone of my friends - all three of 'em - into playing the game. From there it was on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, then 2nd Edition AD&D, Miniature Battles, and then on to the mysteriously vague variation known only as... Rule Book.
Never heard of Rule Book? I'm not surprised. It was a regional variation with only one copy ever produced. Allow me to expain.
The year was 1992...
Windows 3.1 had just begun to ship, hundreds of people are quoting 'You can't handle the truth!', and the Catholic Church formally apologizes to Galileo Galilei... it seems the Earth moves around the sun after all.
I was a highschool student in a tiny little town. Every day, at lunch, my friends and I would gather in the caffeteria to play Dungeons & Dragons. Rule books strewn about, dice a flyin', we'd go on many a monty haul romp. Slashing and burning our way through one campaign after another.
But it would seem that one or more of the teachers had a problem with this. Dungeons & Dragons is, after all, the devil's game. They complained to the vice-principal who paid us a visit during one of our games and told us we'd have to stop. Dungeons & Dragons was simplly not allowed on school property.
Well, I had obtained for myself a very high horse whom I named 'freedom of expression' and, having climbed onto it, I absolutely refused to get off. So we paid a visit to the Principal to plead our case.
We made a very persuasive case, imho, for a group of high school geeks. Our reasoning was that the school had a drama department - the entire purpose of which is 'roleplaying'. To ban rolepalying would be to ban drama. We showed our gaming materials and campaign notes to indicate there was nothing lewd nor obscene in the games we were running. We were able to show that our grades were fine and that the gaming was not interfering with our studies. And we were able to show that there was nothing in the written rules for the school that prohibited roleplaying games on school property.
The principal then proceeded to tell us that roleplaying games are fine. He's nothing against them. We can play any game we want, so long as it's not Dungeons & Dragons. You see, impressionable young kids get too involved in D&D and it's occult nature. He knew of a girl who was forced to do unspeakable things by the Dungeon Master because she was afraid of what he might do to her character. So nope. You just can't play that game here on school property. There's no rule about it, but if we find you doing it.... (insert un-named threat here)
Final decision: roleplaying games are acceptable, Dungeons & Dragons is not.
So we did the only thing we could do. Removed the covers to all of our D&D manuals and replaced them with a non-descript cover that proclaimed the game to be 'Rule Book'.
What's that you kids are playing?
It's a roleplaying game - this is the Rule Book.
Okay - carry on. Just don't play Dungeons & Dragons.
We won't.
Ah to be young and growing up in a puny little town.
