The question of the day for Day 5 of RPGaDay is what was my most recent RPG purchase?
This would be a copy of Basic D&D.
At some point, I lost my original copy and I’ve been thinking I would like to try the first adventure I ever ran/played again. Just the other day, I found a copy while looking through a local game store’s second hand books and immediately grabbed it.
Over thirty years ago, this was the fateful purchase that launched me into the tabletop role-playing world – instigated by my older brother. He had convinced me to pool our Christmas money to buy the newly released boxed set of basic D&D, but only on his solemn promise that there was actually a game board.
I was only ten years old at the time and had seen some painted miniatures while Christmas shopping with my dad and really wanted to play with them. Somehow I had heard that D&D didn’t actually use a game board, so was worried that I wouldn’t get to play with the miniatures if I used my precious Christmas bounty on this strange new game.
Once we were home and discovered, alas, there was no board, my brother, ever the diplomat, let me be the Dungeon Master as consolation prize.
Not long after that first adventure I passed the mantle of DM over to him, feeling overwhelming as a ten year old with no experience. But soon enough, I was DMing for friends, designing new adventures and my own games and now, these many years later, am nevertheless still playing with those little painted miniatures.
And, some day soon, I’ll try running that adventure again. This time with a little bit more experience under my belt.
Justin Schmid
Justin started tabletop gaming in 1983 with Basic D&D (red box) and never looked back. He runs and plays in a wide variety of games, including Savage Worlds, Dungeon World, Trail of Cthulhu and many, many more.
He also writes professionally for role-playing games, including writing and creating Night's Edge an Alternate Reality Universe for Cyberpunk 2020. He went on to write eight more adventures and sourcebooks in the Night's Edge line, adding vampires and other supernatural perils to the already dangerous world of Cyberpunk.
As a freelance writer, he wrote The Bermuda Triangle for Call of Cthulhu, Shadows of the Mind, and Psi Wars for Conspiracy X and contributed to Last Unicorn's Star Trek RPG, as well as to Cybergeneration sourcebooks, and many other games.
When he's not creating imaginary worlds for his daughter, he's running games for his friends and writing new adventures or designing new game systems. He currently lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.