I still remember the first time I played D&D......well not exactly.
It wasn't D&D, that's for sure. I don't know what the hell you would call it, to be honest. We were young kids telling stories and rolling funny looking dice. We were having fun.
The first game I ever played was some sort of a modern day ruleset. I use the term "ruleset" lightly because the rules were more of guidelines than actual rules. We would roll dice, look at the numbers and do our best to figure out what happened.
The DM had his map and had us roll dice to stat our characters. My first adventure was walking into the local fast food restaurant, ordering a burger and somehow stopping a crime.....or beating someone up........or something.
I was hooked. The maps, the freedom, the dice, the stats for my character....I loved it all. I needed more.
I went immediately out to the local toy store. (that's where you bought D&D back then, FYI) They only had two sets there, a gold box about Immortals, and the Hollow World Campaign Set. I bought them both.
Now, picture that you've never played D&D, don't understand the races, classes, scores, proficiencies, nothing. Now imagine sitting around with your friends trying to learn the game with nothing but the most advanced set and a non-core supplement. Of course we had a blast!
We had no idea what we were doing. We created bizarre characters, we rolled for hp at every level and laughed at the fighters with 1 hp, we giggled and shared stories every weekend.
We played at school during lunch, we stayed late and played in the computer lab, we played some more on the bus ride home, then when we got home we were there long enough to say hi to the folks before meeting at someone else's house to play some more. Those were my golden years of RPing.
I bought the AD&D 2nd ed PHB as soon as I had the cash saved. I got the DMG for my birthday and the MM for Christmas. Those books were my bibles from elementary through high school. We had tons of supplements, campaign settings, adventures, maps, you name it.
We branched out to other games too. We did some White Wolf such as Vampire: The Masquerade or, one of my favorites, Aberrant. We got into Star Wars, first the West End Games d6 (amazing system for face to face gaming, btw), then the newer d20 Revised. Later we even did some d10 unisystem in the form of All Flesh Must Be Eaten.
When 3rd ed came out, I was sad and nervous. So much time, so much dedication.......so much money into 2nd ed. I was scared of change. I initially rejected the system, but eventually grew fonder of it, though AD&D is still my system of choice.
I tried 4th a few times, never really got into it. It felt awkward to me and I wasn't big on the ruleset. Like many of my comrades, I passed on this system.
Now, in the twilight of 5th edition, or "Next" as some people call it, I am once again optimistic for the future of gaming. I have playtested the system and enjoy many of it's points. It does well in simplifying and streamlining what is starting to become a "clunky" system.
Though me and my old gaming friends have all grown up and are busy with jobs, families, and homes of our own, we still manage to occasionally find the time to get together and escape back into our RPG realms to roll some dice as we escape to our own imaginations.
The Short Version
I'm a long time RPer with nearly 20 years GMing experience. Well experienced with MapTools. I have run and am familiar with D&D, AD&D 2nd ed, D&D 3.5, Star Wars d6, Star Wars d20, Aberrant d10, and All Flesh Must be Eaten. Custom wrote my own d20 modern system. These games operate on a number of systems including d20, d10 Unisystem, d10 White Wolf Dice Pool, and d6 West End games.
In my spare time, I work as a professional Dungeon Master and Blogger, as I try to share with the world the games that I love.
On this site, I'm going to show you houserules, maps, adventurers, DMing Tips, new monsters, and countless other things I have used against players in years past.
You'll also find complete rewrites of RPGs including both my own version of 3.5 which I call "Halberd" and it's modern day counterpart "All out War" or "AoW" for short.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy your browse. There's something here for most everyone.
Welcome to the Dungeon.
-Gomer
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