Board-Gaming Retrospect: My Dungeons & Dragons Journey

Like so many other great things, my D&D journey began in the late 80's/ early 90's. Well, to be precise, it began almost undeniably with comic books. Let's zip back a few years and revel in the nostalgia of it all...

Ah, the great eighties...what a time dude, what a time. There I was, the quintessential 11 year old 80's nerd: corduroy trousers, knitted jersey, North Star trainers and of course, a Sony Walkman pumping out all the beats that were groovin' on the streets. My Friday afternoons were generally spent hunched over a pile of comic books in my Dad's store with a bottle of Marshall's soda and a bag of Nik-Naks. And man did I read a lot of comic books. From the earliest I can remember being the kid-friendly Casper & Wendy Harvey comics to the late 80's Action Comics, Superman, Detective Comics, Batman, The Justice League, Spiderman, 2000AD, Judge Dredd and of course, my all time favorite - The Shadow. My awesome dad, being a comic book geek himself, fed into my habit and my love for comic books grew. Surprisingly, I read more DC stuff back then. Unsurprisingly most of the comic books smelled strongly of cheesy Nik-Naks ever after.

It was around the summer of '92 while paging through a copy of Marvel's Nightcrawlers' series that I happened across a 2-page sprawl for TSR's Dragon Quest: A game for heroes in search of a REAL adventure. Needless to say I was totally and completely blown away.

Prior to this my exposure to role-playing and miniature gaming was limited to a brown 'paddington' styled suitcase filled with tiny plastic figurines of green, yellow and grey army men with an assortment of tanks, a few cowboys and a few plastic knights. That's not to say I hadn't given thought to gamifying my miniatures. Heck, my brother, cousin and I had our fair share of war campaigns that even ran on for weeks with those little plastic armies of ours. Of course, the combat aspect of it was limited. OK, truth be told it was all pew-pew and no real strategy but...we were roleplaying in our own way. Just without any polyhedral dice.

So, when I happened across an advert for a Dungeons and Dragons type-of-game, it kinda got my creativity and already fervent imagination doing the moonwalk over the hood of a Delorean. So I started looking for anything I could find on Dungeons and Dragons related. Unfortunately, South Africa at the time was probably the furthest planet from the universe and our censorship laws so stringent that most of the really good D&D stuffs never got to my hood. And, if ever it did, it would probably be deemed satanic and I would be on my way to hell with scorn and a 'tsk, these laaities ner!' (Translated: Tsk, these kids of today hey).

So, my D&D exposure remained limited to the 2-page advert for TSR's Dragon Quest.
Not that it wasn't useful. There was enough information inside the ad to allow me to actually build and invent something tangible. My first campaign was a bunch of plastic knights mixed with cowboys and a few war veterans on a chessboard with a 6-sided die. And, all modesty aside, at 9 years old, it was a game of pure freaking awesomeness. But, this was the early 90's and us kids got  quickly sidetracked by Ninja Turtles, arcade gaming, movies and other geeky stuffs.

There were a few more unexpected D&D type lucky packets that popped up from now and then such as The Ancestral Trail, a partwork fantasy magazine that had elements of roleplaying in it but more story-driven and not really a full on gaming RPG.

It was not until the mid 90's that my obsession into the world of boardgaming, miniature gaming and dungeons and dragons would really take off. At the time I was hooked onto computer gaming, more so towards the latter part of the 90's with games such as Warcraft, Age of Empires, Diablo, Doom and Heretic keeping me occupied for hours on end (and motion sick after playing Doom). At the time there was a store in Cape Town's CBD that sold imported magazines by the kilo and visiting the kilo-shop became something of a monthly ritual for me as many of the imported computer magazines had free demo disks (and stiffy disks!) which fed into my PC gaming obsession. It just so happened that one such visit to the store landed me a copy of White Dwarf and my introduction into the Warhammer universe and real miniature wargaming. And so the White Dwarf became part of my monthly magazine pulls. Oddly enough I have never bought any of the Citadel minis but I bought the magazines purely for the concept and ideas...and also because they were freaking cool.

Pretty soon I had dusted off my old army men and knights and had engineered a fairly complex system of movement and attack but the story and world building element was sorely lacking so I shelved my ideas for a time and went on to highschool. It was here that geekdom sort of reached its pinnacle with countless Saturdays with friends spent over at the local comic books and gaming stores just hanging out, trading cards, sketching and coming up with ideas. It was here also that I first got into playing 'other' sorts of games like Magic The Gathering, Lord of the Rings, Netrunner and the Star Wars CCG.

Then The Phantom Menace happened, we all went off to University and, like so many out there, our paths diverged, people moved on, got married, had kids...
Then, after hitting the big 30 and roughly 25 years of comic book geekery, that I found myself migrating towards forming a dedicated gaming group. We had some poker groups and a few avid dominoes players but something was amiss: I wanted tabletop gaming experience but also that same magic that went along with roleplaying.

From my first blog post our first foray into gaming started with Munchkin which, despite having outlived it's fun factor, was actually met with critical acclaim among my circle of (backstabbing!) friends.

My next venture was a co-operative game in the form of Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game which has become my second favorite solo-deckbuilder and go-to game for when I need to scream in space where nobody can hear me. Ghostbusters was next in line, this one actually getting to our gaming group table and a quick, fun game but lacking in strategy and complexity. It's still a fun game and the minis are awesome but, apart from my kids, it has not really seen much gameplay since. But it is Ghostbusters and I refuse to part with it, albeit only for the awesome minis. Next, came my favorite deckbuilder: The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game and, despite my minimal card pool, I still venture into Middle Earth from time to time.

Then, in September 2016, for my birthday, my amazing & wonderful wife surprised me with a copy of a game that had been on my pull list for a long time but totally out of budget: It was Dungeons and Dragons: Castle Ravenloft. It suffices to say that I was completely and totally blown away. It was as if the 2 page TSR comic book sprawl had finally materialized into something tangible. Here was a game that had everything going for it that I loved: Awesome heroes and villain minis, dark and gloomy dungeons, a fantastic story arc, simplistic rules, cards and powers, replay-value and customization. And, of course, a 20-sided die. The Legend of Drizzt followed soon after and then came Wrath of Ashardalon (and hopefully soon Tomb of Annihilation). It wasn't long before I was creating custom campaigns and long sprawling story arcs that had heroes venture into deep and endless dungeons.

Judging by the number of times this game has hit our table, and my unquenchable thirst for all things D&D related, it appears that my D&D journey is far from over. Where to from here? Well, I'm off to Comic Con Africa next month where I hope to pick up some more D&D/ Boardgaming loot and, of course, to get a few comic books. Because, lets face it...it all started with comic books.