RPG MUSINGS Play The Game You Want To Play

DM Samuel is the founder and editor of RPG Musings and Iron Neuron Enterprises.  Here’s a little about his gaming background in his own words…-

So I wanted to give my readers a short blurb about my gaming background and it turned out way longer than I thought it would – I hope it’s not too boring of a story to tell.  If it is, here’s your TL;DR: I’ve been gaming a long time :)

I have been gaming since I was about 8 years old, when my brother received the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set (first edition, 1981) for Christmas. We quickly realized that we needed the Basic Set and convinced our parents to take us on a mission to find one and buy it (we begged and promised to do extra chores for two weeks, but it was worth it). We got it and we played so much that the books fell apart, literally.

Of course, at 8 years old I wasn’t the best player and my brother would get so mad when I ran his plans off the rails. That’s sort of what happens when you have an 11 year old DM and an 8 year old playing a Dwarf PC (yep, Dwarf was a class!). We played the heck out of The Keep on the Borderlands and The Isle of Dread. Eventually one of us got the World of Greyhawk boxed set and we pinned the map up on the wall in my brother’s room. Greyhawk was my world of choice for many years after that.

I don’t remember much of the following 4 to 6 years, other than the fact that I played D&D as much as I could. The first module I ever bought with my own money was B1: In Search of the Unknown. Of course, in the ensuing years I played all manner of games, not just D&D, including Top Secret, Twilight2000, Gamma World, Star Trek, many Palladium Products (e.g. Robotech and TMNT), Car Wars, Boot Hill, Warhammer, Traveller, Star Frontiers, AD&D, and MERPS. Through it all, my favorite system was always Dungeons and Dragons (actually AD&D). I knew it had flaws, but I loved it, warts and all.

Time moved on and by the time I was graduating high school I was not playing as many RPGs nor was I playing as often as I had for so many of the previous years. By the time second edition D&D was getting along in years I had stopped playing RPGs altogether. When 3rd edition came out (and also, er, 3.5) I had no time or money to devote to the gaming hobby and so squelched my interest in it completely. That interest lay dormant until about 4 years ago, when I decided that I wanted to get back into role-playing.

I started looking into the old games I had loved so much and I found a whole new set of games had come into being while I was away. I discovered Dogs in the Vineyard, Spirit of the Century, d20 Modern, Burning Wheel, and Star Wars Saga Edition. I then rediscovered Call of Cthulhu, Earthdawn, and Warhammer (2e). I also discovered that 4e D&D was going to be released in the (then) near future. I decided to take the opportunity to get back into the hobby that I loved so much when I was younger. I started rebuilding my old RPG collection in earnest, adding new things to the bookshelves next to the old books I was gathering. I’m also a dice junkie, map junkie, and dungeon tile junkie. Oh yeah, and I have over 700 miniatures too. When I decided to build an RPG collection I didn’t mess around!  I log my collection, keep track of my plays, and post session reports and comments over at RPGGeek.com

Along the way, I met a truly awesome woman who was into boardgames. I like boardgames as well and we started to amass a collection of boardgames to rival my still growing RPG collection (I recently acquired Geist, Star Trek (TNG), Diaspora, Mouse Guard, and WFRP3, and added them all to my collection).   Upon release, I bought the three core 4e rulebooks (PH, DMG, MM) and began my search for a gaming group.  I started DMing a game about 2 years ago and I am completely 100% hooked on it again.  This blog will count as yet another outlet for me to express my gaming zeal.  I am also involved in a new podcast called 4 Geeks 4e, you can find us on the web at: 4Geeks4e.com

Welcome – and I hope you enjoy what you find here.  If not, please leave me a comment expressing what I can do to improve.

Legal Note: This blog is written with the intention of spurring discussion of roleplaying games in general, and Dungeons and Dragons specifically. The copyright for the Dungeons and Dragons gaming system is owned in whole and in part by Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. Views expressed in this blog are entirely mine and are not endorsed by Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast, or Hasbro.

Any content of my own design, thought, intellectual effort, or otherwise posted on this site is copyright Iron Neuron Enterprises 2009-2010.  I take full responsibility for the content found herein.  Feel free to post links to my site, but please do not pull content directly from my site.