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OOC: A quick thread about D&D and other RPGs in the mid-80s. I’m really interested by the comments going ‘round about people’s first, second, and subsequent RPGs. I want to take a moment and talk about how, for a certain set of Gen X, there really wasn’t any alternative. 1/x
I spent a decent set of my childhood in semi-rural Ohio, outside a town of 5k, with the “big city” of 30k 15 minutes down the road. Until I was 7 or 8, we didn’t have cable because no one had bothered to run lines out to our neighborhood. We had three (four?) channels w/ ears 2/x
The “big city” had a game store of sorts but it was small and unwelcoming by today’s standards and I wasn’t allowed in. My inroad to RPGs was CYOA books followed by Lone Wolf. I was aware of D&D because of the Panic and ads in occasional comics but that was it. 3/x
When I was finally old enough to go into that game store, the storekeeper pushed my friend and I to two used copies of 1st Ed AD&D - probably because it was all I could afford (the books were $5 each and had been re-bound with electrical tape; I still own them somewhere). 4/x
We had no concept of other RPGs beyond Lone Wolf and those books because there was no way for us to discover them. Of course, when I found other games later, through recos or ads or posts on BBSs / early Internet, I tried as many as I could. 5/x
But for a while there, my RPGs were like my TV with the rabbit ears and no cable, and just like I had no concept of Nickelodeon or HBO, I had no concept of anything outside of D&D because that’s what I could afford and what the only store owner in town recommended to an 11yo. 6/x
Today it’s a different world and we are, if anything, spoiled and overwhelmed by choice and opportunity. Which is a good thing. But please keep this in mind for those of us who grew up in that time and circumstance. 7/7 (I think lol)
