How I got here: D&D Part 1

 I've been doing a lot of writing this past week and it got me thinking about different tastes or styles in RPG adventures and how what is popular has changed over the years.  It's not a question of better or worse, it's really just about different.  Personally I really like current generation game rules, but if I'm being honest I still really prefer the style of adventures and game content that were published when I first got into D&D.  It got me thinking about my first year playing D&D and the first few products that shaped my view of how the game is played.

When I first got into D&D I was 11 years old.  I had basically no money of my own and my family was tight enough for money that I couldn't just go out with my parents and get the things I wanted (or knew of for that matter).  I ended up doing what every 11 year old focused on one thing they want does; I asked for nothing but D&D stuff for Christmas.  I don't remember in detail a lot of Christmases from my youth, but I remember Christmas 1983.

My younger sister used to get up CRAZY early on Christmas morning to open presents.  After a couple of years of ridiculously early December 25ths my mom had set down a rule that when we woke up we could open and play with everything in our stockings, but no presents under the tree, and no waking her up before she got up on her own. So on December 25th 1983 at about 3:30am my sister came busting into my room with her stocking (mine was leaned up against my bedroom door) to go through our stockings.  Every year since my mom had started this practice my sister had come into my room, gone through stockings, and then we would fall back asleep after she got bored, this year would be the first time I stayed up.  My stocking was full of fruit, nuts, candies, and toiletries (the usual for us) but tucked in behind my stocking leaned up against my bedroom door was my first ever D&D book; The Fiend Folio.

I was thrilled!  Not only was the artwork AMAZING but a ton of my early gaming was playing through Fighting Fantasy  books Warlock Of Firetop Mountain and Citadel Of Chaos.  Getting a D&D book that was filled with monsters with the same aesthetic and sensibilities excited me more than any other D&D book I could have gotten at the time would have.  My sister fell back asleep and I sat up in my bed reading the Fiend Folio from cover to cover while everyone else in the house slept.

Hours later we all  went downstairs and started opening presents.  My mom obviously knew which way my interests were going as the first two packages I opened were a JRR Tolkien box set and a CS Lewis box set.  That was awesome!  I had 11 books to read that couldn't wait to get into, but the next package properly kicked off and interest that is still going strong 39 years later...

This was unbelievable!  I was overwhelmed that I had both a Player's and a Dungeon Master's book!  I'd never actually seen this box set before, I had only seen the the AD&D hardcovers before.  And in 2022 I can't accurately convey what a big deal it was to have my own dice, at that time I didn't even know where I could get polyhedral dice from!  I remember thinking I couldn't wait to get together with my friends after Christmas to start playing with my new stuff, and that was before I opened the Player's book and realized it had a solo adventure I was going to be able to play through that day.  That old D&D box combined newness and completeness in a way that still informs my view of what a good starter set for a game should be.

My final gaming present from that first Christmas was another showcase of how great gaming content was at the time.  My first issue of Dragon Magazine.

How could one magazine have; an entire city setting, an complete adventure, a piece of fiction, and a TON of background articles, and even ads (seriously ADS!) that had tons of amazing original artwork?

Christmas 1983 was my first deep dive into fantasy role-playing.  Next up I'll cover summer 1985 when my philosophy of adventures and adventure writing started to take shape.

-Jay

Review - Top Secret New World Order

It seems like over the past year or two I've gotten more than a little nostalgic about gaming and started going down the "retro" path with more than a few systems.

From crowdfunded projects last year I got two new updated versions of classic games.  Villains and Vigilantes was the first, and now Top Secret New World Order.

The original Top Secret was TSR's foray into espionage role-playing.  While with the original pre-Wizards Of The Coast TSR the game also saw a substantially updated version released called Top Secret S.I.  One of the big appeals of this newest edition is that on the front cover and all over the Kickstarter promotional messaging was that Merle Rasmussen (the author of the original game) was the author of this game as well.  That appears to be mostly true.

First up the box game contents themselves.  I have to say this was a bit of a mixed bag for me.  The game comes will a pad of full-colour character sheets (great idea!  why doesn't every RPG do this?), and a nice sturdy GM screen.  In addition there are plastic markers for tension (one of the game mechanics) that can be moved along the GM screen and an almost complete set of dice.  Those are the definite "pros".  The con side from a physical contents point of view is definitely the main rule book itself.  Excepting the cover the entire book is black and white, it is very sparsely illustrated, the layout is dry to look at and read and it has the flimsiest cover of any gaming product I've handled in years.  That last one might sound minor and petty but it's jarring, the cover is thinner than any game magazine I've gotten in years and is no where near as sturdy as the free giveaways Osprey provides.

The rules themselves seem really interesting (I haven't actually played yet) but are based largely on a pre-existing system written by one of the games other credited authors so I'm curious how much of the game content Mr Rasmussen actually wrote or if he might just be a figurehead for this project.  That question aside the core rules are that mix I really like of a simple core mechanic coupled with a lot of depth for the player's to affect and impact outcomes.  It reminds me a bit of Savage World but in fairness I think I'm oversimplifying that, it's just my personal RPG experience likens this to Savage Worlds.

I really enjoy the 'exploding dice' mechanic where a critical success roll on any one die vastly increases your potential for a positive outcome.  However as a criticism for systems like this that assign higher/larger dice to a player's best attributes it actually seems a bit counter-intuitive in that the larger die you have the lower chance you have of a critical success (on 1d4 I get a critical success 25% of the time, on 1d10 I get a critical success 10% of the time).  My other personal reservation with the rule book contents is that there is virtually no background or flavour provided.  Its not unreasonable to assume that the authors thought most players would simply set their games in the current real-world and therefore they wouldn't need any additional background material but it does create a bit of a dry feel to the rule book by not breaking up blocks of rules with some fiction or background factoids.

Overall I think the game is a worthwhile purchase for any fans of the genre or of previous iterations of the system.  For an experienced role-player the game is ready to play right out of the box (it includes an adventure as well) and seems like a fun time.  For someone looking for a first RPG you might want to look for something more visually stimulating as well as something that has a bit more flavour and setting to get you started.

-Jay